Combat-related PTSD: a spiritual wound for the vet and for America

I cannot get this news out of my thoughts today -- Joseph Dwyer is dead. He killed himself. He was a decorated veteran of the Iraq war, an Army medic. He had PTSD. He is the latest announced casualty of war-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

He joins people like Joshua Omvig - an Iowa man who shot himself in front of his mother after an 11-months in Iraq

120 vets commit suicide every single week -- twice the national rate.

Have any of you known or loved someone suffering from war-related PTSD? If you have, you have learned first-hand what this deep spiritual wound is about. For the vet suffering from PTSD, the war is never over.

I know a Vietnam vet who still wakes up in the middle of the night and cannot sleep without walking the perimeter of his house, to make sure it is safe. He sleeps with a gun nearby. Another, a respected professional, wears an ankle holster everywhere he goes. I know another who began having panic attacks and flashbacks 20 years after the war. I know another who has been unable to hold down a steady job since the war. I know an Iraq war vet who cries every day, but will not let his family get emotionally close to him. This country, and other countries who go to war, have two body counts to deal with -- the men and women who died in battle, and the men and women who suffer from PTSD -- including people who kill themselves after battle (or struggle daily against the temptation).

The first man I met with PTSD was a Vietnam vet that I had as a study partner in college. We became good friends. He told me that he had to sleep separately from his wife, because, as a Green Beret, he had been trained to kill at the slightest provocation. One night, when they were both asleep, his wife rolled over in bed, absently tossing her arm over him. He said he woke up/became conscious with his hands around her throat moments from killing her. I will never forget what he said --"The army made me an animal. A killing animal. Humans weren't meant to do what I did. It never goes away. I'll be a wild beast until I die or someone kills me."

And that wound is shared by the vet's entire family, and the loss is felt by the entire community. This spiritual wound flies in the face of all that military peronnel are told about their identity as warriors. It is the real humanity catching up and reacting after having been shelved to make survival in war possible. It is all that is innocent in a person, and young, and untouched, rising up and howling in agony, even if that person looks silent as a grave.

The SanFrancisco Chronicle in February of this year, when commenting on what the Army alone reported, said

Last year, the Army said its suicide rate in 2006 rose to 17.3 per 100,000 troops, the highest level in 26 years of record keeping. The Army said recently that as many as 121 soldiers committed suicide last year. If all are confirmed, the number would be more than double the number reported in 2001.

See these UTube films of a CBS report about this.
Part I regarding the struggle to get complete record counts of suicides of people both serving and no longer serving in the military. The highest rate found was among vets of the Afghanistan/Iraq war.
Part II Failures of the Dept of VA Affairs are discussed and the "Don't Look; Don't Find" attitude.

We speak of the tortures of Abu Ghraib, without stepping back far enough to see that ALL war is torture - every minute. We send our young to experience and do the unthinkable as though it were routine. One man I know had a best friend near him who stepped on a land mine. He had to keep fighting while wiping his best friend's body parts off his face and chest. There was no place to stop, no time to mourn, no way to deal with this. He just swallowed hard and kept on killing -- because he had no other rational choice. It was that or die. Our young men and women have to be on alert against the threat of sudden death 24/7. Every day. For months or years on end.

Do what you will with this, but please do not forget it. Ask the candidates what they are going to do. For some of you, please understand vets differently,with more compassion. Pray for peace. Work for peace. Live peace.

A Lamentation and Litany

For the young, eyes bright as rain, lives new as spring grasses, who are forced to see the horrors of cruelty.
Heal their wounds.

For the veterans who must carry and execute the burdens of our political decisions,
Heal their wounds.

For the veterans forced into acts of hatred and revenge, because no orther choices allow them to live,
Heal their wounds.

For the families of those suffering with PTSD, who seek the son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother they sent to war, only to not find him or her in the person who returns.
Heal their wounds.

For the spouse of one suffering from the ravages of PTSD, able to begin no day with the surety of what will follow,
Heal their wounds.

For the vets who believe joy and innocence are gone forever.
Heal their wounds.

For the vets who cannot get adequate care or benefits for PTSD.
Heal their wounds.

For the caregivers : doctors, nurses, chaplains, family members -- who care for the spiritually wounded daily,
Give them strength and hope.