Tom Kertes

My friend Laura, a big supporter of the War Resisters Support Campaign, sent me a link to her blog about an essay by Max Cleland that calls for more support to those returning from war.

The War Resisters Support Campaign is calling on the government to allow the US soldiers refusing to fight in the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq to remain in Canada. There are at least 150 former US soldiers seeking refuge in Canada, all refusing to fight in a war that they believe is immoral and unjust. Parliament has voted in support of the resisters, passing a resolution calling for provisions to allow soldiers who refuse to fight in wars not sanctioned by the United Nations to remain in Canada. Harper’s minority government has refused to follow the will of Parliament and continues to deport US Iraq war resisters from Canada.

In her commentary on Cleland’s essay, Laura writes:

I understand that many people question the idea that the Nidal Hasan, who opened fire at Fort Hood last week, could have had PTSD, since he was never deployed. These aren’t people who are freaked out over the man’s name or his ethnic background. These are good people on the side of justice, who feel we’re using the expression “post-traumatic” too lightly.

When I heard this, I immediately thought of my friend Dean, a former marine now living in Canada, one of the many war resisters at risk for deportation by the Harper government. I’ve written about Dean a few times, most recently here. Dean deployed to Iraq twice. In between those two tours, he was stationed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a US military hospital in Stuttgart, Germany.

The rate of severe depression and suicide at the hospital was so high that military brass became concerned. Soldiers were assigned to act as go-betweens for patients and visiting families, and Dean was one of them. He had no medical or social work experience, and was given no training.

Many of the patients were dying. Many were burn victims, so not only were they dying, but in constant, agonizing pain. Families were flown in to say goodbye. Other patients would survive, but with permanent, life-changing disabilities, and adjustment was a long way off.

It was there – not in Iraq, but in the hospital base in Germany – where Dean developed symptoms of severe depression and PTSD. The hospital personnel told him, Don’t worry, we all go through that.

This was not from fighting the war, but from seeing its aftermath, up close, all day, every day.

Laura echoes Cleland, who writes, in an Op-Ed for the New York Times:

War is haunting. Death. Pain. Blood. Dismemberment. A buddy dying in your arms. Imagine trying to get over the memory of a bomb splitting a Humvee apart beneath your feet and taking your leg with it. The first time I saw the stilled bodies of American soldiers dead on the battlefield is as stark and brutal a memory as the one of the grenade that ripped off my right arm and both legs.

No, the soldier never forgets. But neither should the rest of us.

Veterans returning today represent the first real influx of combat-wounded soldiers in a generation. They are returning to a nation unprepared for what war does to the soul. Those new veterans will need all of our help. After America’s wars, the used-up fighters are too often left to fend for themselves. Many of the hoboes in the Depression were veterans of World War I. When they came home, they were labeled shell-shocked and discharged from the Army too broken to make it during the economic cataclysm.

The entire essay is worth reading.