The Last Veteran's Days

On this Veterans Day, I was thinking this morning about how they have ceremonies for aging veterans each year. I wondered if there are any WWI vets still alive, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, there are 22 still alive, but of those, only a few actually saw combat. These guys are all 106 years old, more or less.

I read John Keegan's First World War this last year. It was a bear of a book that I had to force myself through. Not only is Keegan a fairly dry writer (don't get me wrong, he's an excellent researcher and the information is thorough, just numbingly so), but the subject of WWI is depressing as hell.

Short Summary: Europe spends 20 or 30 years expecting that there will be another war, and does nothing but plan for it. Some obscure and unimportant duke gets shot, and it turns out to be the trigger that sends a horrible cascade of events into motion. Enormous numbers of people smash into each other in great lines, and due to the efficiency of their modern weapons, are forced to dig in. They fight for almost 3 years in an almost static position, feeding millions of men into the action, to no effect. It reminds me of a great machine that is trying to keep a fire called war going, and human beings are the pieces of wood that it keeps feeding in to be wasted. And the war was a waste. Nothing was proved, nothing was gained. Even the victors were bled white and most of a whole generation of young men were destroyed. The war bled the countries' coffers dry and produced such an unhealthy environment that the worst pandemic to ever hit the world swept through in the months following the war and killed even more people that the war killed. Horrible things like chemical warfare were invented. As if the war wasn't bad enough, economic penalties for the losers were so harsh that a vicious hatred was stoked virtually guaranteeing the next war.

Even after all the evidence of the futility of attacking heavily entrenched positions, generals still ordered it and men still went forward into the teeth of the meat grinder. Can we even understand that thinking anymore?

It occurred to me today that those arrogant generals that kept ordering the fruitless attacks are all dead now and that maybe their way of thinking would die with them. Maybe when the last of them died, the urge to send men off to a fruitless, hopeless, meaningless death would find a final resting place in their cold lifeless corpses.

We already know it's not true. Each generation somehow forgets how horrible war is and starts a new series of wars. Maybe this is something that is hard wired into us, a genetic trait. Lord knows there's not much keeping our population in check. If humans were deer, there'd be an unlimited season on them. "Gotta thin the herd." Maybe war is the price we pay to avoid being hip deep in people. If so, it's damned inefficient.

After WWI came a series of little wars around the globe as people sought to push boundaries around and plant their flag in a piece of turf, or assert their domination over another group of people. Then the big countries went at it again. Hell, they didn't even wait a full generation between WWI and WWII. Some of the guys that fought in I were still there to fight in II. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a veteran of both, as well as Douglas McCarthy. Truman fought in the trenches in the first war and later gave the orders that finished off the next war.

Then there was Korea and Viet Nam as well as Gulf War I and the Iraq War. So we didn't learn anything about the costs and results of war. At any given time, there are dozens of wars going on in the world. The print and the network news don't even report most conflicts unless they get completely out of control. Would you like to venture how many ongoing conflicts there are right now? Wikipedia (see "Ongoing Conflicts") says there are 29. The death toll for these wars is mostly unknown, but it appears to be about three quarters of a million. The average conflict goes about 15 years back. Try typing "War Death Toll" into Wikipedia's search bar and gaze in amazement at the carnage from history. The Rwanda Burundi war didn't even make the list and I remember hearing that 1.5 million people were hacked to death with machetes in that war.

They called WWI the Great War and The War to end all Wars. I wonder if maybe the end of war, which would be great, is something of an oxymoron. They always say that those that fail to pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it. I don't think that's right. It's not that people aren't aware of what happened before, they just don't think it's the same thing when it's happening to them. Look at the Iraq War. Many of the people that worked the hardest to make the war happen came of age in the Viet Nam era. I remember when the Iraq War was going to start, there was this really small fringe of people that said that it was going to be another Viet Nam. I remember the reaction those statements got - mostly scorn. The average citizen thought that this was totally absurd. We would be in and out in no time. The problem with this war is that not many Americans think they are affected by it. I don't know anyone that died over there and only a very few that served. I don't know anyone that has lost a loved one over there. But I know that the world seems like a much more dangerous place because of all the resentment over our actions.

The problem with resentment is that it doesn't die with the people that harbor it. They pass it down to their children, and it gets nurtured and preserved. One of the premises in the Serbian Bosnian Croatian Kosovar conflicts was some massacre that happened hundreds of years ago. I'd never even heard of it. No one alive today was there, much less effected by it. Our continuous chain of wars and atrocities stretching back to antiquity is like some kind of twisted perversion we keep feeding and never try to break free of. It's the serial drug addiction of the human race.

All that gloomy sentiment said, I have to say that overall, life is pretty sweet. You get to see interesting things, have good friends, love your family, and cherish sweet days with beautiful weather and glorious scenes. You get to struggle against disease and hardship, grow and learn, strive and achieve, and see the world change and history take place around you. People are basically decent, if you get to know them. There are few people on Earth that no one loves, that someone can't understand or appreciate. Maybe some of them only have animals for friends, but most people have someone that wants to have them around. And sometimes we send people off to war to stop things from getting worse, to preserve our way of life. Not many soldiers that march off to war think that they are doing something worthless. But in the cauldron of war, watching all the suffering and loss around them, I'm sure they have one thought in their minds - "If I get through this, I'm gonna do something to make life worthwhile."

We need to find a way to teach that lesson without war.

PTSD

Estimates that as many as 52,000 of the troops returning from Iraq may suffer PTSD (reference Veterans for America website). Regardless of the number, there is no doubt that many soldiers suffer from this condition.

Recent NPR reports from Daniel Zwerdling brought to light conditions at Ft. Carson Colorado, where soldiers that had PTSD were being denied treatment and harassed and mistreated if they admitted to having a problem.

One soldier fought back and won a courtmartial case they were bringing against him, and in the process, started helping other veterans that were afflicted and persecuted by the Army. He is now working for Veterans for America in Denver and his name is Andrew Pogany.

Everyone remembers the scene from the movie Patton, supposedly based on a true story, where a shell shocked soldier is slapped around by General Patton and called a coward because he wasn't really wounded. This famous example is typical of how people feel about the disease, even those that suffer through it. Certainly, the thought that men's minds can erode or snap under the pressure of combat is a terrifying thought to military strategists, trainers, and commanders. How are we to successfully conduct a war if the process disrupts the abilities of the main tool we use to fight, the soldier? In war, we use equipment and plan for the certainty that it will eventually wear out and break through repeated use without any maintenance, yet we don't treat our soldiers as if they are capable of wearing out or breaking. My analogy is ironic, because I am proposing to treat soldiers more humanely by treating them more like machines.

I was listening to a podcast about a University of Lubeck (Germany) experiment where slow wave oscillations were put into subjects heads through electrodes as they fell asleep. These waves simulate the natural waves that people's brains generate as they fall asleep. Researchers speculate that this is an indicator, or the evidence of the way the brain consolidates the activities of the day into long term memory. Many scientists have questioned the purpose of sleep, and a few have theorized that this is when the brain organizes itself and maintains its health. A recent study of a family group with an affliction robbing them of sleep showed that increasingly erratic behavior, memory problems, and eventually death resulted from a prolonged loss of sleep.

I think that this is part of combat induced PTSD. I speculate that a combination of lack of sleep, high degrees of stress from extreme survival instinct, and having to deal with a situation that is just incompatible, contradictory, and intractable would imbalance most people's minds. I believe that the sleep disruption is interrupting the proper integration of soldier's memories and thoughts into their minds. When they do sleep, the hair trigger they acquire to assist with their survival is disrupting their sleep patterns. They have a huge load of mental material to process. They think they are doing their patriotic duty for a country that doesn't appreciate them, and doesn't want them there. They are told they are in the country to help the people that are trying to kill them. They go out to do missions each day, which they cannot refuse, because they are in the military, and their instincts are telling them that this is dangerous and stupid and they should not go out there into the danger, but their sense of duty gives them no choice. They watch friends die and wonder if there is any point in their sacrifice. They listen to their training briefings about how the enemy will attack them, then they see that their threat is everywhere, or the enemy changes tactics. They are in a no-win situation. Does anyone think that a sane person can endure an insane situation long without being infected by it?

Those that come back and do seek and get help for PTSD are taught about their triggers. These triggers are sounds, smells, sights, or some kind of stimuli that puts them back in the mental situation of their distress. They often can't sleep and self medicate to escape the continued stress. Some describe feeling as if the bad situations they endured in combat will not quit happening in their mind. They keep replaying and repeating, keeping the stressors fresh in their mind. One form of treatment exposes the soldiers to their triggers in a safe environment, being told over and over that the environment is safe. Eventually, they can dismantle or decrease their own triggers. Therapy alone has helped many PTSD sufferers get some relief from their condition. Others benefit from time, which seems to erode the condition down to a less severe level. Some never really get better, and many commit suicide.

I believe that the slow wave oscillation inducer could be used in conjunction with therapy to help cure the condition. I think that the brain gets off track and cannot get back to the point where it can incorporate what is happening. With some external reinforcement, perhaps the restful, restoring sleep can be reinitiated and the soldier can begin to assimilate the things that happened and understand and accept them.

Perhaps this therapy could be used in the field. Once a soldier is removed from danger and provided adequate security during sleep, these devices could be made available to the soldier. If the use of externally boosted slow wave oscillators improves memory, as the studies indicate, it could have an additional benefit. Besides not allowing the sleep patterns to become disrupted in the first place, it could help soldiers remember and assimilate the things that happened during the day. If the mind works on the problems of the dangers it faces during the waking hours while it sleeps, perhaps the solutions of how to avoid dangers will come more naturally, and our soldiers will get better at avoiding dangers and surviving their combat experience. And maybe they can then come home, healthy and whole and enjoy the reward of a normal life that they have more than earned through their service.

Iraq Veterans and PTSD

Letter sent to Senator Bond 12/14/2006 6:50 AM

Thank you for your recent request for the Department of Defense to look into the denial of treatment for soldiers that may have PTSD. This is an important issue that cuts across party lines.

A year ago I sent you a letter, disappointed with your stance on torture. I felt that this position could only be blind support for the President in defiance of what is right or wrong (I still do). What politicians do not understand is that there are stances on issues that are right or wrong independent of party affiliation or who supported a candidate to get elected. Most Americans have a pretty good sense of these issues and when politicians' actions seem to be dictated by political expedience rather than what that politician values, the people are sorely disappointed in their leaders.

Whether a citizen agrees with the war or not, the tools we use to fight this war are flesh and blood people, and this country owes its highest debt to those that risk harm in order to serve for the good of the country. The thought that we would ever do anything less than honor and support them is a wrong that must be eradicated immediately.

The sad truth is that war uses people up. The things we require soldiers to do in combat situations harm the soldiers' psychological well-being. This is not a weakness or anything to be ashamed of, it's a fact that we ignore at great peril. PTSD counseling should be mandatory for all returning troops, and command imperatives should be crafted to remove the stigma from this condition. We do so well crafting our service members into a "Band of Brothers" when we send them off to war, and we honor the bonds they form through their trials. Why should these brothers, our nation's brothers, not be treated as true brothers in their time of need? They need our help and understanding to restore their minds and souls after the sacrifice they make for our country.


Please continue this good effort and see it through. It is far too important to ignore.