anthony
Founder
The first question I get asked, more often than not, when someone discovers I'm a combat veteran, is whether I killed someone. Whilst the rudest question to ask, it's also the most obvious question. The problem is naivety though from civilians who do not really understand what is traumatic about operational deployments.
Killing someone is the easy part... not being killed is the constant unknown, let alone survivors guilt from seeing or hearing about a buddy who lost the battle of survival, and deployed home deceased. The things you see and come across that engagement orders don't allow you to intervene, these along with the constant threat of death, are what I would put on the two highest issues of combat trauma.
Watching someone get blown to bits, decapitated, shot for just being there, raped and lots more... these things play on your mind after the fact. There is nothing worse than having engagement orders where you simply cannot shoot someone if they're dressed in civilians and raping another, or killing them even... if you intervene, your own military will punish you / send you to jail, because you didn't follow your ROI (rules of engagement). It is you the soldier who has to stand back and watch civilians be their worse, watch the enemy done civilian clothing and do things, which you can't stop... all because you can't clearly identify them at that time as the enemy. A civilian killing another civilian, raping, torturing, so forth... is not typically within ROI, thus you can do nothing but let it happen and continue on your way.
To understand combat, it isn't about killing... its about watching humanity doing the worse things to one another, that really otherwise wouldn't occur.
Most soldiers can justify killing an enemy combatant, because it is kill or be killed, that simple. Very easy to reconcile in your brain. Why your buddy next to you got hit and you didn't... not so easy. Or why you can't stop someone shooting that child, again, not easy when you come from western society where things like that are against the law and you go to jail for.
I've been on some operations unarmed, such as humanitarian missions... yet there are rebels who are armed, do shoot at you or people who just want to kill you because you're different from them and they don't do different. Being in situations like that with constant threat of death... that is another thing that plays with your mind... right at the top of the list. Plenty of soldiers go into combat, see nothing, do nothing, but come home with PTSD. Why? Because of what I mentioned above... that constant threat alone, let alone if you see or do things as well... it adds up when deployed for month on month, compounding tours, your mental psyche breaks eventually.
Why am I saying this? Because civilians, even military who have never deployed to an operational zone, they don't understand that its just not about killing. Its about taking someone from a society of rules and laws, putting them in one with rules they have to comply with, yet the population / enemy doesn't. Some of it is the politics of war... and that alone causes PTSD for soldiers.
It is easier to be a civilian within such a place, than a soldier in uniform, wearing a constant bullseye to everyone around you.
Killing someone is the easy part... not being killed is the constant unknown, let alone survivors guilt from seeing or hearing about a buddy who lost the battle of survival, and deployed home deceased. The things you see and come across that engagement orders don't allow you to intervene, these along with the constant threat of death, are what I would put on the two highest issues of combat trauma.
Watching someone get blown to bits, decapitated, shot for just being there, raped and lots more... these things play on your mind after the fact. There is nothing worse than having engagement orders where you simply cannot shoot someone if they're dressed in civilians and raping another, or killing them even... if you intervene, your own military will punish you / send you to jail, because you didn't follow your ROI (rules of engagement). It is you the soldier who has to stand back and watch civilians be their worse, watch the enemy done civilian clothing and do things, which you can't stop... all because you can't clearly identify them at that time as the enemy. A civilian killing another civilian, raping, torturing, so forth... is not typically within ROI, thus you can do nothing but let it happen and continue on your way.
To understand combat, it isn't about killing... its about watching humanity doing the worse things to one another, that really otherwise wouldn't occur.
Most soldiers can justify killing an enemy combatant, because it is kill or be killed, that simple. Very easy to reconcile in your brain. Why your buddy next to you got hit and you didn't... not so easy. Or why you can't stop someone shooting that child, again, not easy when you come from western society where things like that are against the law and you go to jail for.
I've been on some operations unarmed, such as humanitarian missions... yet there are rebels who are armed, do shoot at you or people who just want to kill you because you're different from them and they don't do different. Being in situations like that with constant threat of death... that is another thing that plays with your mind... right at the top of the list. Plenty of soldiers go into combat, see nothing, do nothing, but come home with PTSD. Why? Because of what I mentioned above... that constant threat alone, let alone if you see or do things as well... it adds up when deployed for month on month, compounding tours, your mental psyche breaks eventually.
Why am I saying this? Because civilians, even military who have never deployed to an operational zone, they don't understand that its just not about killing. Its about taking someone from a society of rules and laws, putting them in one with rules they have to comply with, yet the population / enemy doesn't. Some of it is the politics of war... and that alone causes PTSD for soldiers.
It is easier to be a civilian within such a place, than a soldier in uniform, wearing a constant bullseye to everyone around you.
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