Mate, thanks for sharing your story. At the time you could probably laugh at the stupidity of the Major, we all do that, and even joke with your mates like 'I couldn't see shit' and 'I wanted to blast those ##^@ers', but the silent stress build up happens and we have to push it down into the vault and move on, that's what we are trained to do, right???
Everyone has stories like that, and the small minded people out there would say, 'nobody died', 'you came back alive', etc, etc, but personally and I could probably speak for the rest of the forum, you were kissed on the dick that day mate.
While I was over there a routine patrol went out and was hit by an IED, for some stupid reason some fairly high ranker was on that patrol, and was hit. The shit fight started when and even higher rank went out with the QRF, but the taliban had cottoned on to procedure and hid their secondary IED's 300 m back from the first ones, so when the QRF deployed and arrived they detonated killing whoever that higher rank was. My mind is a little foggy on that, maybe 'SPOCK' can help me out here.
Flynnman you were probably in more dangerous situations than that too. This is why we are so different from other people with PTSD and why we don't fit in to the other forum.
You see, the majority of them, I won't say all, have only suffered one incident, like a car accident, or a natural disaster, or god forbid a rape. It's enough for them to suffer from the symptoms of PTSD for the rest of their lives and their symptoms are every bit as bad as ours. The Beast does not discriminate there; however, the problem we have is when it comes to therapy.
The standard person that has a single trauma to deal with can generally get through that with therapy and lead a semi normal life. Stress will still affect them, but nothing like us. My therapists have got me to a level where the past is no longer haunting me. There are still a shit tin of incidents that I need to deal with, but as they are not causing problems, they will leave it alone.
A lot of Vietnam Veterans have a bigger problem. For 40 plus years some of them have been hiding their demons, so when they go to therapy, a good therapist will only open 'Pandora's Box' a little while to deal with the issues affecting their life, then they close it again.
A lot of them will die without even touching those nightmares.
I am waffling here. Sorry for stealing your thread.
Everyone has stories like that, and the small minded people out there would say, 'nobody died', 'you came back alive', etc, etc, but personally and I could probably speak for the rest of the forum, you were kissed on the dick that day mate.
While I was over there a routine patrol went out and was hit by an IED, for some stupid reason some fairly high ranker was on that patrol, and was hit. The shit fight started when and even higher rank went out with the QRF, but the taliban had cottoned on to procedure and hid their secondary IED's 300 m back from the first ones, so when the QRF deployed and arrived they detonated killing whoever that higher rank was. My mind is a little foggy on that, maybe 'SPOCK' can help me out here.
Flynnman you were probably in more dangerous situations than that too. This is why we are so different from other people with PTSD and why we don't fit in to the other forum.
You see, the majority of them, I won't say all, have only suffered one incident, like a car accident, or a natural disaster, or god forbid a rape. It's enough for them to suffer from the symptoms of PTSD for the rest of their lives and their symptoms are every bit as bad as ours. The Beast does not discriminate there; however, the problem we have is when it comes to therapy.
The standard person that has a single trauma to deal with can generally get through that with therapy and lead a semi normal life. Stress will still affect them, but nothing like us. My therapists have got me to a level where the past is no longer haunting me. There are still a shit tin of incidents that I need to deal with, but as they are not causing problems, they will leave it alone.
A lot of Vietnam Veterans have a bigger problem. For 40 plus years some of them have been hiding their demons, so when they go to therapy, a good therapist will only open 'Pandora's Box' a little while to deal with the issues affecting their life, then they close it again.
A lot of them will die without even touching those nightmares.
I am waffling here. Sorry for stealing your thread.