Many years ago I used to be one angry prick... never hid this from the main ptsd forum site when I created it. It takes more courage IMO to man up and acknowledge when wrong, than it does to run of on some tangent of nobility, crusading how important one is over anyone else. I really hated the pissing contests between corps whilst in, let alone people carry it when out.
I was a poge, field refuelling... and let me just say, we were usually ahead of infantry on what you may want to call a "front-line"... so we were normally behind the line in enemy space, with small mobile refuelling sites for blackhawks and gunships to get in and out of. We were often on our own or had a small detachment located near us for fire support. We would get back to locations and Infantry would be sitting around drinking brews, eating all they wanted to eat, having a great life in some fancy shed. Then we had times when we were back from the fighting areas, had a generator, tent, fridge with cold drinks, etc... with a much larger, more permanent refuelling establishment. Infantry would come by and slang shit at us for having it easy.
It was often funny when someone from SAS was around us, some grunt would speak such shit, and the SAS trooper would give them a reality shock of what some poges actually faced compared to Infantry. That would shut-up especially more experienced soldiers... but newer ones had that pride of corps bullshit going on.
Funnily enough, some of our own people were ex-grunts, because it was a job they had the best of both worlds. They got the cruise locations with all the perks, yet they also got out into the dangerous territory... except they didn't have the support of their battalion behind them, instead they quickly discovered just how f*cked they were when in some location for a few hours, a couple SAS or section of grunts to protect us, refuel flatout for a couple of hours, then pack up, sling the crap under a chopper and gone again before enemy fighters could hopefully reach us.
Reality was a bitch to ex-grunts who became poges due to injuries, then suddenly realised the job was more dangerous than their own combat missions.
My brother-in-law was a medic on a ship of Somalia and Rwanda... helping to patch up all the injured, watching them die due to it taking too long to get them onboard, etc etc. Body parts everywhere, nothing like what any doctor would see in an ER unless there as some type of major attack or such, which is rare at best. The ship was providing supporting fire to land based troops, as well as being a massive still target for enemy... sinking a ship normally ends badly for most onboard. He has PTSD due to his serving in combat zones, all done from a ship. He is messed up, but not as bad as I was on land. Again... land based troops are usually more messed up.
It is believed that special forces troops all have PTSD, hence why they keep them in action near constantly, and they have such flexibility when not in action with the shit they pull and get up to, usually way outside the scope of normal, because the are literally trained to have PTSD and learn how to control it the best they can... because the most effective soldier on the battlefield is normally one with PTSD, due to the symptoms it possesses as strengths in combat, but weaknesses in civilian society. This is also why most special forces endup taking jobs with civilian security companies so they get back into combat zones. They simply can't function outside them all that well... and it takes them many years to slowly chill out from their experience and training.
Combat is just so diverse... and PTSD comes from so many different sources.
A storeman would rarely have in their mind they are in danger. If a mortar hit close to their stores and location, suddenly the realisation they're not untouchable, or excluded from conflict, hits them hard... thus PTSD can form because they can't see their enemy to even have a fighting chance, hence helplessness kicks in. Stores and such are far better targets nowadays in modern warfare than ever. Enemies stopped fighting head to head long ago, instead they began targeting logistics. We all do the same... we go for logistics. You cut of logistics, you suddenly make an easy enemy to fight due to low morale. Urban warfare is seen today as worse than jungle, as jungle you have a level playing field to some degree. Urban, they can pop out a window, rooftop, corner, then disappear before you can even get a grenade or such in their location... usually ending up with innocent casualties as a result, which didn't occur in jungle warfare for the most part. Yet jungle has more deeming psychological problems than urban due to the isolation.
This is why, IMO, all veterans and combat types are really quite equal. PTSD is PTSD... when it comes to obtaining it in combat zones. Severity changes and experienced trauma is obviously different, thus equating to symptom severity... but the PTSD is still the same and can easily go up or down without notice.
