- Admin
- #13
anthony
Founder
Scott Fraser said:
Scott, I have a rough idea mate of what is going through you head, and let me just say, the pain can be eased through reasoning. I have watched children die, been armed, and because or ROE not been able to engage, because the profile did not have enemy uniform. Very typical of ROE don't you think. I have pulled children out of drains, when their heads where cut off, or other body part, and worse again, but let me tell you something as I had to learn for myself, that it is not our personal fault that these people die, because the circumstances where out of our control.
Yes, you have to live with this, as I do with all my things, but survivor guilt is masked with a lot of fiction, not fact. Finding the fact is the important part, ie. did you shoot the girl? NO. Someone else did. Did you know that a sniper had you in their sights? NO, obviously not. Did you know that by bending over that the shot would instead hit the little girl? NO, you did not. You had no control in that situation Scott, and that is fact. There is a difference between thinking we know the facts and believing we know the facts. Its not about dismissing what happens in war, its merely about factualising what we can, and cannot control. Certain things are within our control in combat, most things are not. We do not control others, we do not control where others bullets fly or land, we do not control circumstances, we do not control the wind, rain or weather in general which changes velocity of rounds, makes our footing slippery even and a we move when the trigger is pulled... so many things we DO NOT control within combat Scott, and it is these FACTS we must work with, not FICTION that we tend to believe, hence we come home with survivor guilt.
Survivor guilt does not just stem from incidents themselves, it stems from your basic training actually. When you are trained you are rewarded as you go for doing good, you are punished if you do poorly or fail. When someone dies in combat, the ultimate reward is survival, being you get to return home with your life, but during so you feel as though you failed, because you lived and others died, and the military has programmed you during training that good is rewarded, poor is punished. This is where veterans begin to confuse the too, and the human mind knows that death is bad, it is not a good thing, so we associate our reward off survival mixed with death of others, and have now confused our very own training.
This is what survivor guilt is about... you got a reward of keeping your life, the little girl died and lost hers, instead of you, all of which you could not control, but you believe you did, or where in control of that situation, when in fact you where far from it.
