If it were I, I'd just give them the skinny and eliminate any conversation before it starts, zeroes or not, orders are orders. Go to Liberia. Avoid bodily fluid contact. Pay Attention. Lead by example. Wear your gloves and faceshields.
As for the beast, ignore it. They will either end up here with us, or they will be just fine.
I know you want to prevent anyone else from ending up like us. Shit, everyone here feels that way. But, we are what we are, and we should be proud of it. We survived. We went to places and did things none of them can imagine, even with the help of the interwebs and HD TV.
But, truth is, the Beast IS military service. The symptom list reads the same as the bootcamp training recs: Keep em tired. Keep em alert. Keep them paranoid. Keep them alive, exhausted and bitching.
Much as I hate to be blunt, truth is the dead don't suffer from PTSD or anything else. what has become the Beast for us is why we are all here and able to talk about it. Without our innate, ingrained anxiety reactions, many of us would be in a bag, a box, or scattered around a nice bit of landscape.
Instead, we are alive and bitching. Exhausted. Paranoid. Alert. Aware. ALIVE.
Those that trained us did their jobs well. We are the proof.
When training, ordering and briefing the next generation, all we can strive to do is as well or better than those that trained and ordered us. We can't carry guilt for the newbies. Hell, we can barely carry our own!
We, the PTSDer's, aren't something new. Modern humans as we know them have been around at least 12,000 years.There has NEVER been a time where there wasn't combat. Where there wasn't soldiers, and guards, and sailors. (Hell we even had air dales, though they shot arrows or threw rocks....). As long as there has been combat, there has been survivors that carry the scars of it, visible or otherwise.
We're just the ones that get all the press coverage these days. We are the hot topic, the monster under the bed, and those to be pitied. Civilians need that as much as they need us to go do the jobs they are too cowardly to do themselves. Sure they talk big, but really, who does the dirty work (right or wrong) for their country? Us.
We are still doing our jobs. Sure, we might be huddled in basements, or pubs, or in plain sight, but we are and always will be military men and women. We still protect our countrymen as they work hard to crawl up the obesity index and fist kittens and keep their gas guzzlers fuel of toxic chemicals. We make them feel protected because they look at what they perceive as our suffering and feel better about their own pitiful, meaningless lives. They eat their antidepressants to be part of a trend and have an excuse for their worthlessness. We eat them because they will cage us up if we don't. In other words, we carry the burdens so they do not have to.
Every single member here can remember that one or more comrade in arms we helped out while on duty. All of us made a difference, good or bad in at least one other person's life. Most civilians can't even comprehend such things. We might have done something as drastic as taken a round for a buddy, or dragged a bag home for mom and dad, or given clean skivvies to those that had none. We might have given a chocolate to a kid that had never seen and never will see candy. We might have done things that are socially unacceptable to civilians and politicos and lawyers. But someone had to do it and we were them.
So, keep your chin up. Train them well. Lead the right and then be there for them when they get back. It is all of our job to ensure that.
