SBAND Seminar Materials 2013 Free Ethics: Echoes of War The Combat Veteran | Page 6

Many  veterans  have  taken  issue  with  the  term,  Post-­?Traumatic  Stress  Disorder.    One   modern  veteran  is  quoted  as  saying  “PTSD  is  a  name  drained  of  both  poetry  and  blame.”9     That  veteran  prefers  “soldier’s  heart,”  because  it  is  “a  disorder  of  warriors,  not  men  and   women  who  were  weak  or  cowardly  but  .  .  .  who  followed  orders  and  who,  at  a  young  age,   put  their  feelings  aside  and  performed  unimaginable  tasks.”10     C. Psychiatric  Casualties  in  20th  Century  Wars   According  to  Lieutenant  Colonel  David  Grossman,  a  West  Point  professor  and   recognized  expert  on  the  psychological  effects  of  combat,  “[c]ombat,  and  the  killing  that  lies   at  the  heart  of  combat,  is  an  extraordinarily  traumatic  and  psychologically  costly  endeavor   that  profoundly  impacts  all  who  participate  in  it.  .  .  .  Psychiatric  breakdown  remains  one  of   the  most  costly  items  of  war  when  expressed  in  human  terms.11    Indeed,  for  the  combatants   in  every  major  war  fought  in  this  century,  there  has  been  a  greater  probability  of  becoming   a  psychiatric  casualty  than  of  being  killed  by  enemy  fire.12   World  War  I  was  a  watershed  period  when  the  effects  of  “combat  stresses”  began  to   be  recognized.13    It  was  only  in  World  War  I  that  armies  began  to  experience  months  of  24-­? hour  combat,  leading  to  vast  numbers  of  psychiatric  casualties.14   During  World  War  II,  504,000  men  were  lost  from  America’s  combat  forces  due  to   psychiatric  collapse—enough  to  man  50  divisions.15    At  one  point  in  World  War  II,   psychiatric  casualties  were  being  discharged  from  the  U.S.  Army  faster  than  new  recruits   were  being  drafted  in.16    A  World  War  II  study  of  U.S.  Army  combatants  on  the  beaches  of   Normandy  found  that  after  60  days  of  continuous  combat,  98%  of  the  surviving  soldiers   had  become  psychiatric  casualties.17   The  Vietnam  War,  with  its  unpredictable  “guerrilla”  nature  and  lack  of  public   support  is  believed  to  have  generated  even  higher  rates  of  psychological  injuries.    Though   9  TICK,  supra  note  6,  at  99  (quoting  George  Hill,  a  disabled  Marine).      Id.   11  DAVE  GROSSMAN  &  BRUCE  K.  SIDDLE,  PSYCHOLOGICAL  EFFECTS  OF  COMBAT  (2000).   12  Id.   13  DAVID  H.  MARLOWE,  RAND  CORP.,  PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOSOCIAL  CONSEQUENCES  OF  COMBAT  AND  DEPLOYMENT  32  (2001).       14  GROSSMAN  &  SIDDLE,  supra  note  11.   15  Id.     16  Id.   17  Id.   10 6