Want to Prevent PTSD? End Unbridled US Militarism
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/20-1
Because my 33-year-old father was on the verge of embarking for Europe and the allied invasion of Italy, my birth certificate reads: U.S. Army Hospital, Fort Benning, Georgia. When he finally returned, PFC Lee Olson's decorations included a Purple Heart Medal for shrapnel wounds suffered from a German hand grenade in the Battle of Monte Cassino, one of the longest, bloodiest and most costly land campaigns of World War II.
After my dad died from a sudden heart attack in 1956, I recall my mother wistfully confiding to me that your Your father was never the same person after the war. A stoical Scandinavian, this was her cryptic explanation for my dad's emotional disengagement, frightening impatience, brooding sadness and inability to hold a steady job. Like so many other spouses of returning vets, she mourned for the prewar husband who remained missing in action.
Perhaps she hoped that one day I'd understand why he could never be the loving father he might have been and after decades of trying to fathom and forgive my dad, I finally grasped how the personal had become poignantly political for one unsuspecting 12-year-old boy. In that sense, my mom and I were undocumented collateral damage.
World War II combat veterans rarely if ever gave voice to what theyd done or witnessed and my father was no exception. My best guess is that his emotional scars would be diagnosed today as chronic or delayed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which the American Psychiatric Association defines this way:
The person has experienced, witnessed or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened deaths or serious injury or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others, and his/her response involved fear, helplessness, or horror.