O what a lovely war, no? The allies controlled the air, and the ground campaign consumed a nice, round 100 hours. Apart from certain Mike Tyson fights, has combat ever seemed so neat and swift? And one more question: does anyone still believe that? CNN may have resumed its regular programming, but so has Saddam. Kurds suffer and die daily. And some 500,000 members of’ the U.S. military have just begun to deal with the problems that crop up when humans wait anxiously for seven months, then fight furiously for six weeks, in a distant desert. To be sure, the typical Vietnam veteran endured more stress than his Persian Gulf counterpart. But as David P. Niles, an Alexandria, Va., mental-health counselor specializing in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), says, “Just because the media didn’t have photos of 100,000 dead Iraqis doesn’t mean that someone didn’t have to count and bury those bloated bodies.” Someone had to kill them, too. But then, as experts in PTSD know, not killing anyone can cause problems for trained warriors. “People who go to war don’t ever come back unscathed,” says Erwin Parson, a psychologist at the Perry Point, Md., Veterans Administration Hospital.
There is mounting evidence that some of the psychological wounds sustained during the gulf conflict are just beginning to show. Only a fraction of those who experience combat ever develop full-blown PTSD–A condition characterized by delayed feelings of depression, mistrust, isolation and rage–and the brevity of the gulf war will no doubt work to keep ensuing cases to a minimum. But with about half the troops now home, counseling services provided by the military and the American Red Cross report a steady stream of clients. Last week the VA authorized its outreach centers to assist men and women who had served in Grenada, Panama and the gulf. Meanwhile, some private therapists say that they have started to see what Niles describes as “soldiers who find it hard to reconcile the way they reacted at the moment of trauma with the way Rambo reacts in the movies.”
Some Vietnam vets are angry that those who got so much glory for so little time and bloodshed should be complaining about anything. Tom Williams, a Denver psychologist and Vietnam vet who serves as an expert witness in court cases involving PTSD, says that the gulf experience cannot readily be compared to the war he fought in during the late ’60s. “Not every bad feeling,” he says, “is PTSD.” He is, of course, correct–and yet the Persian Gulf War did have its brief bursts of horror. “Some guys saw some real bad stuff,” says Dave Phillips, of Warren, Mich., a 27-year-old gunner assistant in the Second Armored Division. “One of the gunners told me he picked up this guy’s leg and it broke off, it was burned so bad.” Even Paul Klein, a spokesman for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, who plays down the psychological impact of the gulf war, says, “It’s not just combat that causes stress. Waiting … being in a position where you don’t know what’s going on, is probably more stressful.”
Besides the stuff of which flashbacks are made, therapists say they are also hearing about a kind of low-grade, mundane misery. For every story like that of Phillips–who says that “it hasn’t quite hit me yet” that both of his legs were injured and a friend was killed in a flash of artillery fire last February–there are several more soldiers who say they felt fine until they came home. “The reintegration into the family structure is probably the most salient issue that these people have to deal with,” says David Stulman of the Affiliated Counseling Clinic in Killeen, Texas, where the shelter for battered wives reports an increase in phone calls since the troops returned to nearby Fort Hood.
Alcohol and drugs, suddenly available again after a long stretch in sober Saudi Arabia, are common components of the misery. Sometimes, though, the problem for military people is simply the disparity between their public image as war heroes and the private feeling of having lost control of their lives. To a list of troubled warriors that includes Shakespeare’s Henry IV (who suffered disturbing thoughts) and Audie Murphy (who never stopped having nightmares about the very events that led to his becoming the most-decorated serviceman in World War II) now add Specialist Randy Youngblood, a 23-year-old infantryman at Fort Stewart, Ga. After a brief, blissful family reunion, Youngblood and his wife had a complete breakdown in their relationship and three days later filed for divorce. Now Youngblood, on leave since his return, spends his days disconsolately doing housework and caring for his two small children. “I was fighting for a way of life, but when I came back my way of life was gone,” he says. “I’m just watching everything I do to make sure I don’t blow up over anything minuscule.”
Youngblood’s marital problems predated the war, but he found the separation only increased mutual suspicions and resentments. Many other male soldiers admit they find it difficult to deal with their wives’ newfound independence. Others say that their children changed most while they were away, in ways both exciting and sad. While he was stationed in Saudi Arabia, Sgt. Garrett Bryning’s younger daughter learned to walk and say her first words. “I’ve missed seven months of the most important part of their lives,” says Bryning, 26, now back at Fort Hood. He has also, merely by pursuing his profession, brought his two children to a state of high anxiety. When Bryning shuts the door behind him, even to go for the mail, his 2-year-old still screams nonstop until he comes back.
One thing a lot of troubled families do agree on is that things could actually have been worse. Each branch of the service created specialized combat-fatigue centers or combat-stress centers near the front lines in Iraq. Col. Joe Fagan, psychiatry consultant to the Army’s Central Command in Saudi Arabia, estimates that those units handled more than 3,000 troops, including “some severe reactions to combat stress.” There were preventive programs, too. “We’ve been inviting [married] people to begin dating again,” says James Dunn, director of the Family Guidance Clinic, near Fort Hood, who tells couples to take things slow and “don’t just jump in the sack.”
The major criticism of the military’s support system by VA and civilian therapists is that it becomes harder to locate the farther one gets from the front lines. That’s a problem because the vague feelings of shame, guilt, anger and depression that are the real spoils of war, if untreated, only get worse. The VA lately has reported a marked increase in PTSD symptoms among World War II veterans as they enter their 60s and 70s. What can that mean for a certain 20-year-old veteran of several Scud missile attacks now stationed in Fort Stewart? Hearing a siren recently, the young private slammed on his brakes and was halfway out his car door before he realized he was in America, where the war is officially over.
