in 2006 I went to Afghanistan I was NATO's head of air transports for the IAF mission the International Security Assistance Force and when I came back home I had been transformed and not in a very good way as rather angry and irritated and suddenly spending a fortune on speeding tickets I was easily startled by loud noises and slept very lightly I remember waking up one night to what sounded to me like shooting outside and it was a frightening experience I couldn't find my bulletproof vest I couldn't find my weapon I couldn't even find my clothes
and then there was this male hand touching me saying everything's alright don't worry it took me quite some time to realize that that was my husband comforting me in the safety of my own bed in the Netherlands you might wonder why is she so touchy well let me take you back to Afghanistan I worked at the headquarters it's a stationed in at the capital Kabul and Kabul is at an altitude of 1,800 meters high and even though it's at 1,800 meters high it's still in a valley and it's surrounded by high mountains with perennial snow
the Himalayas and we knew that every night we went to bed the enemy whomever that may be might go up those mountains and shoot rocket-propelled grenades at our camp again so every night I went to bed I would put out my clothes like that boots still in the trousers bullet food proof vest next to it so I could leave for the bunker within 20 seconds after the alarm went off that's a it's a state of high alert that doesn't magically wear off the moment you come back to the Netherlands and it was not something new
because a mission preparation we were told that when you came back you might feel weird you might need to readjust but I wanted how many others have this as well and no matter how many people I asked nobody could tell me at the time even though we do get debriefed extensively they didn't even have a name for this returning home blues and the broader question does war affect soldiers is a very important one if you just consider how many lives it affects just to the war in Afghanistan in the last 15 years hundreds of thousands
of soldiers have been deployed so as a military scientist I was I'm specialized in military memoirs I was intrigued and I decided to read up to see what others scientists had to say about it the first name that immediately popped up was full Fuzzle he wrote a classical study about the experiences of First World War soldiers and he said those young men went into the war with the romantic notion that war would turn them into a real man maybe even a hero instead the First World War turned out to be awful life in the trenches
the fear of poison gas the constant nearness of death and destruction so instead of turning them into heroes the war turned them into victims so Fuzzle concluded that modern 20 century soldiers write about disillusionment because of the atrocities of modern warfare and other research is agreed with him then in 2008 more than 30 years later comes her re and her re disagrees he says it's not so much that modern wars are particularly more awful it is that modern people including modern soldiers have other expectations of life they expect life to be a series of experiences
to bring them something and war then is the ultimate experience in Harare says that ultimate experience can be one of disillusionment I had high expectations and they didn't come true however quite the opposite is also possible those are growth stories war has turned me from a naive young man woman into a mature person not so much a hero but somebody who has grown from his or her experiences so who's right Fuzzle or Harare they both agree that war changes soldiers but one of them says it's it's just negative and the other says it could also
be positive and if Ferrari is right what's the ratio between positive and negative stories not even Harare knows so as a military scientist I was now really intrigued and I decided to find out having written a military memoir about my own experiences in Afghanistan I decided to study every military Afghanistan memoir I could find and read from five different countries United States United Kingdom Germany Canada and of course the Netherlands I found 54 in total published up to 2010 and based on a characterization by Friedman I found all sorts of different stories I found 40%
disillusionment stories but I also found 30% growth stories like Harare predicted and I found a lot of other stories as well like action plots and sentimental stories all in all more than half the books had positive stories so Harare was right modern soldiers not only experienced disillusionment but many of them have other experiences including growth stories and what about my experiences could they be found back in those books well they looked a little bit like PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder which was characterized at the time by three things hyper arousal like my being scared of loud
noises in rusev very experienced incretins avoidance and numbing and in order for you to be diagnosed with PTSD you need to have at least six of those kind of symptoms I only had one I perusal so I don't have PTSD but six of those authors 109 was diagnosed with PTSD then I found a scholar who actually had a name for what I had and her name was Louisa Weibull and she called it post deployment disorientation and I love that term you come back post from a deployment you feel a little disoriented and she said even
Swedish soldiers who have been on a very peaceful mission when nothing out of the ordinary say nightly risk of rocket-propelled grenades happens even they come back with this feeling of post deployment disorientation and it is a it's a feeling of alienation but it also looks a bit like those PTSD like symptoms so I looked through the books to see if they were described and they were described extensively British soldiers like Dutch soldiers are warned for them for instance do bt for instance writes you're told your mood will change without warning you'll get angry sad depressed
resentful and you know won't know why you might start drinking too much driving too aggressively arguing unnecessarily picking fights for no good reason I thought yes that sounds familiar when I came back from my deployment I could no longer limit myself to a hundred kilometres an hour on motorways I could sacrifice my life in Afghanistan and I couldn't even drive 120 hence the speeding tickets the other things were also described extensively like Neil's ruler he writes about alienation he writes in in third person and in Dutch so I'll give you my translation the first few
days he was just happy to be home and mainly very tired now that mr. slowly dissipated and it's hard on him he doesn't feel right at home in the Netherlands yet he's more silent than usual and often seem to have his mind on other things the PTSD like symptoms were also described very often by for instance by American infant wrist Johnny Rico the fireworks explode like colorful spiders over the Hawaii Beach and I jump I leaned forward from a chair and tap Ryan on the shoulder holy did you see that what Ryan asked check it
out I say I wait for the next explosion and my buddy jump slightly I had exactly the same intrusive reacts perience described very often for instance by American pilot Michael forensic his nightmare started when he killed when he came home worse were the dreams about the hospital again I was alone walking through the ICU looking at the bandage children lying in the hospital beds wrapped in gauze missing arms legs eyes the wounded children just stared at me expressionless faces I looked around for a nurse a doctor someone but there wasn't anyone and a beautiful example
of avoidance and numbing is given by German paratrooper Robert ik Holt once again in my translation I couldn't understand why after such a short period of time I wasn't the same person I was before the deployment and I withdrew more and more also because I felt unrecognized friendships are my relationship with my partner broke up as I was no longer interested in maintaining them so I was very relieved to see that I was not the only one with post-deployment disorientation in fact half the books that not only describe the mission in Afghanistan but also the
homecoming mentioned at least one but often more of those symptoms so they're very common so by now the conclusion should be clear yes war effects soldiers and it can affect them negatively but it can definitely also affect them positively for me personally I no longer have any problems my as expected my post deployment disorientation went away I no longer feel jumpy when I hear loud noises and I no longer get any more speeding tickets though I must confess to two parking tickets lately so I've transformed back again but not entirely not entirely as you may
have understood by now the art form that I'm in love with his books and paintings have never been able to touch me until after my deployment I saw this painting by Steph radar and it shocked me this like the books I studied is a self-portrait of a soldier who's been to Afghanistan and who's been changed so having heard all this what should you do with this information should you have pity on soldiers now professional soldiers know that war may change them so please don't fit us but do provide us with an appreciation of the work
we do providing stability and security in unstable parts of the world because that's what we crave your recognition thank you
