Military service brings tremendous difficulties, including exposure to grave hazardous situations. For some veterans, military service and operational deployment can be the start of a strong independent identity and sense of belonging. Returning from the battlefield, people only congratulate and celebrate the war without remembering and dealing with the traumas and hardships the soldiers faced during the war. After all, Civilians may not understand the difficulties faced by those who have separated from the military and returned to civilian life. By the time they are done serving and during their reintegration, the effects of war have many veterans. It is so throughout the entire time of military engagement. In response to the question about their experiences in the first few years, once they had left the military, combat veterans are not as much as those who never served in combat to answer that they constantly felt optimistic about their future. They are often less likely to say that they did not receive respect, struggle with the lack of structure in civilian life, and feel disconnected from family and friendships. Consequently, they will be physically back home but mentally will continue to fight for the transition of their life from that of a military officer to civilian.
According to Dao, facing the reality of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common problems veterans have to deal with after their military service. The fact that PTSD afflicts a vast number of veterans cannot be overlooked. Be it because of experiences of being captured during the fighting or as a consequence of rapes, PTSD symptoms can be devastating and long-lasting (Schein et al. 2156). Personnel have a higher risk of facing PTSD following their military deployment because they are in such stressful and even dangerous circumstances. Among other symptoms, PTSD can involve nightmares, flashbacks, high anxiety, and emotional detachment. It may be hard for veterans to withstand these symptoms, which can, in turn, lead to problems with their daily functional ability, personal relations, and work performance. However, things are not always that easy since seeking treatment through therapy, medication, or support groups allows veterans to handle better their PTSD symptoms, which, in turn, should improve their daily lives. In other words, former soldiers relate their service time, the influence it had on their mental health, and the lack of caretakers available to them.
Nevertheless, Matt Richtel emphasizes the challenges of giving custom thanks to the veterans for their military service while talking about the expression of gratitude. The primary stress for every veteran who has had a direct encounter with battle is when he kills someone. Richtel said, “I pulled the trigger,” and “You didn’t. Don’t take that away from me”. This is a manifestation that these veterans live their lives competing with the agony of memories of those terrible experiences they went through. When they return home, however hard they try, they cannot make any of those memories go away…therefore, this often causes difficulties in their mental health. Through firsthand experience and interviews with the vets, Richtel pinpoints how some vets find it unpleasant when people thank them for their service and begins to mention their struggles with guilt, inadequacy, or moral conflict between an image of the heroic military and the reality of war. Richtel makes up an inward view of soldiers’ psychological results and difficulties during their return to a peaceful life.
Equally, War veterans, after returning home from war, will experience a loss of identity and another hard-fought battle, reintegrating into civilian society once more. In the transition from military to civilian life, veterans frequently go through an identity crisis as they try to fill in the gap of self-determination. This loss is further augmented by the reality that their identity is so tightly tied to their military service and the episodes they had in battle. Mehan argues that military service is not only employment but also identity. Heroes lay their whole beings on the line because lives depend on it. With each tour of duty and each battle, it grows stronger and stronger. The war experience can completely change a soldier’s notion of oneself and disrupt the attempts to reintegrate into civilian life. It may take a long time for veterans to redefine their identity at home, and it can be very challenging, too. Such an abrupt change from a combat zone where soldiers’ only goal is to stay alive to the intricacies of the civilian world can be overwhelming and isolating for them. As shown in a letter from a soldier during the Korean War, patience and acceptance are so significant in their journey of self-awareness (Gioia). Often, veterans ask themselves about their purpose and find themselves at a loss of meaning and an aimless way of life. It may take them a long time to regain their identity and realize a new sense of self-worth and a new purpose for their life.
Parker et al. argue that military training did not prepare soldiers for their lives after service but gave them sufficient training to sail through their military service and combat. Almost every veteran affirms that they were well trained for the military service, but fewer veterans say that their military facilitated their transition back to a civilian lifestyle. Extremely often, the military is highly valued for the professionalism it provides. More than 90% responded that the training they got, as they stepped on the ground of the army for the first time, has prepared them very or at least somewhat well for the military way of life (Abbey 2). In terms of training and preparedness, veterans from the period before and after the 9/11 attacks share that they had good feelings about their track record. This is the reason behind financial, emotional, and professional difficulties for veterans during the readjustment period.
Statistics show that about a third of veterans faced difficulties making ends meet in their first few years after discharge. Moreover, at least 20% of veterans were unemployed. One in five mentioned the difficulty they had with alcohol/substance abuse. Combat veterans who reported experiencing unbearable situations tend to suffer from psychological traumas much more often than veterans who did not have this terrible experience. For the majority of veterans, it became pretty difficult to obtain this post-service job. For instance, a majority of veterans who served in the military after 9/11 mentioned that their military service generally had a positive impact on their transition to their first job after leaving the military – 35% said it helped very much, and 26% believed it helped a bit (Parker et al.). Not more than ten people out of a hundred even say that being a veteran hindered them from finding a job.
In conclusion, the soldiers will go to war and return home as different people than they went to the war. Ideally, the repercussions of the war are beyond what it establishes on the battlefield. They depict the issues relating to confusing emotions after a conflict, loss of identity, and difficulty when it comes to coping with normalcy after a life-changing experience. On the contrary, those intensively trying days of war decay soldiers’ personalities that civilians (society) detest, and the only remaining path now is the adaptation of a new life pattern. This realization may be a bittersweet homecoming, and you will feel different from your friends or relatives. The bravery displayed by these soldiers has kept our country safe and sound at home; nevertheless, their arrival would be accompanied by a sense of detachment, of meeting up with a world where sights and directions conflict with their precious memories.
Works Cited
Abbey, Derek M. “How Veterans Make Meaning of the College Choice Process in the Post-9/11 Era.” Journal of Community Engagement & Scholarship 13.4 (2021).
Dao, James. “After Combat, the Unexpected Perils of Coming Home (Published 2011).” The New York Times, 28 May 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29soldiers.html.
Gioia, Dana. Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the words of. US troops and their families. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Kim, Parker, Ruth, Igielnik, Amanda, Barroo and Anthony, Cilluffo. The American Veteran Experience and the Post-9/11 Generation.https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/09/10/the-american-veteran-experience-and-the-post-9-11-generation/
Meehan, Shannon P. “Identity crisis: A USUS veteran and a casualty of war.” Los Angeles Times, 30 August 2012, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-30-la-oe-meehan-veterans-identity-20120830-story.html.
Richtel, Matt. “Please Don’t Thank me For My Service.” New York Time, 21 Feb 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/sunday-review/please-don’t-thank-me-for-my-service.html
Schein, Jeffrey, et al. “Prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States: a systematic literature review.” Current medical research and opinion 37.12 (2021): 2151-2161.
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