Catastrophe - Dick Morris [133]
Those who suffer from PTSD may “feel depression, detachment or estrangement, guilt, intense anxiety and panic, and other negative emotions. They often feel they have little in common with civilian peers; issues that concern friends and family seem trivial after combat.”544 During nightmares, they may even strike their spouses or partners but remember nothing about it after waking up.
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SUFFERING FROM PTSD
Jesus Bocanegra was an Army infantry scout who suffers from PTSD. “I had real bad flashbacks. I couldn’t control them,” Bocanegra, 23, says. “I saw the murder of children, women. It was just horrible for anyone to experience.”
Bocanegra recalls calling in Apache helicopter strikes on a house by the Tigris River where he had seen crates of enemy ammunition carried in. When the gunfire ended, there was silence.
But then children’s cries and screams drifted from the destroyed home, he says. “I didn’t know there were kids there…. Those screams are the most horrible thing you can hear.”
His readjustment has been difficult: his friends threw a homecoming party for him, and he got arrested for drunken driving on the way home.545
Lieutenant Julian Goodrum, an Army reservist, is being treated for PTSD with therapy and antianxiety drugs. A platoon leader in Iraq, he experienced isolation, depression, an inability to sleep and racing thoughts after his return home.
“It just accumulated until it overwhelmed me. I was having a breakdown and trying to get assistance,” he says. “The smell of diesel would trigger things for me. Loud noises, crowds, heavy traffic give me a hard time now. I have a lot of panic…. You feel like you’re choking.”546
Sean Huze, a Marine corporal, doesn’t have PTSD but says everyone who saw combat suffers from at least some combat stress. He says the unrelenting insurgent threat in Iraq gives no opportunity to relax, and combat numbs the senses and emotions.
“There is no ‘front,’” Huze says. “You go back to the rear, at the Army base in Mosul, and you go in to get your chow, and the chow hall blows up.”
Huze, thirty, says the horror often isn’t felt until later. “I saw a dead child, probably three or four years old, lying on the road in Nasiriyah,” he says. “It moved me less than if I saw a dead dog at the time. I didn’t care. Then you come back, if you are fortunate enough, and hold your own child, and you think of the dead child you didn’t care about…. You think about how little you cared at the time, and that hurts.”
Smells bring back the horror. “A barbecue pit—throw a steak on the grill, and it smells a lot like searing flesh,” he says. “You go to get your car worked on, and if anyone is welding, the smell of the burning metal is no different than burning caused by rounds fired at it. It takes you back there instantly.”547
Allen Walsh, who was attached to a Marine unit providing force protection and chemical decontamination, says he has experienced PTSD, which he attributes to the constant threat of attack and demand for instant life-or-death decisions.
“It seemed like every day you were always pointing your weapon at somebody. It’s something I have to live with,” he says.
At home, he found he couldn’t sleep more than three or four hours a night. When the nightmares began, he started smoking cigarettes. He’d find himself shaking and quick-tempered.
“Any little noise and I’d jump out of bed and run around the house with a gun,” he says. “I’d wake up at night with cold sweats.”548
Sergeant Danny Facto of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division suffered from PTSD. “After seeing comrades killed,” CNN reports, “the