Review: Getting Past the Post-Traumatic Stress
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 30, 2013
To my surprise writing a review of Phyllis Zimbler Miller's short story "Solomon's Justice" took significantly longer than reading it. In part, this reflects the fact that powerful themes may conjure up mixed reactions and stimulate the recall of memories one might prefer to leave buried. For me the story's emotion-charged subject matter -- the interpersonal and social impacts of battlefield-induced PTSD -- summoned feelings of ambivalence, some no doubt guilt-related.A Vietnam-era veteran, while so many of my contemporaries were suffering and dying in remote Southeast Asian jungles, I was enjoying a comfortable posting in Germany: Not exactly the alternately terrifying/character-building experience my father -- who'd been wounded in the Philippines in WW II -- anticipated when my draft notice arrived. His PTSD, if it had existed at all, had been mitigated by the open arms with which America and its allies had welcomed home "the greatest generation," whose heroic sacrifices protected the world from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. They may have been scared deeply by their experiences, but the world they'd left behind when they went to war wanted them back.Those of us who served in the military a generation later hadn't exactly been welcomed as heroes. But -- and here's where I take some small issue with "Solomon's Justice" -- neither were we subjected to the widely reported (and mostly apocryphal) scorn of our civilian countrymen and women. What can't be disputed, however, is the fact that many of those drafted into service during that era were adults, and some, very well-educated. They had families to return to. Careers to revive. Dreams to fulfill. They came back to "the real world" and were re-assimilated -- successfully for the most part.The current generation are not nearly so lucky as their predecessors. Those who fight on our behalf today are mostly younger. They may enlist with vague notions of subsequent careers outside the service; but, for most of them, the military is only life they've ever known beyond high school. And absent a replenishing draft to national service, there simply aren't enough of them to do what's being asked of them. Far too many have been pressed into repeated combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, with insufficient rest in between. They spend their own all-too-brief lives on a violent treadmill, surrounded by the horrors of combat, for reasons no one seems capable of articulating clearly any longer.In a just cause, or not, the pressures are causing these young men and women to break down at a frightful pace. Suicide is epidemic in the ranks, as well as among those who've mustered out. And far too many of those who avoid the compulsion for sudden self-destruction still find themselves in trouble -- with their jobs, their marriages, and with society at large.Veterans Court is a pilot program that recognizes that our returning military is under this cloud. With no salutatory memories to sustain them -- with only the vivid recollections of combat's sudden death and disfigurement, and their own violent, conditioned responses to those threats -- many of them are drifting away to the most dangerous fringes of modern life. The Veterans' Court program is an attempt to help those who run afoul of the law to return from that edge, before they are irretrievably lost.If you know someone who's struggling because of PTSD, read "Solomon's Justice." Share it with them. Share it with others in your circle, so that they'll be able to recognize the signs of the struggle, and understand. And if you know a vet who's having trouble with the law, tell them about the Veterans' Court program. More, encourage your elected representatives to expand the program across the country. We owe it to them and to the Nation they served.