"Combat
Trauma - A personal look
at long Term Consequences"
By
Chaplain James D. Johnson (LTC USA Ret.)
What is it like to get
shot in combat, to feel your life draining away and know there is nothing you
can do to help yourself? Kind of like this: “The squishing sound is like a knife
opening a cold watermelon. . . . The round enters just above my left rib cage
and exits just below . . . my right nipple. . . . I instinctively place my left
palm over the exit wound and can feel only warm blood . . .”
James D. Johnson’s important new book, Combat
Trauma: A Personal Look at Long-Term Consequences is a
first-person account of enduring post-traumatic stress disorder, the grim
acronym known as PTSD. Acquired during his service as a Vietnam grunt, Johnson
describes this life-changing disorder as a “combat
wound to the soul.”
Now a retired Army chaplain, Johnson has broadened his story by the testimony of
fifteen other Vietnam vets—all combat survivors and all living with their
personal nightmares. Their credentials: 78 combat decorations, including 2
Silver Stars and 16 Presidential Unit Citations. Their combined, intensely
personal and brutally honest testimonies immediately mark this book as a
neo-classic in the literature on PTSD.
But Combat Trauma also poses
immediate and troubling questions for American military manpower policy, which
routinely requires soldiers to perform repeated combat tours. Johnson argues, “In
sports, the more one conditions his or her body . . . the greater the chance of
success and the less chance of injury. Not so with trauma. The greater the
exposure to traumatic events, the greater the likelihood that psychological
injury will occur.” (Reviewer’s emphasis.)
Understand those implications? We have fought two back-to-back wars with an army
of Other People’s Kids far too small for its tasks. The only way to support the
surges in Iraq and Afghanistan was to send the grunts back for three or four
combat tours, some lasting up to fifteen months. During Vietnam the normal tour
was only one year, which may help to explain why the major problem confronting
Army leaders today is troop suicides.
Both now and in the future, those leaders need to take Johnson’s insights
seriously. “Many of us are still numbed out, feel
tainted and even have difficulty enjoying the simplest pleasures. Our combat
trauma was like being burned on the inside. . . .” In Iraq and
Afghanistan we have lost only a tenth of the soldiers killed in Vietnam; but
these same symptoms are likely to be common among those surviving recent combat
with jihadis and insurgents.
Clearly though not elegantly written, Combat
Trauma’s real worth lies in its forthright, almost clinical
dissection of symptoms—withdrawal, fear, hyper-vigilance and flashbacks being
only a few. Even more significant are the equally unblinking looks these
veterans provide about the effect of these recurring symptoms on key life
issues—work, careers, faith and even morality. It might be PTSD, but many
non-veterans will share the rich contempt these former soldiers feel for
“wannabes, liars and pretenders”—especially politicians shameless enough to
claim credit for combat while exposed only to war-zone photo ops.
While no miracle drug or treatment can cure PTSD,
Johnson and his colleagues have learned the importance of renewing and
maintaining close ties among the band of brothers. That
solidarity is essential in the ongoing fight for sympathetic heath care from the
Veterans Administration.
The book recounts a number of infuriating incidents, like hassling a veteran
claiming hearing loss as a by-product of the many firefights to which he had
been exposed. With irrefutable logic, the doctors pointed out that the nearly
deaf soldier should have donned his government-issued ear protection before
firing back at the onrushing VC—the precise auditory equivalent of safe sex.
This book is only the latest reminder that the
Vietnam veteran was the victim of sustained malpractice—sociological, military
but, most of all, political. Drafted into combat while others
stayed home, Vietnam GIs executed flawed strategies, somehow won an improbable
victory, and then watched as Congress punted away their sacrifices. These
scarred veterans finally returned home to the guilty indifference of their
countrymen.
Although not a book for the fainthearted, James
Johnson’s wrenching heart-cry underlines the sacrifices made by present and
previous generations of American soldiers—and of society’s continuing debt to
those who bear our battles.
Reviewer Kenneth Allard is a former army
colonel, West Point faculty member, and dean of the National War College. For
almost a decade he served as an on-air military analyst with NBC News, is the
author of four books, and is an occasional contributor to the The Daily Beast.
Where to Purchase:
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Combat-Trauma-Personal-Long-Term-Consequences/dp/1442204346
Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/combat-trauma-james-d-johnson/1021026622