Page 308 - Total War on PTSD Final

1. It is important to note that identity issues may differ between individuals, and more so between armies. In conscript armies (e.g., in Israel), wherein a large percentage of the population serves for a predetermined period of time, the “warrior” identity may be less dominant. Nevertheless, as I argue below, PTSD may fortify that identity regardless of whether service is mandatory or not.
Contributing to this sense of alienation is Veterans’ conviction that civilians would never really be able to understand and Veterans will never really be able to explain, not fully, not sufficiently. The experience of war is ineffable. After all, how does one explain the experience of taking cover in the face of incessant enemy fire, losing a friend, or deliberating whether to pull the trigger when confronted by a child carrying explosives, and doing so, or the uncertainty of the battlefield, or collecting mutilated bodies (friends’ as well as foes’), or myriad other experiences? Therefore, there is a loneliness of communicative isolation almost inherent to war. Samuel Hynes (2001), in his seminal book, The Soldier’s Tale, notes that “War cannot be comprehended at second-hand. . .it is not accessible to analogy or logic” (p.1). If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then soldiers inhabit their own world, and it is different from that of civilians. As a Canadian soldier fighting on the Italian front in the Second World War, writes to someone at home:
The damnable truth is we are in really different worlds, on totally different planes, and I don’t know you anymore, I only know the you that was. I wish I could explain the
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