Page 304 - Total War on PTSD_FINAL

Researchers, much to their surprise, have found that the loneliness experienced by active duty military personnel is different from that which is experienced by civilians. Specifically, they found that it does not seem to be influenced by familial bonds and socioeconomic backgrounds, as it typically does among civilians, but rather it reacts to fluctuations in social connection within the military unit (J. T. Cacioppo et al., 2016). What these researchers failed to realize, is that for those who served, the military unit is the “family.” It cannot be overstressed that the bond formed between combat soldiers runs deeper than blood and ultimately renders them “brothers-in-arms.” It is a kind of bond that can rarely, if ever, be emulated in any other context. The consolidation of this bond begins early on in the enlistee’s military experience.
Basic training (i.e., boot camp) aims both to create soldiers and form cohesive combat units. It does so by breaking old civilian habits and replacing them with a strict military ethics. The “soldier identity” is often instilled by an abrupt detachment from one’s former social ties (i.e., family and friends) and the employment of a rigorous training regimen that will make much of that was once so familiar, seem completely irrelevant. Soldiers are “broken in,” so to speak; and as they break as individuals they are re-molded into an organic unit. However, it is ultimately the joined participation in war that forges the unbreakable bond between soldiers.
The stressors of war – the fear of annihilation, the sight of mutilated bodies, the moral conflicts, the loss of friends, the physical and mental strain, the fatigue and the uncertainty, to name but a few (Nash, 2007) — are of such magnitude, that enduring them together creates an extraordinary shared experience that incommensurably exceeds the mundane involvements of everyday life. It is an experience that makes the statement
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