Page 258 - Total War on PTSD

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 “I was there” a defining feature, an identity that separates the us and the them (Hynes, 2001). The battlefield is an alternative universe wherein killing and dying are commonplace and survival is a normal mode of existence.
The bond between soldiers is acquired also via a discursive channel, as common terms change their meanings. As soldiers undergo war together, they learn anew, and more forcefully than ever, the meaning of comradeship, solidarity, courage, loyalty, trust, reciprocity, interdependence, sacrifice and loss. These “concepts” no longer designate for them what they meant prior to the war, what they mean still to civilians. Indeed, when civilians speak of such things, when they enunciate these words, or when they idly mention names of people and places that have sustained the dire toll of war, Veterans might feel that these have been uttered in vain.
More fundamentally, the military binds soldiers by employing a unique military lingo, the discourse that becomes the bread and butter of warriors’ discursive interchange: codenames, nicknames, acronyms, locations, military slang and common jokes, these are all embedded in soldiers’ everyday discursive exchange. These become part of the
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