Page 931 - Total War on PTSD

like if I had made other decisions. With that said I can't point out the positive or the negative events in my life. I made my decisions and I got what I got. I'm truly not sure right now if I would want my kids to serve. A lot has changed since I was in. I can tell them the way things were, but that doesn't mean they would have the same experiences that I did.
By the time I got to that last command I had eight troops up under me and I was their supervisor. I learned a long time ago that, if you take care of your men, they will take care of you. They also knew that, if anyone was going to pick on them then I was the one that was going to do the picking. They were also always trying to get even with me. One time, when I was sitting up on the gate, on a midnight shift and, in the guard shack, they were hollering at each other and then I heard one of them scream. Well I ran in there and one of them had exploded a ketchup package on his hand and his nose so it looked like blood, and was saying that another individual hit him. At the time I thought he really did get hit and I was thinking about how I was going to explain this all to the Flight Chief.
In my work as a Traffic Accident Investigator, I handled a lot of accidents involving children. I think that was the worst of all of it. It got to a point that, when I did seek help at Robins Air Force Base for issues that happened to me in Korea, a Doctor (an Air Force Major) basically told me that shit happens and to man up. I am not really sure where my breaking point was, but around 2001 I was having flashbacks...and I would go out and was seeing those kids faces in groups of people. I was hallucinating. It just kept going on and on. It wasn't long after that when I tried to commit suicide. There wasn't enough alcohol in the world to shake it. I didn't seek help again until after a suicide attempt in 2002. I spent three months at Brookwood Medical
931 of 1042