Page 994 - Total War on PTSD

“If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.” - James Thurber
Courtenay: Like Steve, if I could have stayed in the military service I totally would have. I just had no choice in the matter. My experiences were varied...especially when I was in Kandahar. I guess it was nice that we didn't have to live in a tent but living in a building had its tradeoffs too.
The local nationals who came in to clean our barracks bathroom always made me very uncomfortable. It didn’t help matters at all but my room was right next to the bathroom. My already jumpy demeanor was that much more so when the cleaning crew was there, and I often found myself involuntarily twitching my arms or legs.
Sometimes, since my bunk shared a wall with the bathroom, I could hear everything when they came in the building and started working on the bathroom. They were noisy but kept to themselves, so I wasn’t sure if those actually cleaning were male or female. I just knew there was always a male supervisor. Other than the racket they made and them appearing at odd times, they always yelled before entering the bathroom to ensure no one was in there. This meant that the people close-by, like myself, got to listen to the bellow of “housekeeping” before they entered the bathroom and went to work.
They also cleaned the hallways occasionally and that bothered me just as much, if not more so, than the bathroom cleaning. Always double locking our door, there were times when my bunk- mates forgot to do so and, as I was closest, I would check the lock to ensure that anyone who shouldn’t be there couldn’t get in.
In our barracks, one of my fellow soldiers took a shower and went back to her room. Shortly thereafter, she responded to someone knocking on the door by just opening the door with no idea who it was. The perpetrator forced her backward into the room, closing the door behind him. She did scream and was assisted by two other women living in another barracks room and the man got away, only to be apprehended later by base security.
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