Page 302 - Total War on PTSD

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 defining features of the Vet’s world. Nevertheless, this discursive practice also contributes to the Veteran’s isolation upon departure from that world. As former U.S Army Intelligence officer and Veteran of the Gulf War, Ray Starmann notes,
How do you talk to civilians about “fire for effect” or “grid 7310” or “shake and bake” or “frag orders” or “10 days and a wake up” or a thousand and one other terms that are mystifying to the real world? You can't. (Starmann, 2015).
Conversely, Benedict (2009) notes that the military language, almost as an undeclared purpose, strives “to maintain a secretive culture that shuts out civilians” (p. 8). And so it does.
Indeed, and unfortunately, all of the aforementioned factors that serve to bind soldiers to one another, also work to sever the repatriated Veteran from the civilian world, particularly from family and non-military friends. The all-encompassing Army life that soldiers grow so accustomed to is a paradoxical one. While deployed, one may become homesick, longing to reunite with the family left back at home; and yet, when back at home, one can often think and speak of nothing but the military. An important
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