"Rock-bottom".

I too am a veteran, from one of those "low-intensity" bush wars of the seventies. I think that I might have suffered, or perhaps am still suffering, from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Syndrome, I am not qualified in any medical or professional capacity to comment on the subject with any degree of validity - other than through my own experiences - and those of my closest comrades.

I have had my series of "rock-bottoms" and have flirted with the forces of darkness. Fifteen years after the end of "my war" the horrors came home to roost and exploded inside me. Inexorably, I'd been on the downward slide of self-pity and self-destruction - drinking heavily, feeding on my nightmares and mixing with low-life scum. It all climaxed in an orgy of sordid misery and I woke one day in an Intensive Care Unit, apparently having tried (not for the first time) to take my own life. I'd lost everything - my family, my business, my house, my car - my dignity. I had nothing, save a suitcase of clothes, the shell of a broken body and a dying spirit that was crammed with desolate hopelessness. Other than death, there was only one way to go - up. I chose life and the slow, painful process of healing and reintegration into society began.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, previously known as Shell Shock or Combat Fatigue, or worse - Lack of Moral Fibre, is only something that came to be a little more understood when the Vietnam veterans returned home to the USA to a welcome of vitriolic abuse, scorn and loathing. Where did these veterans turn ? Inwards to themselves and the subsequent plethora of veterans' associations that sprang up.

A generation later in Southern Africa, still suffering the aftermath of a series of grubby little conflicts, the walking wounded, both black and white, still suffer in silence, their scars unrecognized and misunderstood. I am one of the fortunate few, in that the simple act of writing down my experiences has proved immensely cathartic. I have no magical solutions to purge other people's demons - I'm too busy dealing with my own. But the plain act of communicating our pain to one another, somehow strangely, seems to bring a small measure of relief. Perhaps this is what is meant by telling "war stories". It may be the only way we know how to clumsily try and put the ghosts to rest - and at the same time be there for each other. We know, we understand, we care - a brotherly love so deep and bonding that it will last forever, that few can comprehend. In another more ordinary life I probably wouldn't have mixed with these people. We have come from different classes, different backgrounds - in fact many are straightforward idiots - but we still care for each other. Bizarre.

In the same way that only an alcoholic can truly understand, and therefore counsel, another alcoholic, as such can only a war veteran understand and counsel another war veteran - as primitive as that counseling may be. Psychiatrists, psychologists and other professional counsellors all have important roles to play, but unless they themselves have experienced the trauma of combat - or any other such trauma (rape, etc.) - they will never in a million years identify with the sufferer. Guide, advise, comfort, sympathize - yes. But identify ? No.

Like alcoholism, PTSD if allowed to go unchecked, will but fester and eat away at the core of a man's soul, ultimately devouring from inside. It is a condition that does not go away. It does not heal with time - it gets worse. The only way to deal with the past is to confront it - head on. Hiding it away buries it from the world, but does not hide it from a man's psyche.

Like many before me I tried to escape from my nightmares and bury them in various substances, notably alcohol. When I got sober a few years ago, the nightmares began to dissolve - the pain was still there, but not the screaming white-knuckle terror of reliving the slaughter. I thought I had it beat. Trying to intellectualize the whole sordid history, I rationalized that perhaps the alcoholism had caused the PTSD - or was it the other way round? I became so entangled in my own psychoanalysis, and my own all-encompassing self-pity, that I lost the plot. I tried to out-psyche what gratitude I should have had. I ignored the living and dying examples of my comrades who were slowly but surely killing themselves - quietly and unnoticed. I found I could no longer do it on my own. I embraced what little humanity was left inside me and for the first time in my existence I surrendered my will and my life over to a power greater than myself.

The memories of the slaughter shall always be with me, but they no longer haunt me.

I cannot change the past. I am slowly learning to live in the present - not in the past, nor in the future, but for the now. That is what is real, and it's a case of "one day at a time".

Veteran C.

Copyright © 2001 S. Le Roux AND OpsMedic. All rights reserved.