- Joined
- Jun 8, 2010
- Messages
- 565
I watch this movie and cannot help but think of my grandfather. Walt and my grandpa are nearly the same person except that my grandfather was a devout Catholic and was a WWII veteran instead of Korea.
A line that really hits home for me is when Walt is talking to the Priest in the bar and the Priest says, 'it seems like you know a lot more about death than you do about living'. The United States military has been engaged in combat operations in multiple countries for 11 years now. Over 50, 000 milpo have come back injured and 6652 have come home under a flag.
18 and 19 year old men have held their friends as they died, 25 and 26 year old men have spent more time in combat than they have with their children. A whole generation of young men have become intimately familiar with death, suicide, and suffering. I got a phone call the other day that another Soldier from my old unit had killed himself and the call seemed almost scripted. We both had been through it several times already that it had become a mechanical response. I tell everyone the same thing in regards to combat veterans killing themselves, that they had been killed in Iraq/Afghanistan and just didn't know it yet.
The VA says that 18 veterans kill themselves every day and that one in three or four(depends on who you ask) homeless males served in the military. Veterans drink and use street drugs or abuse prescription medications to bury the pain they carry. Survivors guilt, MDD, and PTSD are demons that many of us spend our lives running from, and an overburdened, apathetic, bureaucratic nightmare of a veteran's health and support system is failing miserably.
I was injured and medevacced extremely early in my deployment and medically retired long before I felt that I had done enough for the Army and my brothers so the guilt from that haunts me daily. I am one semester away from graduating with a degree in social work and want to work for the VA or as a DoD civilian helping my brothers and sisters, though my reasons are not entirely altruistic. I feel that I owe the Army far more than I gave and hope that I can assuage some of my guilt by getting back into the system and helping out my veteran and/or active duty brothers and sisters.
Anyways, I don't know if anyone has read this far, but if you have, thank you for allowing me to vent a little. Here.
A line that really hits home for me is when Walt is talking to the Priest in the bar and the Priest says, 'it seems like you know a lot more about death than you do about living'. The United States military has been engaged in combat operations in multiple countries for 11 years now. Over 50, 000 milpo have come back injured and 6652 have come home under a flag.
18 and 19 year old men have held their friends as they died, 25 and 26 year old men have spent more time in combat than they have with their children. A whole generation of young men have become intimately familiar with death, suicide, and suffering. I got a phone call the other day that another Soldier from my old unit had killed himself and the call seemed almost scripted. We both had been through it several times already that it had become a mechanical response. I tell everyone the same thing in regards to combat veterans killing themselves, that they had been killed in Iraq/Afghanistan and just didn't know it yet.
The VA says that 18 veterans kill themselves every day and that one in three or four(depends on who you ask) homeless males served in the military. Veterans drink and use street drugs or abuse prescription medications to bury the pain they carry. Survivors guilt, MDD, and PTSD are demons that many of us spend our lives running from, and an overburdened, apathetic, bureaucratic nightmare of a veteran's health and support system is failing miserably.
I was injured and medevacced extremely early in my deployment and medically retired long before I felt that I had done enough for the Army and my brothers so the guilt from that haunts me daily. I am one semester away from graduating with a degree in social work and want to work for the VA or as a DoD civilian helping my brothers and sisters, though my reasons are not entirely altruistic. I feel that I owe the Army far more than I gave and hope that I can assuage some of my guilt by getting back into the system and helping out my veteran and/or active duty brothers and sisters.
Anyways, I don't know if anyone has read this far, but if you have, thank you for allowing me to vent a little. Here.
