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we never focused uh we didn't have internet up at Restrepo we didn't have the phone we
didn't have anything we had we had us so we when we were up at Restrepo we focused on
us you know doing the job so those were never concerns for us
in my head the guys that went through World War II and Korea and and not Vietnam as per
say they had these this this long period of time when they came home and they would you
know they didn't have planes they went across ships across the atlantic to get home and
they had this time to sort of let these feelings out to their friends that they served with
and say you know hey what happened over their and talk about it and stuff like that I think
that that in itself we have to focus on because these guys are coming home 6 days after getting
shot at and theres no time to to de-stress ourselves to talk about what we went through.
And its worse since were talking to citizen soldier exhibit several of my team mates are
in here and we were in Afghanistan in 06 07 3 days after we left Afghanistan we were home
because it was coming on mother's day and they wanted to rush us out the door and they
shoved us through as fast as they could having been in active duty with the desert storm
kinda you know like they came across when we came back from their because they had such
big equipment we all went back to fort hood or our bases we had no equipment we sat around
and kept talking to each other we de compressed we talked about the good things the bad things
and just slowly came off of it active duty forces a lot of time get to do that because
they are still waiting for equipment and they're still they may go on a block leave then come
back and they slowly get off that your national guard reserve soldiers they come back and
days after getting released if they need a paycheck they go back to work literally within
days if not weeks they're back in the swinging work force with a population that has no idea
that they were just getting killed it is a very tough situation and the ship coming across
world war II and korea those kinda is a good break down of why we didn't probably see as
many issues there 100% I think what were lacking as a nation
is to to address that this PTSD shell shock or whatever you want to call it is real I
mean achilles the worlds best fighter had PTSD and no one even acknowledges that and
I mean you read the trojan war and you can see that he has PTSD but these this problem
goes back thousands of years what we need to start focusing on is rather than trying
to treat it to actually prevent it like AIDS you put a *** on instead of treating it
afterwards thats really what you have to do with PTSD you have to I think I really this
not just my personal opinion this is just but I say it a lot because I really believe
it I can take apart an m4 m16 is less that 20 seconds I can put it back together is less
than that time I have no idea how to handle after my friend gets killed and I don't know
how to tell my friend hey its going to be alright I have no idea how to do that still
don't so they don't really have theres no actual
formal process when you return its kind of its before before you should be trained before
you go to war hey lets talk about talk about what your soldiers are going to have to deal
with what you are going to have to deal with when you go to war lets talk about this and
how were going to handle it Im not talking about this touchy feely stuff I'm talking
about real hard core stuff hey you're going to see you're friends die you're going to
have to and as a leader you are going to have to deal with your friend dying and your soldiers
dealing with that too and the answer is not to shove it down inside and continue mission
its to deal with it at that time some how but I don't know how.