posted by Monica Benderman in TheWar forum.

From our personal perspective, I can say that the very dreams that hold a soldier together while he is trying to survive in a combat zone (being with family again, family vacation, home, sleeping in their own bed, driving their own vehicle, extended family reunions, going out to dinner, shopping) are the very things that will tear him apart when he finally does get home, unless everything is done right.

The soldier needs someone to be strong enough to put restrains on his uncontrollable urges once he returns, but they can’t do it in a way that makes the soldier feel controlled. It is a very tough thing because, after being in a combat zone, it takes an incredible amount of strength to control that soldier, and in many cases, they don’t have the strength themselves, not at first.

Soldiers in war live for seeing their children again, but then the actions and antics of their children are overwhelming once they do. They want so much to love them, but in many ways their dad is a stranger, and the high energy of the children does not sit well with the adrenaline that is driving the soldier when he first returns.

The soldiers want to get back to paying the bills, and driving the cars, and making the decisions.. but they shouldn’t be put in those positions right away… we see too many wives who have been so anxious for their husbands to get back to doing that, that they throw everything, the kids, the household, the repair problems to their soldier after he’s been home for two weeks, and head off to get their nails done, to shop and to spend time with their friends. It’s tough, but it’s not what is going to work. In my opinion, that is where many of the 191 cases of child abuse happened after the 3rd ID returned from their first deployment.

There can’t be too many expectations for the first quiet time together, either, for a soldier and spouse. Oh.. the quiet time is good, but we see too many wives wanting their soldier to open up and tell them everything that happened “over there” and the soldier wanting, not only to forget it himself, but not wanting to put his wife through what he witnessed.

Kevin and I were lucky. Because my kids are his step-kids, they lived with their dad and we had several months of quiet time before our son moved to be with us. The first weeks after he returned, we stayed in hotel rooms.. and had very little that he had to be responsible for, except to get himself used to the 8 hour time difference, and the quiet. Of course, those two months were just a start, and he is still trying to adjust to so many things, but it will happen. The saying “time heals all wounds” is a biggie.. and more people need to take it to heart. The worst thing a family can do is expect that everything will be the same once a soldier returns. Getting back to normal involves incredible restraint on the part of family members. Moms and Dads, extended family.. it’s great to give love, and to show that they care.. but too much too soon can be so overwhelming. These soldiers have shut their emotions down completely for the entire time they were gone. Families, on their otherhand, tend to live by their emotions while the soldier is deployed. A great big hug is sometimes all a soldier can take for months once he gets home.

We kept things quiet here .. still do to a great extent. And routine is so very important. We all worked hard to keep things neat, and stay one step ahead with any potential obstacles to order. They were not only distractions, but a big source of stress.

We also had to find a way to let our wants and needs take a backseat. We might have made plans days ahead, only to have Kevin want to do something completely different, and often times “off the wall” when that day finally arrived. We learned that our plans could always be rescheduled, and we were fine with that, because what he
wanted to do had to happen… it was what would give him some peace. It is worth the change when someone means that much to you.. because to see what they are going through on a daily basis and know that war was the cause of it, without ever really hearing the specifics, tears at your heart. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a grown person with mortar rounds going off all around you, never knowing what you’ll face next, friends wounded and dying.. emotions shut off.. and having to stay an adult, when I would think that all you would want to do is crawl into a blanket and be a little kid again. I don’t care what anyone says.. they are lying if they tell you that
the little kid in them goes away. It doesn’t - it can’t. I think one more cause of combat stress is the very fact that there is nowhere for that little kid to run to .. so he has to stand and face it.. alone, and then when the soldier returns, not only do they live with what they faced, but for many they have to face the fact that they were afraid.

War is so wrong.. it puts people in situations they are not meant to deal with.. and what they have to become in order to do what they are asked to do is something their conscience does not have a mechanism to adjust to. It’s no different than putting a strange man-made virus into their physiological system. There are no anti-bodies to
combat it.. so it festers and never really goes away. Just as chemical additives are not natural.. war is not natural.. it is an additive to life that man has created that has the potential to destroy natural life. To keep the chemical additives from eating away at our insides, we have to stop taking them.. “go natural,” it’s the only solution, since there is no cure. It is no different with war. To keep war from eating away at humanity, we have to find a way to stop using it as a treatment for humanity’s problems. There is no other cure.