The Road to Understanding

By Babette Johnson







I have had the pleasure to know, laugh and work with veterans of all wars/conflicts over my forty years of life and I can honestly say that one issue stands out as taboo and never spoken of: Family.

In a rare number of cases veterans came home to loving support of a strong family unit; who were honored and ecstatic to see them return. Sadly though, statistically speaking, most veterans return home to situations they couldn’t foresee ever happening. The ones who once loved them –whether parent, sibling, spouse or friend, who truly expected these vets to come back as they left- are astounded, perhaps even appalled at the change.

Let’s take ‘Dakota’ for instance. At seventeen a bright, happy easygoing young man who cared about church, the boy scouts and helping out around the house. Dakota goes off to fight, war or military conflict, a young boy suddenly so far from home…he’s told in Boot Camp that the enemy must die, that he’s a piece of shit and if he does his job all will be right in the world. And his job is to kill. So, Dakota gets to where he’s going, does his job, kills the enemy and somehow manages to stay alive. All, he assumes, is now right in the world.

Being at such a crucial age, Dakota’s body is learning to enjoy and expect the adrenaline rush that this type of activity is giving him. He loves and trusts those who fight with him, his brothers, as they protect him the most…he fears things he doesn’t know. The bush is rife with the enemy. This in turn helps him to become the best soldier he can be: Frosty.

Suddenly Dakota takes a plane trip home, without those he trusts beside him…and met at the airport by no one, or worse…his crying mother. His mother, the woman who bore him, raised him, cooked, cleaned and kissed his boo-boo. How can he ever explain to her the fact that it was his job to take a human life?

Instantly Dakota, who has come from the most hideous living conditions and stench of death, is expected to acclimate back into normal society within twenty-four hours of his arrival.

As Dakota looks around the house and family, nothing seems familiar to him, even his clothes. He feels like a stranger in a strange land. The frosty sensation is waning and this freight train of emotion is rushing toward him. Something that he does not want to experience, because it brings with it visions of what he did, how he did it…and why he did it. Dakota will start looking for a release from these impeding thoughts. Alcohol or drugs will help remove the horrific images.

But when sitting at Christmas dinner with all the relatives, food and festive decorations, his mind can only revert back to rations, somnambulism, his thousand-mile-stare and the buddies who didn’t come back. Blade had been humping right beside him one milk run…the sniper made quick work of Blade and yet Dakota lived…now there isn’t a moment that goes by when Dakota isn’t in constant turmoil over the thought of his miserable life getting saved and Blade’s being taken….

Dakota know longer knows how to make chitchat. He no longer wants to eat turkey and dressing: this food makes him sick. He sees people laughing but only hears the ringing in his ears from the tinnitus the shell bursts has permanently caused. Every noise is the enemy, every exit, every window he must keep his eye on; the enemy could easily slip into one of those. And having faced a year or more of touch deprivation, the once loving boy now wishes to be left physically alone.

Dakota’s mother or others around him may pull him aside and complain about his aloofness, but he can’t find the words to explain, nor does he want to. This is him…this is who he now is. Why can’t they just accept it? His brothers’ back in the war did.

Dakota, at everyone’s insistence, will get a job: "No time to sit around and do nothing, Dakota…you’re nineteen now and you need to get a job!"

He sees everyone’s foibles as stupid mistakes and they weigh heavily on him. Errors usually got one killed in the world he knew. Conversations seem boring and tripe, causing him to become quiet and mentally languid.

Soon he will hear these words out of all most every person he knows and it will quell the remainder of who he was forever….

"What’s happening to you? What’s the matter with you now? What is your problem this time?"

The same people who berate him with these questions are the ones who give him the look of disgust when he does start to talk. They ask him to talk and when he does so his sentences are replete with expletives and war tales. Not to their liking, the listeners will grow disgruntled and never broach the subject again, but they need not worry. Dakota, feeling like a piece of human garbage to begin with, along with his loved ones look of vile regret, shut him down completely.

The further his family and friends distance themselves from his military life, the further he draws into himself…never to come out again.







Having spoken with veterans intensively over the last year I can honestly say that their symptoms as aforementioned are 50% war induced and 50% societies rejection induced.

Vets simply want acceptance from Americans and not their judgment. Vets only do what OUR, yours and mine, government asks them to do. Vets do it and then we reject them because they aren’t the people they once were, but how can they be?

To understand the mindset of a Veteran imagine that you were in a terrible fire and 90% of your body was burned, but you survive…for some reason you survive, but the rest of the people in the house don’t. You and your damaged, scarred body will live on.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a reality and is rampant in this country today.

Seems sad to me that the countries greatest commodities are treated like military, disposable garbage. Why…because they did their job and are forever mentally different…?





If you want to make a REAL difference in a Vets life, find one, hug them if they allow you to and Thank them for giving you your freedom. Then apologize to them for never having offered them the compassion they needed when they needed it.