I’m wondering if there is more PTSD in the two “bad” wars — Ray’s and B.D.‘s wars, Iraq II and Afghanistan II — than there was in the “good” war, WWII. Is this Trudeau’s point in this current arc of strips? And if so, why? Is it because troops deep down know that what they’re doing is wrong? Whereas there was little doubt among any troops in WWII that what they were doing was wrong. Stopping Hitler was stopping evil that was spreading around the globe, whereas nobody was stopping the evil of Saddam beyond Iraq’s own borders. What do you think?
To answer Mr. Roberts 88, I would think that Ray unwittingly came to B.D. because deep down he knew, almost unconsciously he knew, that B.D. could help him a thousand times better than the VA. B.D. has been through it, B.D. got great rehab, and here’s his chance to pass the goodness along to the war buddy who saved his life in battle.
Trudeau isn’t beating on the troops about whether the war is wrong. He visits the troops in the veterans hospitals and raises issues that the soldiers bring up.
Mr. R., I don’t think the VA is bad at all, quite the contrary. The medical doctors there, including the psychiatrists, I’m sure could do a lot more for PTST vets if it were not for the political problems involved. For now, I think B.D. is Ray’s best bet. He’s already offered to get Ray “squared away upstairs”. His living there doesn’t preclude his using VA services as well.
I love the strip, but it’s part of the whole ‘ooh, look how we suffered’ whining that has played so well in the USA since Vietnam. I thought the winners were supposed to write the histories, but both Vietnam and Iraq are mainly commemorated by the aggressors licking their wounds in accounts in which the victims are either shadowy scary figures or invisible.
Knightman, suppose you were a Jew in one of Heinrich Himmler’s gas-you-to-death camps during the Holocaust. Suppose you knew somehow that “the Yanks are commin’. the Yanks are commin’” to set you free. Would you send them away, saying, “Wars aree HELL! There is never a good WAR!” Then, having your wish come true, go to your death as Hitler ’s 3rd Reich rules the world?
He has you all talking and thinking about it. Maybe that’s all he’s trying to do. Keep it in the open so maybe just maybe the Govt will own up and do a better job helping those with PTSD. That said I spent 3 1/2 years in Viet Nam and I do not suffer from PTSD. But I find I do not suffer fools so easily when they spout about what they know nothing about.
Don’t know about you, but I personally get goose bumps when I read some of Gen. George S. Patton “words of wisdom” on fighting WWII. Here’s an example:
“Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!”
“Paper hanging” is a WWII era euphemism for m.f-ing. Find the quote at <http://www.5ad.org/Patton_speech.htm> and on many other websites.
Okay, okay, so Old Blood and Guts was a bit over the top. But it is said that that SOB was one of only two Allied general officers in WWII, the mere mention of whose name, could sometimes literally make Hitler relieve himself in his pants. Not even Supreme Commander Ike could claim such an honor. And certainly not that British “superego” Monty Montgomery. The only other possibility would have to have been Russian Marshal Zukov, a commander so mean that he used his own troops as human mine sweeps in the grand march to Hitler’s Berlin bunker from the east.
Still, Almighty Judge of All Creatures, may they, all four of them, RIP.
Notice I DID NOT include General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Josef Stalin in that petition of the immediately previous post.
I don’t think that Knightman said that WWII wasn’t justified, he just said it wasn’t good.
I doubt you really think that it was “good” that thousands upon thousands were killed or maimed in WWII or disagree that what they went thru was “hell”.
Skulker, and I said, “suppose” followed by a parable wherein Knightman was given supernatural powers of making WWII go away and allow an unopposed Nazi global victory. The parable allows him — or any reader — the chance to examine his own sense of justice. I await his decision, if he so chooses to render one. The parable is non-condemnatory per se. One may explain his decision in any way he wishes.
Skulker, how would you choose? And how would you defend your decision?
Another such parable or allegory is J.R.R. Tolkiens’ Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you were Frodo the Chosen Ringbearer, would you have foregone the war and given the ring to it’s maker, and putatively “rightful” owner, saying, “War is HELL. There never is a good WAR?” And let Sauron, Hitler-like, rule Middle Earth? Or would you cooperate with the opposing forces and drop the ring into the fires of Mt. Doom? Same type of parable. Explanations are so complex that and English words so slippery, that you may easily hide behind semantics and avoid the moral up-or-down decision.
A third example is the Harry Potter series. I haven’t read the books and have seen only a couple of the movies, so I’m hardly qualified to explain it as regards this issue. However, I would hazzard a guess: There IS a war, there is a Hitler-Sauron type villain: Voldamort. I you were involved, would you choose to fight in the war or not? And why or why not? Thus the issue may be resolved for you personally. But everyone involved must make her/his own decision based on her/his own conscience.
@DylanThomas3.14159 Actually the reason he said “Paper Hanging” is because before his political power took him out of the workforce, Hitler hung wallpaper for a living. A well known fact at the time that somehow has been overlooked by many people since then.
Regarding the expressed opinions of Dylan Thomas3.14159
A sure fire way to know that a persons only exposure to war is through comic books and video games is to listen to them glorify the acts of war and to idolize it’s generals.
war is hell. no question. it is only fun in your mamma’s living room where your length of service is 2 hrs not 200 days; where the airconditioning replaces the soul-sucking heat and humidity of the jungle; you sleep soundly in your bed a night, not laying in a pit in the ground half awake, listening to hear if some guy is crawling toward you to cut your throat or frag you; that and a thousand other pleasures.
Dylan Thomas3.14159, if you want to understand a bit about war…let’s assume your an anglo. go to Watts or Ciudad Juarez; strip down to a tee shirt, shorts and shoes, stay in country for 200 days, and when you come out (if you come out) tell me it wasn’t hell.
A totally-off-topic current event: Obama has just explained to the Teapublicans that defaulting on our debt will make interest rates go up, and that will be the same as RAISING EVERYONE’S TAXES.
Do you think they’re too suicidal to hear the president? By their own admission, they ran for office not because they want to govern but in order to “starve” the government whenever possible.
This quote originates from his address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy (19 June 1879); but slightly varying accounts of this speech have been published:
I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.
Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!
There is more than one way that the clause, “War is hell”, can be used to “explain” someone’s decision about whether or not to fight a “just war”, such as WWII. One can say, “War is hell,” and and since no war is just, I will not fight in any war. One can also say, “War is hell,” but since there are just wars, I will fight in the war that my conscience tells me is just, but refuse to fight in the war that my conscience tells me is unjust. This is the reason we have “conscientious objectors”.
Everyone’s talking about PTSD nowadays as if it’s exclusively a soldier’s disease. ANY traumatic event can cause PTSD, whether it occurs in a war zone or in your own back yard. PTSD has been around for years under different names, “shell shock” “soldier’s heart” etc it is recognized more now than it ever has been, and thankfully now there is treatment available whereas in prior wars (WWII, Korea) you were expected to suck it up and move forward. My father is a Vietnam vet, but went in to the services with undiagnosed PTSD as a result of watching one of his older brothers drown right in front of him when he was a young child, less than 10. To this day he has difficulty going to a public swimming pool where kids are yelling and carrying on. He didn’t work on treatment until after he retired from the Air Force, 26 years later, as to admit that you had a problem was considered a sign of weakness by his superiors and something he could have been discharged for. Yeah, great house to grow up in.
Ray may have arrived in a “drop out” state, but he got to the one place he knew he could get help, at least subconsciously, so good for him! Most people with PTSD don’t have a safe place to go to, it’s part of how the disorder develops, everything you know and everything you think is safe turns out not to be, and the trauma worsens. Without treatment you are always subject to flashbacks, drop outs, whatever you want to call it. WIth treatment at least you have a fighting chance against the fear that goes with it.
With these two needless wars, with our invading countries that hadn’t done anything to us as nations, who did NOT need, or want, our “intervention” to give them the governments WE wanted, it is harder for soldiers to justify their actions. Add in the fact that repeated tours take their toll, and fewer “citizens” have a direct personal contact with soldiers and sailors than at any time, during any previous wars in our history, and yes, PTSD will be worse, and more common. It is good that GT keeps this issue before the public, though public ignorance, and the effort to defend that ignorance, makes it difficult to get the point across.
In his Paper hanger talk to 500 priests of his Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, at the Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, in Chicago, Illinois, on May 18, 1937, Cardinal George Mundelein made these observations on the tragic transformation of German public opinion:
“Perhaps you will ask how it is that a nation of 60 million intelligent people will submit in fear and servitude to an alien, an Austrian paper hanger,1 and a poor one at that, and a few associates like Goebbels and Göring, who dictate every move of the people’s lives?’ The Cardinal went on to suggest that the brains of 60 million Germans had been removed without their even noticing it." (Hitler’s Pope, p. 183)23”
There is disagreement as to whether Adolf Hitler ever worked applying wallpaper or not. John Schimmel, a Wooster, Ohio man who grew up in Transylvania, claims to have known Hitler at the time he was learning the trade.4
The paper hanger term was nonetheless pejorative, suggesting a laborer performing a task which required more hand–eye coordination than intellect, and one who offered ersatz art rather than original art. This was an ad hominem attack on Hitler’s ideas, for he was a published author,5 and a watercolorist, having produced 500–1000 paintings.6 Accordingly, the term became popular among those who opposed Hitler’s ideas rather than among those who endorsed them.[edit]References
1^ a Paper hanger is a person with the occupation of applying wallpaper.
2^ Dialogue Toward Consensus and Healing
3^ Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary was the site of the talk by Mundelein. See the more accurate quote from the Chicago Tribune at that Wikipedia entry
But PD it’s more complicated. How about if you capture a top tier Nazi, and put him on trial and he is convicted and is sentenced to death. A few years after he is executed, you determine that the verdict was a mistake and he should not have been executed, because that’s what happened to Alfred Jodl. He beat some charges and was convicted on four charges he never saw the evidence to. At the time of his sentencing he requested a firing squad.
Is all of that irrelevant because he was a miserable Nazi?
GT really tells it as it is about our service people coming home from a war where the world may or may not be a better place because of all the sacrifices that had to be made. People with PTSD are not exactly “whining”. If you or a buddy gets badly wounded by a flying piece of bone from another buddy a few feet in front of you who caught something, it’s a little hard to stay mentally healthy through it. If you do you’re not human.
rayannina over 13 years ago
Rural high schools don’t have as many drop-outs as Ray!
mroberts88 over 13 years ago
He should really go to medical, they might help.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
I’m wondering if there is more PTSD in the two “bad” wars — Ray’s and B.D.‘s wars, Iraq II and Afghanistan II — than there was in the “good” war, WWII. Is this Trudeau’s point in this current arc of strips? And if so, why? Is it because troops deep down know that what they’re doing is wrong? Whereas there was little doubt among any troops in WWII that what they were doing was wrong. Stopping Hitler was stopping evil that was spreading around the globe, whereas nobody was stopping the evil of Saddam beyond Iraq’s own borders. What do you think?
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
To answer Mr. Roberts 88, I would think that Ray unwittingly came to B.D. because deep down he knew, almost unconsciously he knew, that B.D. could help him a thousand times better than the VA. B.D. has been through it, B.D. got great rehab, and here’s his chance to pass the goodness along to the war buddy who saved his life in battle.
squirreldodger over 13 years ago
Trudeau isn’t beating on the troops about whether the war is wrong. He visits the troops in the veterans hospitals and raises issues that the soldiers bring up.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Visiting troops in VA hospitals and raising issues fellow soldiers bring up doesn’t mean that Bush’s war in Iraq wasn’t wrong.
mroberts88 over 13 years ago
Dylan, that is a good point that I did not think about. However, he should at least give the VA a chance, they might actually work.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Mr. R., I don’t think the VA is bad at all, quite the contrary. The medical doctors there, including the psychiatrists, I’m sure could do a lot more for PTST vets if it were not for the political problems involved. For now, I think B.D. is Ray’s best bet. He’s already offered to get Ray “squared away upstairs”. His living there doesn’t preclude his using VA services as well.
Knightman Premium Member over 13 years ago
All this proves is Wars are HELL! There is never a good WAR!
judgefloyd over 13 years ago
I love the strip, but it’s part of the whole ‘ooh, look how we suffered’ whining that has played so well in the USA since Vietnam. I thought the winners were supposed to write the histories, but both Vietnam and Iraq are mainly commemorated by the aggressors licking their wounds in accounts in which the victims are either shadowy scary figures or invisible.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Ever suffered acute PTSD, Judge?
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Knightman, suppose you were a Jew in one of Heinrich Himmler’s gas-you-to-death camps during the Holocaust. Suppose you knew somehow that “the Yanks are commin’. the Yanks are commin’” to set you free. Would you send them away, saying, “Wars aree HELL! There is never a good WAR!” Then, having your wish come true, go to your death as Hitler ’s 3rd Reich rules the world?
TURTLE over 13 years ago
He has you all talking and thinking about it. Maybe that’s all he’s trying to do. Keep it in the open so maybe just maybe the Govt will own up and do a better job helping those with PTSD. That said I spent 3 1/2 years in Viet Nam and I do not suffer from PTSD. But I find I do not suffer fools so easily when they spout about what they know nothing about.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Sonny, the more years I’ve been reading Trudeau’s strip, the more I’ve been impressed with his incredible genius.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Don’t know about you, but I personally get goose bumps when I read some of Gen. George S. Patton “words of wisdom” on fighting WWII. Here’s an example:
“Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!”
“Paper hanging” is a WWII era euphemism for m.f-ing. Find the quote at <http://www.5ad.org/Patton_speech.htm> and on many other websites.
Okay, okay, so Old Blood and Guts was a bit over the top. But it is said that that SOB was one of only two Allied general officers in WWII, the mere mention of whose name, could sometimes literally make Hitler relieve himself in his pants. Not even Supreme Commander Ike could claim such an honor. And certainly not that British “superego” Monty Montgomery. The only other possibility would have to have been Russian Marshal Zukov, a commander so mean that he used his own troops as human mine sweeps in the grand march to Hitler’s Berlin bunker from the east.
Still, Almighty Judge of All Creatures, may they, all four of them, RIP.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Notice I DID NOT include General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Josef Stalin in that petition of the immediately previous post.
TheSkulker over 13 years ago
@Dylan
I don’t think that Knightman said that WWII wasn’t justified, he just said it wasn’t good.
I doubt you really think that it was “good” that thousands upon thousands were killed or maimed in WWII or disagree that what they went thru was “hell”.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Skulker, and I said, “suppose” followed by a parable wherein Knightman was given supernatural powers of making WWII go away and allow an unopposed Nazi global victory. The parable allows him — or any reader — the chance to examine his own sense of justice. I await his decision, if he so chooses to render one. The parable is non-condemnatory per se. One may explain his decision in any way he wishes.
Skulker, how would you choose? And how would you defend your decision?
Nothing about this is easy, I know.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Another such parable or allegory is J.R.R. Tolkiens’ Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you were Frodo the Chosen Ringbearer, would you have foregone the war and given the ring to it’s maker, and putatively “rightful” owner, saying, “War is HELL. There never is a good WAR?” And let Sauron, Hitler-like, rule Middle Earth? Or would you cooperate with the opposing forces and drop the ring into the fires of Mt. Doom? Same type of parable. Explanations are so complex that and English words so slippery, that you may easily hide behind semantics and avoid the moral up-or-down decision.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
A third example is the Harry Potter series. I haven’t read the books and have seen only a couple of the movies, so I’m hardly qualified to explain it as regards this issue. However, I would hazzard a guess: There IS a war, there is a Hitler-Sauron type villain: Voldamort. I you were involved, would you choose to fight in the war or not? And why or why not? Thus the issue may be resolved for you personally. But everyone involved must make her/his own decision based on her/his own conscience.
Kerovan over 13 years ago
@DylanThomas3.14159 Actually the reason he said “Paper Hanging” is because before his political power took him out of the workforce, Hitler hung wallpaper for a living. A well known fact at the time that somehow has been overlooked by many people since then.
Coyoty Premium Member over 13 years ago
Dropping out, smoking weed… Ray’s turning into a hippy. Maybe he’s there to see Zonker instead.
glenardis over 13 years ago
Regarding the expressed opinions of Dylan Thomas3.14159
A sure fire way to know that a persons only exposure to war is through comic books and video games is to listen to them glorify the acts of war and to idolize it’s generals.
war is hell. no question. it is only fun in your mamma’s living room where your length of service is 2 hrs not 200 days; where the airconditioning replaces the soul-sucking heat and humidity of the jungle; you sleep soundly in your bed a night, not laying in a pit in the ground half awake, listening to hear if some guy is crawling toward you to cut your throat or frag you; that and a thousand other pleasures.
Dylan Thomas3.14159, if you want to understand a bit about war…let’s assume your an anglo. go to Watts or Ciudad Juarez; strip down to a tee shirt, shorts and shoes, stay in country for 200 days, and when you come out (if you come out) tell me it wasn’t hell.
cdhaley over 13 years ago
A totally-off-topic current event: Obama has just explained to the Teapublicans that defaulting on our debt will make interest rates go up, and that will be the same as RAISING EVERYONE’S TAXES.
Do you think they’re too suicidal to hear the president? By their own admission, they ran for office not because they want to govern but in order to “starve” the government whenever possible.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
War is Hell.
This quote originates from his address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy (19 June 1879); but slightly varying accounts of this speech have been published:
I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.
Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!
Source:
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Shermanhttp://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman>
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
There is more than one way that the clause, “War is hell”, can be used to “explain” someone’s decision about whether or not to fight a “just war”, such as WWII. One can say, “War is hell,” and and since no war is just, I will not fight in any war. One can also say, “War is hell,” but since there are just wars, I will fight in the war that my conscience tells me is just, but refuse to fight in the war that my conscience tells me is unjust. This is the reason we have “conscientious objectors”.
sierrasongbird123 over 13 years ago
Everyone’s talking about PTSD nowadays as if it’s exclusively a soldier’s disease. ANY traumatic event can cause PTSD, whether it occurs in a war zone or in your own back yard. PTSD has been around for years under different names, “shell shock” “soldier’s heart” etc it is recognized more now than it ever has been, and thankfully now there is treatment available whereas in prior wars (WWII, Korea) you were expected to suck it up and move forward. My father is a Vietnam vet, but went in to the services with undiagnosed PTSD as a result of watching one of his older brothers drown right in front of him when he was a young child, less than 10. To this day he has difficulty going to a public swimming pool where kids are yelling and carrying on. He didn’t work on treatment until after he retired from the Air Force, 26 years later, as to admit that you had a problem was considered a sign of weakness by his superiors and something he could have been discharged for. Yeah, great house to grow up in.
Ray may have arrived in a “drop out” state, but he got to the one place he knew he could get help, at least subconsciously, so good for him! Most people with PTSD don’t have a safe place to go to, it’s part of how the disorder develops, everything you know and everything you think is safe turns out not to be, and the trauma worsens. Without treatment you are always subject to flashbacks, drop outs, whatever you want to call it. WIth treatment at least you have a fighting chance against the fear that goes with it.
Dtroutma over 13 years ago
With these two needless wars, with our invading countries that hadn’t done anything to us as nations, who did NOT need, or want, our “intervention” to give them the governments WE wanted, it is harder for soldiers to justify their actions. Add in the fact that repeated tours take their toll, and fewer “citizens” have a direct personal contact with soldiers and sailors than at any time, during any previous wars in our history, and yes, PTSD will be worse, and more common. It is good that GT keeps this issue before the public, though public ignorance, and the effort to defend that ignorance, makes it difficult to get the point across.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
It is no putdown to any American soldier who fought in the war for me to say that George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was unjust.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Paper hanger (Mundelein’s speech)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In his Paper hanger talk to 500 priests of his Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, at the Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, in Chicago, Illinois, on May 18, 1937, Cardinal George Mundelein made these observations on the tragic transformation of German public opinion:
“Perhaps you will ask how it is that a nation of 60 million intelligent people will submit in fear and servitude to an alien, an Austrian paper hanger,1 and a poor one at that, and a few associates like Goebbels and Göring, who dictate every move of the people’s lives?’ The Cardinal went on to suggest that the brains of 60 million Germans had been removed without their even noticing it." (Hitler’s Pope, p. 183)23”
There is disagreement as to whether Adolf Hitler ever worked applying wallpaper or not. John Schimmel, a Wooster, Ohio man who grew up in Transylvania, claims to have known Hitler at the time he was learning the trade.4
The paper hanger term was nonetheless pejorative, suggesting a laborer performing a task which required more hand–eye coordination than intellect, and one who offered ersatz art rather than original art. This was an ad hominem attack on Hitler’s ideas, for he was a published author,5 and a watercolorist, having produced 500–1000 paintings.6 Accordingly, the term became popular among those who opposed Hitler’s ideas rather than among those who endorsed them.[edit]References
1^ a Paper hanger is a person with the occupation of applying wallpaper.
2^ Dialogue Toward Consensus and Healing
3^ Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary was the site of the talk by Mundelein. See the more accurate quote from the Chicago Tribune at that Wikipedia entry
4^ Marching Toward War: Humanizing Dictators
5^ Mein Kampf
6^ Hitler’s artworks
source:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_hanger_(Mundelein’s_speech)>
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Palin drome, I did check out Goeth’s remark. It’s so. Thanks.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
What I meant, Night-Gaunt49, was the post-Iraqi-invasion phase of the single Afghan war.
DylanThomas3.14159 over 13 years ago
Palin drome: Some COs do serve unarmed, some don’t. Some COs only refuse to bear arms, but serve otherwise. Others consider it wrong to serve at all.
Dragoncat over 13 years ago
Travelling 300 miles on FOOT? Chances are, he probably did.I know training sessions can be brutal, but…
FriscoLou over 13 years ago
But PD it’s more complicated. How about if you capture a top tier Nazi, and put him on trial and he is convicted and is sentenced to death. A few years after he is executed, you determine that the verdict was a mistake and he should not have been executed, because that’s what happened to Alfred Jodl. He beat some charges and was convicted on four charges he never saw the evidence to. At the time of his sentencing he requested a firing squad.
Is all of that irrelevant because he was a miserable Nazi?
ghretighoti over 13 years ago
GT really tells it as it is about our service people coming home from a war where the world may or may not be a better place because of all the sacrifices that had to be made. People with PTSD are not exactly “whining”. If you or a buddy gets badly wounded by a flying piece of bone from another buddy a few feet in front of you who caught something, it’s a little hard to stay mentally healthy through it. If you do you’re not human.