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Trauma can come from imagining destruction, not just from seeing it firsthand.

Remote warfare can cause psychological wounds that are not always visible.

Memory reconstructs the past; it does not simply replay it.

Veterans need care not only for combat injuries but also for what they remember, imagine, and cannot let go.

Not long after returning home from deployment, in a military barracks, a 22-year-old Marine named Austin Powell pounded on his neighbour’s door in tears and cried out: “There’s something in my room! I’m hearing something in my room!”

His neighbour, Lance Corporal Brady Zipoy, went to help. He searched the room but found nothing. Then, tapping his head, Zipoy tried to reassure him: “It’s all right — I’ve been having problems, too.”

The incident was reported as part of a New York Times investigation into US troops who had been sent to serve in the campaign against the Islamic State between 2016 and 2017 and had since returned to the United States. The report drew on interviews with more than 40 gun-crew veterans across 16 US states. Most were “troops who did the firing”—service members who used long-range weapons from afar to kill Islamic State fighters. They were not in direct combat, had not suffered physical combat injuries, and did not see the damage their weapons caused.

What the Investigation Found

According to the Times:

A few gun-crew members were eventually given diagnoses of P.T.S.D., but to the crews that didn’t make much sense. They hadn’t, in most cases, even seen the enemy.

A few gun-crew members were eventually given diagnoses of P.T.S.D., but to the crews that didn’t make much sense. They hadn’t, in most cases, even seen the enemy.

Military doctrine had assumed that firing thousands of high-explosive shells from a distance was relatively safe. These troops were far from direct........

© Psychology Today