Society does not see the war

Mary-Ann served thirty-six years in the military, nine of them active. Twelve months of them were in Tikrit, Iraq. She is working hard to pick up the pieces of her fractured soul after an assignment she thought she could cope with due to the tough training she had received in the post-Vietnam era.

In the days of World War II, war was in the minds of people at home. Citizens would be subject to rationing or working in the war industries. But the war today looks like an isolated experience felt by only a fraction of society, she observes. “I think people’s idea about war is a Hollywood version. I don’t think they know war does not turn off. It continues and goes on. I don’t think they know what the civilian population in Iraq is going through. People have their own political agendas. Some are very much against the war. They want to talk about their political views. They don’t want to see what I experienced,” Mary-Ann says.

Mary-Ann sees war from her experience: “Nobody is really prepared for the horror that comes out of the war. It is not natural to have people attack people. It is not something that is done necessarily to live or survive. It is a shock.”