Picking Up The Pieces

Women Veterans Battle To Mend Themselves

Raquel Ramirez, a young veteran who returned from her deployment with the U.S. Army in Kabul, Afghanistan, could not adjust living back at home. She ended up homeless, sleeping in her car, suffering from anxiety, anger, road rage and drinking heavily. She didn't know her problems were triggered by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a common condition with war veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I knew what the normal was in Afghanistan. I knew what to look for. But for some reason those things were abnormal over here", she describes how her mind worked, when she was speeding on the Californian freeway, having a flashbacks about explosions.

Seven female veterans tell about their personal struggle with PTSD, after serving in Afghanistan or Iraq during recent years. They describe the human side of the war: blown-up buddies, fear and courage, loneliness, getting to know the people of the countries considered as enemies, sexual assaults committed by their fellow soldiers. One of the soldiers did not make it to deployment, because she was raped by her fellow Marine in the base at home.

Retired Major Linda Stanley returned home feeling empty, after nursing blown-up bodies of soldiers in Iraq, despite years of experience and coping skills learnt as the military nurse. She is worried about the hundreds of thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Will they end up homeless in the streets, like many Vietnam veterans, if the society does not see their plight?

Soldiers face overwhelming pressure. They work 12 hour shifts, mostly with no days off, during deployment. They are living in constant emergency mode even at the barracks. Linda Stanley tells, that Iraq and Afghanistan are unlike the previous wars. There is no enemy line. You can get mortared everywhere. Carnage, turmoil and trauma become everyday experience in the war area. Soldiers return to the United States where the war is only seen in the empty glazes of the veterans. Many isolate themselves, unable to function in the civilian life after the pressures of the war, imprinted in their brain. Stanley

The worsening collapse of the U.S. economy pushes many young people to consider military career. Whanja Brown and Daniela joined the military, because they needed money. Whanja's partner ran her deeply into debt. After serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, she has paid her debt, but she is picking up her pieces, fighting against feelings of isolation and anxiety. She got burned and lost three friends in the war.

Daniela never got to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having joined the Marines to get a job and money, she was placed as the only woman in a group of male company and brutally sexually assaulted.

Gwen Chiaramonte was one of many reservists near retirement age, who were suddenly called to deploy in one of the U.S. wars. Just after turning 58, she was assigned to Iraq, giving therapy to soldiers suffering from PTSD, relationship problems, increasing hatred towards the Iraqi people and the pressures of seeing their friends die. Gwen was not so much bothered about the echoes of explosions. Soldiers' anguish followed her home, even if she is a professional social worker. She lost her sleep, drank to forget and lost empathy, one of her most important tools in her profession as the manager in social affairs.

Gwen became angry at the military for allowing bullying and harassment in the ranks, seeing the young people did not have a way out, if they faced trouble. She could not understand why the soldiers are not given enough rest. The most defining incidence in Iraq, that affected her PTSD was a suicide of one of her patients. She could not stop thinking, whether she could have saved him. Instead of mortar attacks, Gwen started to fear depressed soldiers were ticking time-bombs, who may go into a rampage with their loaded guns. She believes now that her fear was right. After her return home, a soldier burst into the combat stress team office where she had worked in Iraq and killed five people in the waiting room.

Loneliness is evident especially in veterans, who went to the combat zone later in their lives. Sue Max was also deployed, when she was nearly 60 years old. She travelled to Camp Victory in Iraq in 2006. She believes that despite the camaraderie, the American crew in Iraq stay in their private shells, not letting others near. The male commander in her unit invited the male soldiers for lunch every week. Women were invited only once, all together.

>But it was one fraction of the causes for Sue's PTSD. As a paying agent, she had to sometimes carry tens of thousands of dollars out of the compound to pay the Iraqi contractors for goods and services. It was easy to feel target during those excursions. The insecurity of the threat of indirect fire was another trauma that created the emptiness, she felt at home.

Many female veterans feel the added ignorance from the public. Most of the Americans do not recognize that the country is at war. But even those, who notice, pass the women, expecting that only men serve. Both Sue Max and Mary-Ann Rich have experienced this. They felt that the VA services were directed mainly for men. They felt excluded.

One in five new military recruits are women. Well over a quarter of a million American women have served in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Until recently, they were not regarded as having been in combat, although in contemporary war zones the front line is everywhere.

Help may be available by VA and other institutions. Finding it and having strength to look for it, is a different story. Mary-Ann Rich was first turned away from VA for bureaucratic reasons. She, like many others, have found it difficult to accept therapy. PTSD victims want individual care, but often the care works like an institutional machinery, with expectations that the same pattern fits everyone.

Mary-Ann cannot stop tears, when she speak of her loneliness, inability to find anyone to connect to, the rest of the society turning their back on the pain, that hundreds of thousands of returning veterans may be facing on their return. 

You don't yet see many of them living on the streets. They may sleep on a friend's couch or in their car, quietly, privately dealing with their past as a wounded soldier, but with no visible injuries, says clinical director Bill Wallace of the U.S. Vets in Long Beach. But there is a danger and fear of a new Vietnam-like generation that ends up on the streets within a few years, if there is no safety net to catch them if they fall.

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