Upcoming Article -- Desert Exposure

I wanted to place this copyrighted document that my friend, Sherry Robinson, author of the highly acclaimed "Apache Voices," wrote after I told her of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) "flashback" I had in a local theater. The "occasion" or the "trigger" for my PTSD flashback, the worst I've ever had since the day I was shot, in Vietnam, was the film "Babel." The 2006 film, starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and several others, had a scene that set me into a pass out experience, right there in the "Real West Cinema," in Silver City, New Mexico.
I want to say that the context of this event was the Iraq War, and my opposition to that war. The point was that cowards, like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, Doug Feith, Steven Halperin, Karl Rove, et al, of that tremendously brave bunch of men in the Bush White House ... had sent our young men and women into a war that was totally needless. I wanted people to know that guys like those guys ... the "Bushistas," didn't learn the things we who were in Vietnam learned about carnage.
The carnage I saw, not only in Vietnam, but in Army hospitals for a year after I was wounded, left me more heavily damaged with PTSD than I ever would have guessed. So, after passing out in the "Real West Cinema," after viewing
the highly realistic scene in "Babel," Sherry took it from there. As a long time journalist who provides articles of interest to the @New Mexico News Services, 2007, Sherry has graciously allowed me to use the copy she wrote, with credit to
@New Mexico News Services, 2007.

© New Mexico News Services 2007

Sherry Robinson/ All She Wrote

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THRU 2-12-07

For veterans, some scars aren’t visible

By Sherry Robinson

As the president was polishing his arguments for the troop “surge” in Iraq, my friend Jerry Eagan was lying on the floor of a theater in Silver City, losing consciousness.

Jerry and his wife had gone to see the movie “Babel.” The shooting of the female co-star was so realistic that it triggered a massive episode of post traumatic stress disorder for Jerry, who nearly lost his arm as a 19-year-old infantryman after a similar shooting.

“The images of the film were so strong as to remind me vividly that I was that person, nearly bleeding to death, with fellow soldiers slapping my face and challenging me to not pass out because you can actually die of such a shock,” he wrote to friends.

“I began to feel sick. Then I knew I was having a flashback from Vietnam. I apparently began or did pass out. People came to my aid, and before I knew it, I was on the floor of the theater, with several people assisting me. They called 911 and they got
there quickly and put some oxygen on me. By then I was drenched in sweat.”

Jerry left the theater when his blood pressure returned to normal, but he was drained. “Here’s the point: I was in Vietnam 41 years ago.” He worries about the new veterans returning with unseen wounds.

One in four veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan has been diagnosed with mental health problems, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. A congressional report says vets seeking treatment for PTSD and other mental-health issues doubled over nine months to 9,103 in June 2006.

Laura Berg, a mental-health nurse at the Albuquerque VA hospital, described her patients to New Mexico Press Women last year.

“Some are deeply, psychologically wounded. It’s hard to hear stories from young men coming back to families in rural New Mexico, who talk about being in convoys and having to run over women and children, about having to steel themselves and coming home and being unable to un-steel themselves. There is more trauma than the public is aware of.”

What about rural vets like Jerry who can’t just drive to Albuquerque every time they have a problem? Many don’t seek help because they’re embarrassed or discouraged by red tape, while others simply can’t get help. Sadly, the same people who would send our troops to war don’t support them when they come home.

Jerry was embarrassed by his theater episode, but he wants people to know what happened to him, especially those who support the proposed troop increase – people like Jerry’s congressman, Rep. Steve Pearce.

Pearce, a Vietnam veteran, has parroted the administration’s line about taking the fight to the terrorists. He’s insisted there was a solid connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, even though both the Senate and the CIA said there was no such tie. Pearce, who had a make-nice visit to Iraq in the balmy days of November 2003, show no penchant for independent thinking. His fellow Republican, Rep. Heather Wilson, does.

Early this month, Wilson returned from a trip to Iraq after first studying classified and unclassified documents and meeting with intelligence agencies and military people. On Jan. 8 Wilson, also a veteran, wrote the president that “the American military should only be used to protect America’s vital national interests.” Removing Saddam Hussein and addressing weapons of mass destruction were national interests; political goals are not, she wrote. “We cannot do for the Iraqis what they will not do for themselves.”

(For her report, see http://wilson.house.gov.)

Jerry believes that real support for troops is to not sacrifice their lives without good cause. “You have no idea what's in their heads when they come home. Or how long it stays there.”