I’d like to preface this entry by acknowledging that I’m not a veteran, so anything I say about the experiences of veterans and the difficulties they have had adjusting to civilian life is second-hand information at best. Consequently, I might be full of shit. I don’t know from personal experience what combat veterans have been through—only from listening and observation. So if anyone wants to correct me on any particular, or on my whole theory in general, I invite them to do so. But I think I’ve seen enough incidents of this type to have a relevant opinion.
I ran across a news article a couple days ago on veterans—particularly those who suffer from PTSD—who end up committing (or rather, being convicted of) serious crimes once they return to civilian life. It caught my attention for a couple of reasons. The first is that one of the featured cases in this story, that of Christopher Lee Boyd, comes from the jurisdiction right next door to Bedford, VA, where I worked as a public defender. In fact, Boyd was arrested in Campbell County just a couple weeks before I started working in Bedford. But the second reason it caught my eye is because I’ve seen these same sorts of stories in my work.
I’m certainly not trying to paint the armed forces as a breeding ground for felons. Veterans, and combat veterans in particular, make an agreement to do what is necessary, no matter how horrifying or costly that necessary thing might be, so that we as a country can enjoy the freedoms we do. They are truly heroes, and for that we all owe them a debt. We owe them much better than our current, systemic failure to address the horrors they experience on our behalf.
The article discusses how many veterans return with PTSD, and develop substance abuse problems, and implies that life for many veterans begins to spin out of control, whence they find themselves in trouble with the law. But what I’ve seen leads me to believe that there’s another aspect on top of that—a specific aspect of PTSD that is in part because of their experience, but is also a part of the training they all undergo to prepare them for combat. Combat veterans have to learn a different set of responses to crises.
For most of us, if someone picks a fight, or if an argument were to come to blows (all of which can carry criminal penalties of their own), we can rest reasonably assured that things won’t get wholly out of control. Usually there are police around (or at least on call), and witnesses nearby, and generally a lot of social pressure not to let things “go too far”.
Certainly, this doesn’t work all the time. Parties and bar fights do get out of hand, and people do get seriously injured. But as someone who’s spent years as a bouncer on both coasts and a number of places in between, most of the time, better judgment (either yours or someone else’s) will stop things before serious or permanent injury is done. Despite the fact that throwing a punch is a criminal offense everywhere that I know of, most fights—even when witnessed by dozens of people—never result in any sort of legal action, because no one gets really injured and no one wants the cops involved.
Veterans, and combat veterans in particular, have had to unlearn that social training. When someone is in a combat zone, by definition the societal and governmental structure that would prevent violence from escalating to deadly levels in that part of the world is long gone. Waiting for someone who’s pointing a gun at you, or setting an IED by the side of the road, to stop and consider the possible criminal penalties of their actions can mean that you become a casualty before you ever get the chance to be a veteran. Hesitation in war will get you killed, and so will underestimating a threat.
But when that veteran returns to society, the same government that taught him (or her) not to hesitate to use force when necessary, now requires him (or her) to assume that force is not necessary. They must act as though a fistfight cannot escalate—even though each of them knows, in a way that most of us never will, that any form of violence can turn deadly without warning; that even a peaceful day can be fatal. And it’s a transition that society expects them to make not only without guidance, but generally without acknowledgment.
Of the veterans I’ve known, none of them have told me any stories about sitting down with their C.O., or even a squad leader, and being told, “You’ve spent the last x years overcoming your societal impulse to shy away from injuring or killing other people (when necessary). Go forth and never do that again. Unless it’s really necessary. But the people who will judge whether or not it was necessary, after the fact, will never understand what you know.”
The stories I have heard from veterans charged with or convicted of violent felonies do tend to have a common theme. I grant this is anecdotal evidence, and not a formal study, so again, I could be completely wrong. But that being said, most of the violent felonies I see civilians charged with stem from poverty and powerlessness, and involve taking either someone else’s property (robbery or burglary), or their control over their own actions or body (abduction or rape). While it’s not unheard of for a veteran to be charged with such offenses, what I most commonly see when veterans are charged with violent offenses are situations where the veteran is not the initial aggressor.
I hear these stories time and again. A veteran tried to walk away from a bar fight, but was followed. Three civilians picked a fight with a veteran. The child of a veteran’s friend was molested by someone who avoided conviction. In these cases, and many others, the veteran didn’t go looking for a fight. Maybe they didn’t “try hard enough” to avoid trouble, but they didn’t set out to start it. But when trouble found them, they chose to end it.
Exactly as they were trained to do.
The problem, all too often, is that their response is deemed too extreme for the day-to-day world of civilian life. Part of civilian life—and law—is that we pretty much have the right to be assholes any time and place we choose, and we still don’t get beaten for it (even if most people would agree we probably deserved it). And even if a line is crossed, we’re expected to trust civilian authorities to deal with it.
All the things that will get you killed in a war zone.
We require veterans to make that transition, and the truth is, we must require it from them. We cannot afford to have a special class of people who are permitted to react with deadly force to situations the rest of us do not believe justify it. Without that transition, the society these veterans fought to protect falls apart.
But at the very least, we owe it to these men and women to provide better resources to help them make that transition than we currently offer. They deserve both mental health counseling, to help them adjust to their new reality, and career counseling to help them find a place in that new reality. Many of these people have seen hell with their own eyes—we owe them whatever help they need adjusting back to life in New Jersey.
EDIT: I have received several responses to this post, both publicly and in private. They have included links to writings, as well as a video, created by combat veterans about their own experiences. I think they paint a good picture of the sorts of things I’m talking about, and I wanted to share them here.
First, two blog entries from a friend who is still in the military, but has rotated out of combat to a posting here in the states:
5 Ways A Deployment Inadvertently Turns You Into An Asshole
and
5 Things They Don’t Tell You About Being In the U.S. Military
Secondly (or thirdly, I suppose), a video created by a combat veteran based on his experience adjusting to life as a student:
“Now, After” (PTSD From A Soldier’s POV) (WARNING: Contains graphic images, and scenes that will likely be triggering to anyone with combat-related PTSD, and possibly those without)
Perhaps these will help people to understand—they did for me.
About John Bradley