Some soldiers find transition difficult
EUGENE, Ore. – Andrea Westfall came home from the Iraq war two years ago, grateful to have survived and planning to resume her civilian life where she’d left off.
But like thousands of soldiers before her, Westfall, 36, learned that you don’t just walk away from war.
“I had all of these memories that kept me awake at night,” said Westfall, a flight medic during the war. “I didn’t sleep basically for the first year I was home.”
Oregon National Guard administrators are aware of the challenges that soldiers such as Westfall face when they return. It’s one of the reasons the military eases them back to civilian life, said Lt. Kevin Ressel, who heads the newly formed reintegration team charged with making the transition smoother for war-weary troops.
Oregon recently welcomed back 700 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry. The soldiers spent a couple of weeks of down time in Kuwait, followed by a week of debriefing at Fort Lewis, Wash., and another four days in Salem before being released from active-duty status.
Besides the bureaucratic paperwork of shifting to reserve status, signing up for interim health benefits and registering with Veterans Affairs, the soldiers spent several hours with employment counselors and chaplains discussing what the future holds, Ressel said.
Recent studies of the soldiers returning from Iraq indicate that significant numbers have been traumatized by the war. The more frequent their encounters with violence, the more likely they are to report symptoms, according to research published in the June 2004 New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers found that as many as 29 percent of soldiers experienced some form of depression or anxiety in the first three or four months they were home. Of them, 18 to 19 percent reported symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder.
Even those without such disorders face obstacles on the path back to civilian life. More than half of returning troops are unemployed, either by choice or through layoffs or businesses that folded while they were overseas.
Moreover, Oregon National Guard Chaplain John Dinsmore said, soldiers face problems that aren’t always apparent during the first days of their return.
“It’s kind of a honeymoon,” Dinsmore said. “They’re welcomed at the airports and the armories. The communities welcome them back with open arms.”
But some soldiers are coming home to divorces. Others find their families changed, their spouses more independent, their children older.
Communication techniques that work in a highly structured military environment don’t go over as well with wives and bosses, Dinsmore said.
Many soldiers turn to alcohol or drugs when they return. Westfall felt like nobody really understood where she’d been or what had happened to her. She used alcohol to numb her sense of isolation and blur the horrific images she couldn’t get out of her head.
“All the things I did while I was over there, this should be a piece of cake,” she said of adjusting to civilian life. “Other times I wished I was back (in Iraq) because I knew how to deal with that. Emotionally and mentally I knew where I fit in.”
It wasn’t until a friend confronted her that things began to change. Westfall went to the local Veterans Affairs clinic and asked for help.