Dear Editor,
When I came back from the Iraq war, I brought the war home with me. Like many veterans returning from war, I brought back more baggage than I took. Some of that baggage is dark and frightening. Very few people understand the baggage that I brought home with me, not my family, friends, and even some counsellors do not understand what I experienced in combat. I cannot blame them. The only people who understand are my fellow veterans who have been there, have done that, and have gotten the t-shirt to prove it.
When I went to war, I took only two bags; one with my military uniforms and the other with my civilian clothes. But when I returned from the war, I had many more bags. One of the bags that I brought home had memories of dead bodies and not just any kind of dead bodies, but the ones whose stench was terrible. A decade after the war, I’m still trying to escape the smell.
I experienced tremendous internal conflict when I returned from the war. For example, on New Year’s Day 2015 while everybody was celebrating and having fun, I was experiencing a flashback from war. When I heard the fireworks, it sounded like bullets and bombshells. And I felt a sickening feeling begin to take over me; my mind began to race; my stomach churned and I felt a sickness in the pit of my stomach; and my palms began to sweat. It felt as if my strength was being drained from my body, and I was dying on the inside.
Then, I began to look around to see if someone was going to attack me at any moment. I was familiar with these feelings; I had seen and felt it before many times at home and in Iraq. And, then, suddenly, I’m back in Iraq, even though it has been over 10 years since I went there. I remember the shootings, bombings, helicopters and running. I could hear the screams of men, and I could hear the awful noise of the guns and bombs. And this led me to find a safe place to get away from the noise. So I go into isolation, I feel safe and protected. No one can hurt or find me.
All I wanted to do was to be alone and isolated. I brought home isolation from the war. Isolation is something else that helped me during the war. It helped me to cope with the things I saw. Some veterans don’t have a lot of people who understand and can talk to them so they isolate themselves. In war, in order to survive, you have to become emotionally numb to the things you see. When I saw people killed or injured, at the time, I did not feel anything at all. I became emotionally numb and developed an awful indifference to pain, even my own.
Although becoming emotionally numb helped me to survive, strive, and succeed on the battlefield, it hurt my family tremendously because I had become emotionally numb, distant, and detached from them. I had become awfully indifferent to my family’s pain, others’ pain and even my own.
After combat, I was unable to turn off feeling numb. So I couldn’t feel any emotions: love, pain, joy, compassion, or empathy. When I would hold my children, I felt no affection, warmth, or comfort. Their bodies felt cold like the dead bodies I put into body bags. Just as I felt detached from the dead and dying on the battlefield, I felt the same with my family. Feelings of numbness, isolation, and guilt are some of the things veterans often carry with them in their baggage home from war.
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Pantlitz
