Combat Stress is alarmed at the huge increase in veterans from the Falklands, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, who come knocking on their door for help. A few are still turning up suffering long-term effects from the second world war and Korea. The oldest applicant for help recently was aged 100.
What's their reasoning for this alarm? Eight years ago 300 veterans sought help from Combat Stress; during the last fiscal year the number jumped to 1,000. The number of Falklands War vets who've committed suicide has risen to 300—more than the 256 British soldiers who were killed in the war itself. Of particular note is how many view the Iraq war's unpopularity in the UK as exacerbating vets' mental health issues. From the Guardian:
The problems of veterans today are compounded by the widespread recognition through much of the army that the Iraq campaign is unpopular, nasty, unpredictable and brutal—and, in the views of a significant minority of soldiers and officers in private conversation, a pretty unnecessary conflict at that. In the first and second world wars, the plight of service personnel was shared by almost everyone in the land. More than 1 million soldiers served in Northern Ireland over 30 or so years, so that became part of the national experience.
But combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a national experience, and the services are worried that they appear in the minds of many now to be detached from most of British national life. Though more American soldiers have been involved—more than 3,000 killed and nearly 50,000 injured, physically or mentally—Iraq is not a shared experience nationally for Americans in the way that Vietnam was.
0 comments:
Post a Comment