Teaching them to kill but forgetting to teach them how to heal

'You can teach a man to kill but not to see dying'
Ex-soldier wins award for speaking frankly and forcefully on the mental distress of war veterans.
Hear him talk about combat stress in this audio clip.
Mark Gould
Wednesday October 10, 2007
The Guardian

The air is blue with cigarette smoke and swearing as Chris Duggan recalls the smell of his injured comrades: "If you imagine burnt pork and plastic; I can still taste it." Flashbacks are common symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but Duggan, a Falklands war veteran, wasn't diagnosed until 1990, eight years after the conflict. By then his mood swings and aggression had destroyed his marriage and nearly killed him.

Tonight, his courage in talking about his illness in Combat Stress, a BBC Radio Wales programme, and his calls for more support for ex-forces' personnel, is being recognised when he receives the Speaking Out award at the annual Mental Health Media Awards.

Duggan joined the Welsh Guards when he was 16 and served in Northern Ireland and Cyprus before the Falklands. Sitting in his house on a Swansea council estate, he takes alternate pulls on his asthma inhaler and a roll-up cigarette as he tells how he lost 48 friends and colleagues when the landing ship Sir Galahad, packed with troops and ammunition, was bombed and caught fire in San Carlos Water.

"On the 8th of June, 1982, me and a couple of others were on a 'foraging' expedition, scrounging some fags and booze for our boys," he recalls. "We heard 'all hands' and we went up to the field hospital. These helicopters were coming in and we were asked to help get the boys off. We didn't know who they were or what had happened, but when they opened the doors the stench was horrendous."
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PTSD does not know one nation from another. It does not know one combat mission from another. It does not know one century from another. It is the aftermath of trauma on the human brain. Some scar. Some are cut so deeply by it they need help to heal. Why is there still a stigma stuck to this wound?