Combat PTSD A Debt That Haunts

Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Shrinking The News


A column by Peter Sheehy

"But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know" -Alan Watts



A Debt That Haunts...

During his second night in Iraq in October of 2003, Sergeant Andreas Pogany witnessed an Iraqi man cut in half by a machine gun. Pogany vomited, shook for hours, and by his own confession, “couldn’t function.” Despite Pogany’s insistence that he was having panic attacks, he was denied proper therapeutic care and was eventually sent home. Before long, Pogany faced court-martial for cowardice, a charge the military had not pursued since the Vietnam war, and one that carries a maximum sentence of death.

Although the military eventually dropped the charges against Pogany, the government's neglect of combat traumas is a bad flashback to the Vietnam era. Even worse, it's a denial of the therapeutic practices that our armed forces developed during World War II. Turning its back on our soldiers' psychiatric wounds, today's military is also rejecting its own history.
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