Testament of 'an honest man and a soldier'
PATRICK RENGGER
March 1, 2008
EMPTY CASING
By Fred Doucette
Douglas & McIntyre,
256 pages, $34.95
It has been said with some truth that in war there are no unwounded soldiers. Yet the nature of those wounds, particularly the psychological ones, and their effect on the lives of the men (and increasingly, the women) involved are as different and multitudinous as the individuals.
Whether you call it battle fatigue, shell shock, PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) or OSI (operational stress injury), the mental trauma that can occur in conflict areas is still barely understood. It is often governed, particularly in the military, by ignorance and hidden by a culture of macho denial. Why some are affected, while others remain apparently uninjured, by the same circumstances remains largely a mystery. In Empty Casing, Fred Doucette tells the story of one soldier, Doucette himself, who rises through the ranks of the Canadian army until, faced with the extraordinary stresses and particular viciousness of the Bosnian conflict, he finally succumbs to mental injury and is ultimately medically discharged from the army.
The story Doucette tells is, in many ways, a quite ordinary soldier's tale, filled with the small struggles and triumphs of life in the military and family life, and the business and boredom of professional soldiering. And yet, its very ordinariness is partly what makes it compelling. When Doucette is finally posted to Bosnia as a United Nations Monitoring Officer, everything changes. In Bosnia, Doucette is sent to Sarajevo in the midst of the siege, a posting that Doucette, whose previous UN tours of Cyprus were his only experience of war, didn't really want. He comforts himself with the thought that it couldn't be that bad, adding, "I could not figure out why all the military observers who had been 'in country' kept wishing me luck."
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PATRICK RENGGER
March 1, 2008
EMPTY CASING
By Fred Doucette
Douglas & McIntyre,
256 pages, $34.95
It has been said with some truth that in war there are no unwounded soldiers. Yet the nature of those wounds, particularly the psychological ones, and their effect on the lives of the men (and increasingly, the women) involved are as different and multitudinous as the individuals.
Whether you call it battle fatigue, shell shock, PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) or OSI (operational stress injury), the mental trauma that can occur in conflict areas is still barely understood. It is often governed, particularly in the military, by ignorance and hidden by a culture of macho denial. Why some are affected, while others remain apparently uninjured, by the same circumstances remains largely a mystery. In Empty Casing, Fred Doucette tells the story of one soldier, Doucette himself, who rises through the ranks of the Canadian army until, faced with the extraordinary stresses and particular viciousness of the Bosnian conflict, he finally succumbs to mental injury and is ultimately medically discharged from the army.
The story Doucette tells is, in many ways, a quite ordinary soldier's tale, filled with the small struggles and triumphs of life in the military and family life, and the business and boredom of professional soldiering. And yet, its very ordinariness is partly what makes it compelling. When Doucette is finally posted to Bosnia as a United Nations Monitoring Officer, everything changes. In Bosnia, Doucette is sent to Sarajevo in the midst of the siege, a posting that Doucette, whose previous UN tours of Cyprus were his only experience of war, didn't really want. He comforts himself with the thought that it couldn't be that bad, adding, "I could not figure out why all the military observers who had been 'in country' kept wishing me luck."
go here for the rest
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