The Curse of Being a Neglected Hero

Residual War Horrors and Neglected Heroes
Residual War
Kathie Costos
April 8, 2017

On Combat PTSD Wounded Times there are over 27,000 articles spanning nearly 10 years of news and government reports on what our heroes have to go through for our sake. They tell of the price men and women pay for doing what they believe in doing.

Oh, sure, we can boil it all down to being a patriot and doing it because freedom isn't free, but then you'd have to get into the reasons behind sending them into combat. The purest reason they have to risk their lives, is also what cuts them the deepest. They risk their lives for those they are with. 

War is often a wrong choice made by those who do not have to go. But those who go make the choice to be willing to die for the sake of their combat family members. Yes, family.

Think of what you'd do for your own family and then maybe you'll be able to understand how devoted they are to each other. That bond adds to what they face afterwards. That bond is what makes being out of combat more dangerous than being in it for them. 

In combat, the concern of the threat of death is not about their own lives. It is about the others. After combat, when it is about what the risk did to them, they run out of reasons to stay alive for.

Brainyquote

"Life is like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending." Jim Henson

Residual War is out of my own brain but it is based on real accounts from heroes trying to recover from what we asked them to do. Wow, bet that hit you like a sledgehammer.

I envisioned a world where wounded soldiers were sent into a healing unit instead of being cast out of the military after it all cut too deeply into their soul. Fort Christmas was a place where they would stop risking their lives and start simply risking their pride, asking for help and getting it. 

The accounts of what placed them in jeopardy are based on what has happened to many different generations of soldiers and woven into a tale of what can happen...or should I say, what should happen.

It should have happened to someone like  Tech. Sgt Steven Bellino in the following report, but it didn't.

Audio recordings, military records, an Air Force psychiatric evaluation, and a timeline Bellino made of key events in his life — most provided to the San Antonio Express-News by his family — show Bellino dealt with steadily worsening symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder as he struggled to change careers after a stellar record throughout multiple Army deployments and CIA contract work in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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