"No training in the world could get you ready" for coming home

So many times we ask "why" when something like this happens. The question we avoid all too often should be asking why is it still happening? How many more years will it take, how much more money will have to be spent, before we see the truth? How many times will we send them into combat because they are willing to die to save others, only to let them what it did to them alone?

"Many times, the platoon set out at 2 a.m. and was in position by dawn, the call to prayer echoing across the desert. When prayer ended, the soldiers attacked. The 24-year-old rifleman’s job was to hunt down and kill the Taliban. He also carried the wounded on stretchers and collected corpses – arms, legs and heads – and put them on vehicles to take to an Afghan police station."

“No training in the world could get you ready for that,” said Mr. Trotter.

Lionel Desmond (front row, far right) was part of the 2nd battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, based at CFB Gagetown. Here, he is shown in 2007 in Afghanistan’s Panjwai district, in between patrol base Wilson and Masum Ghar.

TREV BUNGAY/FACEBOOK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

And now the story of what happened along with the question that there may never be any answers to.

What happened to Lionel Desmond? An Afghanistan veteran whose war wouldn’t end

No one knows for sure why, 10 years after serving in Afghanistan, Lionel Desmond took a gun to his wife, his daughter, his mother and then himself. But an investigation byLindsay Jones sheds new light on the pressing need to better understand soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – and to find ways to support them before it’s too late.
read the story here

This happened in Canada but it happens here too. It happens all over the world when we refuse to see that the men and women risk their lives because they care more than the rest of us do. Maybe that's the point. We care enough to write a check or pass something along on Facebook. The thing is, the participation trophy we get for doing something making us feel good isn't keeping them alive.