Silver Star Medal and Purple Heart recipient Staff Sgt. Omar Hernandez of B Company, 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, displays the wound he sustained June 6, 2007, during his third tour in Iraq while pulling security operations. Photo by Virginia Reza
Silver Star recipient says talking helps counter PTSD
Aug 08, 2008
BY Virginia Reza
FORT BLISS, Texas (Army News Service, Aug. 8, 2008) -- "Alcohol, drugs and partying are not the answer; it just makes things worse," said Silver Star Medal recipient Staff Sgt. Omar Hernandez. "Talking really helps."
Hernandez, who underwent treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder when he returned from his third tour in Iraq last year, said he hesitated to seek mental help because he did not want to be perceived as crazy or weak. He serves with B Company, 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division.
Hernandez's courageous actions on the battlefield June 6, 2007, earned him the Silver Star. His citation read, "For gallantry in action against a determined enemy Sgt. Hernandez exemplary bravery under fire and a complete disregard for his own safety, enabled him to single handedly pull two members of the Iraqi National Police Force to safety despite having already been severely wounded himself. The gallant actions of Sgt. Hernandez are in the finest traditions of military heroism."
Hernandez said most servicemembers who witnessed atrocities in Iraq have either mild or severe cases of PTSD, but do not want to admit it. He was once in the same situation. He suffered from insomnia and was very angry for getting shot and leaving his comrades behind. He was unable to cry and his emotions were a rollercoaster, he said, but finally he decided to "let it all out," which he said lifted a huge weight off his shoulders.
"Talking about it helped so much," said Hernandez. "Soldiers should talk about experiences they encountered down range. It's about making themselves better in their head and in their heart. And if they don't feel comfortable talking to people who have not experienced combat issues, they can look me up. I'll be more than happy to talk to them."
Staff Sgt. Brandlon Falls, Hernandez's platoon sergeant in Iraq, said he was very proud of him.
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The problem is that soldiers are trained to kill, but they are still not trained to heal.
Military training is designed to bypass the natural warning called guilt. “Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli,” says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, “and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy.
Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so.”
Author Chris Floyd points out in his work, The Pentagon Plan to Create Remorseless War Fighters, that there has long been an attempt to lower stress levels and produce a more efficient solder. ¨Since World War II [when the firing rate stood between 15 and 20%], our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram … human software.¨
The CIA MK-Ultra Project also began operating during this time period, initiating training programs designed to habituate soldiers to the idea of killing automatically, by reflex, “at the bell-clap of command.”
Despite veteran casualties in this spiritual war on those who volunteered in the service of their country, the project has met with a great deal of success on the actual battlefield. The dehumanization process led to a steady rise in firing rates for U.S. soldiers after WWII. In the Korean War the rate rose to 55 percent, and by Vietnam, the rate had climbed with 95 percent of combat troops shooting to kill.
In the aftermath of this increased firing rate, the life expectancy of soldiers not killed in combat, but by their own hands, has dropped accordingly.
And so, more dramatic, new technologies are in the wings, in the quest for the perfect soldier.
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troops-face-suicide-in-the-quest-for-the-perfect-soldier/
The military needs to re-program them to reconnect with all that is "them" when the fighting is over. What makes them "them" is their mind, body and spirit. If all three are not addressed, the whole person is not healed. This does not have to include what has become a black eye to the chaplains in the military, evangelizing and enforcing their own religious views, but by meeting them where they are spiritually. Their own faith, their own spiritual connection to what is greater than they are, is what goes into making them who they are inside. It will also play a key role in reconnecting them to the part of themselves suffering the most.
When it comes to citizen soldiers in the National Guards and Reserves, returning to their home towns and cities, the members of the clergy need to step up and stop ignoring the problem or the unique spiritual crisis these men and women must battle back home. kc
