News From the Cause
Soldier Grief: Soldiers demobilizing at Fort McCoy learn how to adjust to civilian life (WHO-TV, DES MOINES, IO)
July 22, 2011
Soldiers demobilizing at Fort McCoy stay in barracks built during the 1940’s. If you go back in time, the shadows in the windows could be World War II brothers in arms.
Back then, Soldiers who couldn’t shake the horror of war were said to suffer from battlefield fatigue. It’s now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But the suffering is the same.
Staff Sergeant Paul Whitenack describes the chaos, “It was 24 hours a day, non-stop, you’re always up and down and you always gotta be on your toes out there.”
Another Soldier, Sergeant Paul Crowe talks about one of the scariest moments in Afghanistan, “I heard our platoon Sergeant come over the radio and say it was a catastrophic kill.”
It was the final mission for Crowe. He’d made it through months in Afghanistan, but didn’t know if he would make it home to see his daughter, Olivia, turn one. He also feared for his fellow Soldiers, his friends. Would they make it home?
“I feel bad that they didn’t make it and I did,” says Crowe.
And with a week’s worth of downtime during demobilization, the feeling often come flooding back.
“In Afghanistan, you don’t really have time to grieve,” says Whitenack. “You just put it in the back of your mind.”
Whiteknack has a lot of grief tucked away.
“Out of all the deployments, I’ve lost about seven guys that I’ve known real well and it gets harder and harder each time, knowing that someone I cared about is gone.”
On this deployment, his fourth, Whitenack lost one of his closest friends, Staff Sergeant James Justice. He was shot while trying to save the crew of a downed helicopter.
“Thing is, I was actually doing a mission at the time and I was gone for six days. Nobody told me about it until I went home and checked emails and stuff and that’s how I found out.”
Whitenack wears a black, metal bracelet in Justice’s memory, but he won’t wear it for long.
“Now that I’m home, I’m catching a flight out to DC. I got a friend out there. We’re gonna go see his plot. So it’ll be nice to at least say hi and say I made it.”
Whitenack also brought the nine men under him home safely.
“I feel like I did the best I could and we’re all home.”
He’s proud of that. In Afghanistan the mission was his focus. He brushes off questions about survivor’s guilt or PTSD, even though the VA estimates nearly 800,000 Soldiers suffer from it. Click here to view more
