Veterans: Returning Home

Veterans have been a crucial part of not only the United States, but in every country around the world. There is still a large debate within our country today on how we should treat our veterans. Why are many of our veterans homeless? What is there status when it comes to healthcare? The list goes on and on. As the readings tell us, veteran affairs have always been met with a large question mark. Just as with the displaced persons, the return of veterans to the home front was met with many of the same questions. Where will these people fit in now? Where will they work? They act different now, why is that? The “Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945-1950” article tells us that there was a genuine concern in the United States and Britain that damaged and disaffected veterans would create widespread social problems (Dale, 118). This comes off as strange to someone whose grandfather was a veteran of World War II. There is also in the reading statements made as to where these soldiers would fit when they came back to their native country. This came as a shock to me because all I had ever heard my grandfather say is “I had a job in the coal mines working when I was drafted, therefore when I came home from Japan, I still had my job waiting for me when I came back.” I have always been under the impression that this was the case everywhere.

In the “Total War and Entitlement: Towards a Global History of Veteran Privilege,” we get an idea that veterans felt entitled to receive benefits after their service. I think they should’ve felt like this. It is only human to expect something in return after you do something. These people left the comfort of their homes, families, jobs and everything they have ever known to go and fight for their country. Sadly, some came back home, while some never were able to come back to see that family. They say that there is not greater gift than a man who will lay down his life for his friends. I absolutely agree with that. What more is there to give? The majorities of veterans that you meet are very selfless and deflect your compliments to something else; it was interesting to see an article speaking of them trying to form an entitlement group. However, I can see where the groups thought that this was a right and they held the right to entitlement. I would think that 54 million is a majority anywhere. In the USSR, this is the number of citizens that served in the both of the World Wars (Crotty, 18). Whenever there is this large of a group of people, your argument has a little pull. Going back to the giving and expecting something in return, I thought it was an interesting fact that in the First World War, Australia was not directly attacked. However, all of their soldiers were volunteers (Crotty, 20). That is a strong sense of nationalism. When your country is not directly attacked, and you still volunteer to leave those people you love behind, that is when you are a true patriot. I absolutely think these people deserved something when they returned, but instead many veterans from many different countries were not met how they would’ve like to have been when they returned. Many were questioned for their psychological toughness.

In the Jarvis article, “If He Comes Home Nervous: US World War II neuropsychuatric Casualties and Postwar Masculinities,” FDR hits the nail on the head for the second consecutive week. The 32^nd president proclaimed that he was “deeply concerned over the physical and emotional condition of disabled men returning from the war” (Jarvis, 97-98). We read in the article that psychiatric casualties in World War II were not addressed seriously until 1943 (Jarvis , 100). It caught me off guard that men who came home after WWII with a psychiatric disorder were considered “misfits” (Jarvis, 99). The troops who faced this problem were considered soft, psycho amongst other things. Movies came out to show that this could be normalized, and that troops could return to a normal life after they returned from combat. They could, as long as their mind let them. The advertisements I feel do not recognize the psychiatric problems as all that serious. The one where the GI is getting an injection one day where he was carried in by his friends, looking like death warmed over. Days later, he is running the bases at a baseball game. Nonetheless, many people in America viewed the psychiatric problems of soldiers differently. I found that although it is an accepted thing in today’s age, that even with this, the lack of admission by veterans. Jarvis writes in the article that only 23 of 40 veterans sought help for their mental health problems. One veteran even said “I will continue to encourage any soldier who isn’t sleeping, who is having nightmare, who is having PTSD not to go seek help. Because as soon as they go and seek help, their life is going to get ten times worse” (Jarvis, 113). This perhaps was the most powerful sentence in any of the readings. No matter how many demons you have, and how bad it gets, one soldier says that it is better to just keep them locked up inside you. I had two uncles who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. They both never spoke of their interactions overseas. Was it because they did not want to replay what they had seen? Was it because if they broke down while talking about it they may be questioned? We may never know. THe last sentence Jarvis wrote was also powerful. She notes that until we can come to terms with the psychiatric casualties of past wars and problematize these psychological problems, they may as well be invisible (Jarvis, 113). I believe that this shows that our country has not known what to do in many cases of mental health. We still see this in many political conversations today. “Mental health, mental health, mental health. What do we do? No one seems to be able to pin point the answers. It seems to have been that way for a long time.

Beginning with World War II, a lot of generalizations made about veterans could be disproved. Things that once were thought as laughable became serious health problems. Some veterans were never able to regain themselves and find their niche they had before the war. Some were looked at and called crazy, some held their thoughts in. However, we see that veterans have not always been treated as the heroes they are. The way these veterans returned and their lifestyles after are simply overlooked. Like the displaced persons readings, these readings on veterans give you a perspective that you never had given any thought to at all.