When David Lowenthal, a recent UCLA graduate, returned to his
home in Boston from the Gulf War in 1992, he had a difficult time
trusting people.
“You come from a place that you are living in fear every
single day. … You look at everybody and everything with a
suspecting kind of look,” the former Air Force crash rescue
worker said.
Like Lowenthal, many of the soldiers currently returning from
Iraq face an often difficult transition process going from soldier
to civilian, dealing with issues ranging from trusting people to
finding employment to seeking counseling.
Mario Leonidas, an inactive Marine reserve, is currently in that
transition period. After a grueling year-and-a-half of braving the
deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, Leonidas has
returned to his childhood home in the San Fernando Valley. Deciding
what to do with his life now is his latest challenge.
He spends most of his days sitting at home and watching
television. He goes to the gym twice a day, and sometimes at night,
he goes out with his two brothers (one older and one younger) to
maybe a bar or salsa club.
He applied to the Los Angeles Police Department and is currently
waiting for a response, he said. He is also considering becoming a
U.S. Marshal, and eventually, he might go to college. But
sometimes, Leonidas said he finds it difficult to relate to people
that have not been through the same experiences that he has in
combat.
“At first it bothered me … but pretty soon you got to
realize that you have to let go,” he said, referring to the
frustration he sometimes feels.
He just wants to have a normal life, he said, get married at
some point and have a family.
Having been home for three months, Leonidas said he’s
starting to get accustomed to being a civilian, but the immediate
challenges that soldiers face after returning home tend to be more
on the physical side, said Shelley MacDermid, co-director of the
Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University.
Soldiers often feel sore and stiff, they’ve become
accustomed to sleep depravation and experience a lack of appetite
due to changes in diet, MacDermid said.
They also have to “get used to not having to be so
vigilant all the time,” MacDermid said. “There are
(soldiers) who drop to the ground when they hear a loud noise;
(they are) uncomfortable in public places.”
The military does offer psychological services for all soldiers
returning from combat and provides several hours of civilian
training before soldiers are released.
But these resources are harder to access for reservists, said
MacDermid, and many soldiers don’t seek the help anyway,
former soldiers said.
“There are substantial numbers of people who don’t
seek the help that they should,” MacDermid said.
Leonidas underwent two weeks of civilian training after
returning from Afghanistan in June.
But Leonidas said he and his friends didn’t take the
classes too seriously.
It was like being “back in school again … and we were
goofing off most of the time,” he said.
His fellow troops often didn’t take advantage of the
counseling services offered by the Marines, but he and his unit did
endure many hardships, he said.
“My company (a battalion division) saw a ridiculous amount
of stuff, we still have nightmares,” he said and indicated
that he had just had one the previous night.
There are several reasons why soldiers may be reluctant to seek
psychological help.
“As a 19, 20, or 21 year old man … it’s very
difficult to acknowledge you need help, you have an overwhelming
sense of confidence,” Lowenthal said.
Another reason might be soldiers being afraid that the treatment
would show up on their military records, MacDermid said.