thedrifter
04-01-08, 11:07 AM
Comic book is a vivid picture of the mission on home front
MY 6-YEAR-OLD sat at the kitchen table reading a comic book. Maybe not reading it, exactly, but looking at the pictures of trucks slamming on the brakes with a SCREECH! And Marines hitting the deck when they hear a CRASH!
I wasn't too surprised. My little boy is attracted to all things comic book - even when the comic book isn't aimed at him.
This one wasn't aimed at him. "Coming Home: What to expect, how to deal when you return from combat" is a new project by Military OneSource. Created by comic book masters Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, who formerly worked at Harvey and Marvel comics, it is aimed at service members who have worn combat gear every day for a year. It's aimed at people who see potential IEDs at every intersection. It is aimed at guys who come back to the States to feel fury at traffic, and women who find that half the world thinks they're bad mothers because they had to serve overseas, and family members who can't understand why their returning soldier or Marine is drinking so darned much.
This comic is aimed to help folks who need to learn about post-traumatic stress disorder. Because I wasn't one of those people, and I wasn't sure how I felt about treating a subject as serious as combat and operational stress response in a comic book, I threw "Coming Home" into a stack of reading material to look at later.
Not a minute later my 14-year-old picked it up. Then the kindergartner. Then our houseguest, a 48-year-old former Navy helicopter pilot. "What kind of aircraft is that?" he asked, holding the cover up to the light from the sliding glass doors. Then he read the whole thing.
Why? Does it take a comic book to appeal to a male of the species? I found that I just didn't care. The important thing was these guys were reading about combat stress as a common outcome of war, a condition ubiquitous enough to appear in a comic book.
So many articles and pamphlets about combat stress, operational response and the more extreme post-traumatic stress disorder aimed at our service members and their families suggest that only certain people have a physiological or psychological response to war and that it is "OK to get help."
What I liked about this comic book is it never went there. It didn't assume that having symptoms and getting help are the last resort of the weak.
Instead, all four main characters in the comic suffer one or more classic symptoms of combat and operational stress response after coming home. The reader gets the idea that sleep disturbances, sensitivity to certain sounds, anger, apathy, avoidance and increased alcohol use are the normal reaction to a year of living dangerously. It would be abnormal to go out on patrols in a war zone for such an extended period of time and not be altered.
That kind of message freaks out those of us at home. We want to believe we send our service members out and they will be so stalwart, so perfect that they will return home unchanged. We want to believe that a steak out on the grill and Grandma's potato salad and the environment of home will be enough to bring our service members all the way back to normal in just a week or two.
It takes longer than that. Months longer. Sometimes years longer. Our job as family members and friends and neighbors is not to watch and wait, hoping that nothing is wrong with our returning service member. Our job is not to assume that the person we've known all our lives will miraculously reappear unscathed.
We need to start assuming that our service members will need some kind of treatment if they have been under fire. Just like we expect members of the armed forces to get a series of prophylactic shots before they go to a war zone, we should expect that they'll need some kind of treatment when they get home. That the reaction to war is normal. That the treatment is normal.
We have to stop telling our military members and their families that it is OK to get treatment, implying tolerance for damage or weakness. Instead we have to start saying it is brave to get treatment. It takes courage to go back into the heart of darkness and evict the things the war has installed.
That this is merely one more courageous and necessary act we expect from them.
Jacey Eckhart, Jacey87@mac.com
Ellie
MY 6-YEAR-OLD sat at the kitchen table reading a comic book. Maybe not reading it, exactly, but looking at the pictures of trucks slamming on the brakes with a SCREECH! And Marines hitting the deck when they hear a CRASH!
I wasn't too surprised. My little boy is attracted to all things comic book - even when the comic book isn't aimed at him.
This one wasn't aimed at him. "Coming Home: What to expect, how to deal when you return from combat" is a new project by Military OneSource. Created by comic book masters Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, who formerly worked at Harvey and Marvel comics, it is aimed at service members who have worn combat gear every day for a year. It's aimed at people who see potential IEDs at every intersection. It is aimed at guys who come back to the States to feel fury at traffic, and women who find that half the world thinks they're bad mothers because they had to serve overseas, and family members who can't understand why their returning soldier or Marine is drinking so darned much.
This comic is aimed to help folks who need to learn about post-traumatic stress disorder. Because I wasn't one of those people, and I wasn't sure how I felt about treating a subject as serious as combat and operational stress response in a comic book, I threw "Coming Home" into a stack of reading material to look at later.
Not a minute later my 14-year-old picked it up. Then the kindergartner. Then our houseguest, a 48-year-old former Navy helicopter pilot. "What kind of aircraft is that?" he asked, holding the cover up to the light from the sliding glass doors. Then he read the whole thing.
Why? Does it take a comic book to appeal to a male of the species? I found that I just didn't care. The important thing was these guys were reading about combat stress as a common outcome of war, a condition ubiquitous enough to appear in a comic book.
So many articles and pamphlets about combat stress, operational response and the more extreme post-traumatic stress disorder aimed at our service members and their families suggest that only certain people have a physiological or psychological response to war and that it is "OK to get help."
What I liked about this comic book is it never went there. It didn't assume that having symptoms and getting help are the last resort of the weak.
Instead, all four main characters in the comic suffer one or more classic symptoms of combat and operational stress response after coming home. The reader gets the idea that sleep disturbances, sensitivity to certain sounds, anger, apathy, avoidance and increased alcohol use are the normal reaction to a year of living dangerously. It would be abnormal to go out on patrols in a war zone for such an extended period of time and not be altered.
That kind of message freaks out those of us at home. We want to believe we send our service members out and they will be so stalwart, so perfect that they will return home unchanged. We want to believe that a steak out on the grill and Grandma's potato salad and the environment of home will be enough to bring our service members all the way back to normal in just a week or two.
It takes longer than that. Months longer. Sometimes years longer. Our job as family members and friends and neighbors is not to watch and wait, hoping that nothing is wrong with our returning service member. Our job is not to assume that the person we've known all our lives will miraculously reappear unscathed.
We need to start assuming that our service members will need some kind of treatment if they have been under fire. Just like we expect members of the armed forces to get a series of prophylactic shots before they go to a war zone, we should expect that they'll need some kind of treatment when they get home. That the reaction to war is normal. That the treatment is normal.
We have to stop telling our military members and their families that it is OK to get treatment, implying tolerance for damage or weakness. Instead we have to start saying it is brave to get treatment. It takes courage to go back into the heart of darkness and evict the things the war has installed.
That this is merely one more courageous and necessary act we expect from them.
Jacey Eckhart, Jacey87@mac.com
Ellie