A Vietnam Trilogy - Book Review Example

A Vietnam Trilogy is a book that tends to describe how war can have a great impact on veterans whereby the war can affect them from a social, cultural, psychological and psychiatric perspective during and after the war. The thesis statement of the author in the first paragraph is understanding of how war can affect the involved individuals due to the war trauma experiences. Our understanding has an impact on their beliefs, perceptions, emotions regarding the cost and impact of war and the responsibility of the community and government for the commitment of the millions of soldiers who are involved in the war and their families.

This topic is of great importance since during the war the veterans tend to face a lot of challenges in the war field while fighting for the victory of their country and protecting them from their enemies. It can be as traumatizing as some end up losing their lives which significantly affects their families considering they could be the breadwinners and hence the family undergoes an emotional situation trying to readjust from the post-war struggles. Some of the veterans may lose some of their body parts out of significant injuries, and this can affect them psychologically, emotionally or even socially causing some of them to commit suicide. For example, at Ft. Bragg there were four suicide cases of combat veterans who had been highly trained after they had returned from Afghanistan and Iraq this could have been caused by the experience they had at the war field. In Kuwait and Iraq, there were a total number of 23 soldiers who had as well committed suicide. After the war, a soldier who is troubled can find it hard to continue sustaining their marriage, and this can lead to divorce, can become depressed and also occasionally have nightmares as a result of being haunted by flashbacks that are horrifying. They are plagued by the feeling that they could have killed innocent civilians during the war. For example that is the case of the former US Senator Bob Kerry who despite being celebrated as a hero of a war that had taken place whereby he is still haunted by the event of the war and have the belief, he killed Vietnamese civilians who were innocent in collaboration with his unit.

Most of the Veterans are ready to get involved in the war since they tend to have the belief that there is usually a strong military, the anti-communist justification behind the US involvement in Vietnam. As much as most of the Vietnams are willing to fight for their own country the psychotic conditions that they go through which makes them return to their home country end up preventing them ever going back to the field. The soldiers tend to feel guilty, shameful and unforgivable when they are not in a position of exercising their duty to protect the country. Such situations make them feel like failures and torture them greatly having failed in combat.

The veterans may end up getting stressed up from such scenarios which affect his personality reactions in the aim of adjusting to difficult situations. The stress may be manifested in different forms such as weakness, poor efficiency, and lack of morale and behavior that is unconventional. The government should come with various means of ensuring that such stress has been eliminated through the provision of adequate treatment as such reactions could persist on the individual causing more chronic types that can be associated with mental illness or complete disruption of the personality of the person. If combat exhaustion is effectively and adequately treated, it can clear up such personality reactions though it is a justification in a situation whereby an individual has been subjected to physical demands that are severe.

After the war, the veterans may end up suffering from psychological trauma which results to them developing PTSD. Many years later after the war has already happened around 345,000 veterans continue to experience PTSD that is related to the war. It is evidenced by the statistics of the Department of Veterans Affairs and as well as clinical studies that have been conducted by a large number of counselors and mental health therapists outside and as well as within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Vietnam veteran who later have various problems after the war could have had a genetic predisposition or even pre-existing problems before the war, and hence their problems should not be attributed to being caused by them getting involved in the battle field and hence thats why they continue having the same problem. Despite the Vietnam suffering from the psychological trauma they are still in a position of getting back to their home country and moving on with their lives.

The government and the society should try their best and intervene in the situation since as far as there are a few of the veterans who are doing quite fine even after the war period there are still others who are doing extremely bad. After the war, a veteran can either be considered to be successful and conflicted or successful and troubled. The attitude of the commanding officers who are in Vietnam is in most cases usually determined by whether the psychiatric team is in a position of seeing a soldier from the different military units. If the soldier is observed to have any psychiatric or emotional problem the soldier is first evaluated if the problem is behavioral. In instances when the problem is behavioral the soldier is punished and disciplined through administrative channels. The government should give emphasis and that all problems should not be termed as behavioral but rather be treated through medical channels whereby the soldiers can visit a psychiatrist and also have them checked by a professional mental health personnel. It will be of great help since soldiers who are psychiatric tend to have extended sleep deprivation, imminent threat of harm or even participating in particularly and incidents that are terrifying.

In conclusion, the soldiers may find it hard to adjust themselves back to their normal lives if no support is offered to them. It is because while being trained to war some get addicted to being a risk taker, use of substances and alcohol as a means of getting relief and also numbing themselves from the pain as no proper medication is available to them. The soldiers also tend to isolate themselves from other people whereby they do not allow others to get close to them and hence once they return from the war it is hard for them to socialize with other civilians easily without a lot of struggles.

Works Cited

Scurfield, Raymond M. A Vietnam Trilogy: Vol. 1. Algora, 2004.