Huffington Magazine Issue 92-93 | Page 42

THE GRUNTS pound to compound, trying to find them [the insurgents]. Eventually they hopped in a car and drove off into the desert.” There is a long silence after Nick finishes the story. He’s lived with it for more than three years, and the telling still catches in his throat. Eventually, he sighs. “He was just a kid. But I’m sorry, I’m trying not to get shot and I don’t want any of my brothers getting hurt, so when you are put in that kind of situation ... it’s shitty that you have to, like ... shoot him. “You know it’s wrong. But ... you have no choice.” Almost two million men and women who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are flooding homeward, profoundly affected by war. Their experiences have been vivid. Dazzling in the ups, terrifying and depressing in the downs. The burning devotion of the small-unit brotherhood, the adrenaline rush of danger, the nagging fear and loneliness, the pride of service. The thrill of raw power, the brutal ecstasy of life on the edge. “It was,” said Nick, “the worst, best experience of my life.” But the boy’s death haunts him, mired in the swamp of moral confusion and contradiction so fa- HUFFINGTON 03.16-23.14 miliar to returning veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is what experts are coming to identify as a moral injury: the pain that results from damage to a person’s moral foundation. In contrast to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which springs from fear, moral injury is a viola- He sees the shooter is a child, maybe 13. With only a split second to decide, he squeezes the trigger and ends the boy’s life. tion of what each of us considers right or wrong. The diagnosis of PTSD has been defined and officially endorsed since 1980 by the mental health community, and those suffering from it have earned broad public sympathy and understanding. Moral injury is not officially recognized by the Defense Department. But it is moral injury, not PTSD, that is increasingly acknowledged as the signature wound of this generation of veterans: a bruise on the soul, akin to grief or sorrow, with lasting impact on the individuals and on their families. Moral injury raises uncomfortable questions about what happens