COURTESY OF DEBRA SCHIANO
THE RECRUITS
ing to do with the rightness or
wrongness of war.”
In recent years, the military has
tried to build what it calls “resiliency” into its young warriors.
In one Army program, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, soldiers
at every level get annual training in physical and psychological
strengthening. The key to absorbing stress and moral challenges is
to “own what you can control, and
think before you take on negative
thoughts and start blaming yourself,” said Sgt. 1st Class Eric Tobin, a master resilience trainer.
If women and children are inadvertently killed in battle, he
said, “feeling bad about that is
normal. Not to minimize the loss
of life, but you can also focus on
the positive outcomes of that
battle, that you are still alive, that
you protected yourself and your
team, that you helped the military
achieve its objective.”
The Army is also producing a
series of videos to get troops to
think about moral injury be fore
they are sent into battle. In four
of these 30-minute videos, to be
completed later this spring, combat veterans talk about their experiences and how they dealt with
the psychological damage, said Lt.
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
Col. Stephen W. Austin, an Army
chaplain with the Comprehensive
Soldier Fitness program. One of
the videos focuses on killing.
“There are no answers — we
just want to start the conversation, getting the troops comfortable talking about these things,”
said Austin. “That’s the most important thing of all, that people
feel they can talk about these issues with their buddies.”
The Marines have taken a
slightly different approach, focused on identifying and helping
Marines with all forms of combat
stress right on the battlefield.
Nash developed a comprehensive approach to combat stress
called OSCAR (Operational Stress
Control and Readiness) concepts.
Under the program, the Marines
have embedded mental health
professionals like himself directly
into combat battalions. And lead-
Schiano (left)
with a close
friend and
fellow Marine
in 2008.