As the New Year’s meter reset to 2023 it reminded me it has been nearly 20 years since my first trip to the Iraq War with the 1498th Transportation Co. of the National Guard, the first California Guard unit sent there. We all got back alive. I am not filled with nostalgia.
The war, we were informed during a ceremony at the amphitheater at Camp Roberts, was dubbed “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” We also heard the unit of 90-ton tractor-trailers was going to play a vital role. The outdoor briefing happened in mid-March, a few days after my 50th birthday in 2003.
The “shock and awe” bombing campaign on Baghdad had started a day or two earlier. By the end of April, the trucks and the truckers were on their way to Iraq. On May 1, a banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier stating “Mission Accomplished” formed a backdrop for President George W. Bush who declared all major combat objectives had been met. The war was over, he said, and we had won.
None of this turned out to be strictly true.
The war would run nearly 10 more years. We still have troops there. Iraqi Freedom was a nebulous concept. And, we invited every terrorist in the Middle East to come fight us, seemingly forever. The only really true part was the Guard truckers played a vital role. They hauled tanks, skip-loaders, con-ex containers full of god knows what god knows where, all over Iraq. They logged more than 2 million road miles without accidents, except for Improvised Explosive Device explosions from Iraqi insurgents that inflicted a dozen or so Purple Hearts, a couple of Bronze Stars, and thank God, no killed in action that first deployment.
The war went on. A number of the 1498th Iraq veterans deployed again, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some soldiers got used to revolving door deployments. They got normalized to being at war. The mission never really was accomplished. And many suffered. If it’s not a visible wound, the inner scars usually manifest in the form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Not everybody returns from war with PTSD, but it can be cumulative. With more deployments, the flashbacks, nightmares, hyper-vigilance and irritability, often mixed with drugs and alcohol become more likely.
Last week in a private online unit forum one of the 2003 veterans asked if any of his battle buddies get jitters driving under freeway overpasses. Iraqi overpasses often concealed explosive ambushes. About 20 answered that, yes, freeway overpasses give them the shakes when they drive. It is 20 years later. That is a PTSD marker.
So, when I read a Military Times story about the Department of Veterans Affairs offering new “no cost” mental health services to any vet experiencing a mental health emergency, I was flabbergasted. What about the last 20 years? Or further back? We sent millions of troops to wars that happened before the Post 9/11 conflicts.
Color me skeptical. The VA says it will pay for its own “world class” practitioners to do this newly “free to all” service that started Tuesday. Or, VA says it will pay for services to veterans provided by “Care in Community” private practitioners.
In our Antelope Valley, I know two experienced therapists on the “Care in Community” list who have treated veterans for years. They have to fight to get paid, with payments running months late, or more. One faces constant threats to dis-enroll his practice, even though his clients give him high marks.
The VA says veteran suicides have reduced to 17 a day from a previous 22 a day. It is hardly a ringing endorsement, with some suicides that happened in VA parking lots. Will it improve? It had better improve. Consider how many could have been saved before a “new plan” got announced.
Editor’s note: Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group. An Army paratrooper veteran, he deployed to Iraq with a local National Guard unit to cover the war for the Antelope Valley Press. He serves on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.
Anyone experiencing a suicidal crisis, should call the National Suicide and Crisis Hotline at 988.