Fort Hood is in Kileen, Texas, less than fifty miles from where I was born and reared in my maternal grandparents' home on the family ranch. I never went to the army base but it was one of two military installations in the area and everyone respected the servicemen and women who were stationed there.
The other military site is an Air Force Base in Waco where my father was stationed during the Korean Conflict before going into combat and where I lived for a few months as an infant.My youngest sister often went to Fort Hood to meet and date servicemen when she moved to Texas as an adult, long after I moved away from my home state.
She told me last night that during the time she hung out there, a soldier shot several civilians during a fight with his girlfriend or wife. However, nothing as horrific as what happened yesterday has ever happened there or on any other military base in this country.
I spent some time with soldiers when I was a student at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, where Fort Sill is located. Many of my GI friends were Vietnam veterans and most suffered from either Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or drug addiction.
Several of the guys rented a trailer off base and I used to hang out there with some of the other girls in the dorm smoking pot with the guys. Every night we were there, we watched in horror as one of the Vietnam vets took a hit of acid.
Once, my best friend, Nancy, who was my first white friend having gone to black schools in Texas before being banned from Texas schools for my "militant" activities, grabbed his acid and popped it in her mouth.
My roommate, another white co-ed from Dallas, Texas, and I put our twin beds together and made Nancy sleep between us after she started "tripping" on the acid and thought her own bed was surrounded by snakes.
Drugs were very common on college campuses back in 1972, and Nancy wasn't the only student I saw high on acid. However, I couldn't get over how many men returning from combat used drugs.
I dated a couple of GIs from Fort Sill. One was an alcoholic and he and his buddies drank a "Texas fifth" full of whiskey every week. I collected half a dozen of those three foot tall bottles.
Another was a cocaine addict, but I didn't know it. Usually, we hung out at the trailer with everyone else and there was no "alone time" for couples, except the guys who lived there and their girlfriends. That was fine with me because I wasn't trying to fall in love with any of those guys, believe me!
Then, one night my boyfriend showed up at my dorm driving a friend's car and took me for a ride. We ended up on a country road and, high on drugs, the sonofabitch attempted to rape me.
It was only an attempt because having been raped at fifteen the only time I was out of my grandmother's protection, I fought him off and he took me back to the dorm - an hour past my curfew (and I was the mayor of the women's dorm!).
My roommate, Karen, and my best friend, Nancy, were looking out of a window on the tenth floor where our room's were concerned about me being so late. They saw this guy who just tried to rape me walk me to the door and me turn around and punch him so hard, he fell on the ground unconscious.
I have no memory of hitting him or knocking him out, although I wasn't too surprised when they told me about it later because it wasn't the first time I'd beat some guy down; date rape was fairly common and I wasn't trying to be a victim.
(A guy I met at a "juke joint" outside Oklahoma City I went to with my friend Malcolm tried the same thing after I got drunk on moonshine. He offered to take me "home" and instead drove out to a deserted area. He tried to pull me out of the car and instead pulled off one of my platform shoes and threw it in the car, so I beat him in the head with it, giving him a concussion and was able to tell him how to get back to the apartment Nancy and Karen were sharing that summer between our junior and senior year!)
I never saw that GI again except once at the trailer and when I told the other GI's, especially my friend Morgan, the oldest guy and their unofficial leader, what happened, he was banned from there.
Morgan suffered from PTSD and often saw Vietnamese people in his room and talked to them. He was dating a friend of mine, the only other black female on my dorm floor, and she said they'd be talking or watching television and he'd suddenIy start speaking Vietnamese and talking to someone only he saw.
He told her it was the deceased father of his Vietnamese wife. Other times he saw his "wife," who supported her family by working as a prostitute and servicing a U.S. general, her only customer by giving him "scat." (If you don't know what that is, believe me, you don't want to!)
I never got over what being involved in war did to those GIs and since then have always thought much more should be done about the psychological health of those returning from combat, particularly since my nephew is now doing his third tour of Iraq.
But I have to wonder if a psychiatrist who is supposed to help those who've been in combat is so unbalanced he'd kill the very people he's supposed to help, is the military really able to provide help for combat veterans?
I've worked in behavior science for a number of years and had a best friend who was a psychologists, as well as other close friends in the field. While, like everyone else, they have their issues, they are trained to maintain their professionalism and to get help when they find themselves in the kind of crisis Dr. Hasad seemed to be having. Witnessing PTSD first hand must have been a harrowing experience for him, but what happened to his training?
I am not a medical doctor or a trained psychologist, but in my job as a behavior specialist, I've had to endure verbal and physical attacks from people who were out of control, violent, and extremely aggressive.
It was my job to intervene and de-escalate the situation and to maintain everyone's safety, as well as to develop programming to deal with these types of behavior.
Had I reacted to the stress of being hit, kicked, slapped, punched, spat on, having my glasses broken twice and blouse ripped off, called the "N" and "B" words and told to "F" myself dozens of times a day, I would not have been able to do my job.
There were signs that Dr. Hasad was having difficulty and unable to function as a psychiatrist; the same signs seen in combat veterans who've come home from battle and beaten and/or killed spouses.
When is the military going to find a way to intervene and help these people before they destroy the lives of others as well as their own?
My father suffered PTSD after fighting in both World War II and the Korean Conflict.
The only major result of his stress was an ulcer, but he also had a stutter which was problematic since he was a minister, and there was other psychological damage, particularly in his ability to express his emotions.
That didn't change until just before he died nine years ago. It took the military thirty years to even acknowledge that he needed help and by then, it was really too late.
Hopefully, after the massacre at Fort Hood, something will finally be done to actually treat PTSD and other war-related ailments.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
devilgrrl
wakingupslowly
Chicago Guy
JaceyMack
gracielou
madcelt
Salon.com
Comments
the powers that be no longer care about us, or the soldiers (whose benefits have decreased since the most recent wars started). we cannot afford to give vets health care, when instead we have to hand money over in the hundreds of millions to halliburton to do a job they then contract out for 300,000 dollars.
i wish this would make a difference, though.