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Going Over The Top: Things that go bump in the night

I spent yesterday talking to a veteran who spent a couple of weeks as a prisoner of the Serbs during the nineties and the before and after of all that. He had a lot to get off his chest and a lot more to say on how all the focus is on the big wars and very rarely on the various peacekeeping and NATO missions. A lot of the things that came up were pretty gut churning even if not particularly gory or detailed.
 
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I've most frequently come across the treatment side of this in the pages of Current Archaeology- for several years they've been reporting on Operation Nightingale which is based around offering ex-servicemen a chance to take part in digs (including the drawing of site plans and the like) and appears to have been reasonably successful as a method of transitioning back to civilian life.
 
Very much agreed. The "little" incidents, while generally affecting a small number of people, can be just as unpleasant as the big events that have whole libraries devoted to them.

And peacekeeping can often be more traumatic than set-piece battles. In part, that's because - typically - the big battles are uniform against uniform, and while it's unpleasant, at least everyone involved tends to be there for that reason. Peacekeeping operations generally involve the constant dealing with civilians caught up in the whole sorry mess.

It actually came up because he was explaining the Rosettes on his medal ribbons which led to him and another vet elaborating that the actual war tours were probably the cleanest, least dangerous and simplest they did.

I had to disappear not long after but the plan very much seemed to be for all concerned to drink themselves into oblivion last night I can't imagine things got less emotional afterwards. In a way seeing and hearing all these people with their guard down and talking about stuff they won't mention the rest of the year seemed more in spirit than the Parades and Prayers. All very raw.
 
It is unfortunate that PTSD has become a term abused by people with no business joking about such things. And I say this as someone who occasionally would get vivid recollections of a specific traumatic event. (The time I broke my foot, as minor as that seems.)

It’s like people that are slightly anal-retentive and say “I guess I have OCD, lol”
 
It is unfortunate that PTSD has become a term abused by people with no business joking about such things. And I say this as someone who occasionally would get vivid recollections of a specific traumatic event. (The time I broke my foot, as minor as that seems.)

It’s like people that are slightly anal-retentive and say “I guess I have OCD, lol”
Don't start me on the "self-diagnosed autistics" who believe autism is a medical term for social anxiety and slightly weird obsessiveness.
Then again, they're merely annoying and primarily harmless; it's the parents (almost always mothers) who stampede overworked GPs into giving a diagnosis of ASD to their completely neurotypical-but-difficult child. Who then legitimise the belief of autism as social anxiety, awkwardness, slightly weird obsessiveness, and occasionally some unexpected "superpower"
 
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