The Army Fails to Recognize Soldiers in Trouble When They Come Home

“We send our soldiers to war and all the Army sends back to us are broken husbands.” This is how one of my friends described our lives after our husbands returned from Iraq. We knew the men we kissed goodbye but the men that came back home a year later were not the same men. The Army did send back broken husbands. Some soldiers were more broken than others but all had some level of damage that doesn’t show much sign of repairing itself.

I am one of the lucky wives, the man I kissed goodbye almost two years ago is showing signs of coming back to me. I wish I could say the Army helped us in getting him back but that would not be even close to the truth. The Army has a method of out-processing that is not only a waste of time but actually detrimental to the well being of their soldiers. They send soldiers home after an initial evaluation and never follow up.

When a soldier returns to the United States after a year or more away from home they have one thing on their mind: Going home! They don’t care how they get there, how much pain they are in or if they have twenty nightmares a night, they are going home! The average soldier is evaluated a just few days out of combat. This is the first mistake the Army makes in their evaluation process. The soldier is still trying to change day to night and night to day from the time change as well as adapt to a significant weather change in most cases. My husband returned to New Jersey in December after spending a year in Iraq. His body was not prepared for the shock that it had from extreme heat to the average New Jersey winter. It took him a couple of weeks before the cold weather that had never bothered him in the past became something he could tolerate.

Ask any soldier who has been away from his family for a year if he is in pain or having problems emotionally and then hang the knowledge that he will probably delay his return home if he answers yes to any of those questions and you can likely count on one hand how many soldiers will admit to having any problems.

While an initial health evaluation should be done before sending a soldier home another psychological evaluation should be required within sixty to ninety days after returning to his home. Most do not even see that there are problems until after they get back home and have had time to settle in. It takes time to realize that being up all night is not simply adjusting to jet lag or that the nightmares are not going away. Sadly, most are embarrassed to go and ask for help at this point because they are convinced they can handle it themselves. If these soldiers were required to go or a secondary evaluation they might be more willing to ask for help as “everyone has to do it”. This is especially important for those that are Reserve members as they are not on a military post where others may recognize symptoms. Instead they are sent home to unprepared family members who try to hold everything together while dealing with their own aftermath of having a loved one in combat.

Until the Army does some kind of follow up on the soldiers that they simply release into the world, there will be many broken husbands coming home to their wives and in turn there will be broken marriages and broken lives because nobody took the time to notice that these soldiers and their families were in trouble.