Salt Lake Tribune
Traumatized female vets battle to get care
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The last time she saw him alive, he was begging to be saved.
“I don’t want to die,” the soldier pleaded as hospital medics tended to burns all over his body. “Please, don’t let me die!”
Later, when they would meet in her dreams, the soldier wouldn’t say anything at all. And though she wanted to talk to him, she never knew what to say.
“I’d just watch him go about his life — the life he had before he died,” she said.
It has been nearly four years since Marie returned home from the war. She is still haunted by her experiences there.
But the ghosts of those she saw dead and dying in Iraq are only a small part of her distress. Far more painful, she feels, has been the way she has been treated since coming home.
Civilian friends, unable to understand what she went through in Iraq, have distanced themselves from her. Some military comrades have mocked her, sexually harassed her and — when she complained to her superiors — cut her out of her most vital social support network. Government officials, responsible for assessing her psychological wounds, have told her she’s unworthy of compensation.
Nearly a quarter of a million women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Female veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD, at about the same rate as their male counterparts — and some studies have suggested that women may be more vulnerable to war-related psychological trauma. But military culture — and a post-military support system designed by men, for men — can make it difficult for women to access the help they need.
So they often suffer alone.
Marie, a junior enlisted woman in her mid-20s, still serves in a Utah-based reserve unit. The Salt Lake Tribune agreed to identify her by her middle name because she fears retribution from military superiors for speaking out.
She mourns for the woman she used to be. But she insists she doesn’t regret her decision to join the military.
“I had the privilege of serving my nation,” she said. “That’s the one thing, maybe the only thing, they can’t take away from me.”
‘If they won’t help me, who will?’ » After offering to spend her off-duty hours helping at Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad in northern Iraq, Marie realized hospital work wasn’t for her. But after a boisterous argument with another member of her unit, her commanding officer sent her back to the hospital as punishment.
“He specifically ordered me to work in the emergency room,” she said. “He said it was to remind me of how good I had it.”
Among her duties: Cleaning up the body of an Iraqi soldier mutilated in a bomb attack.
Army Spc. Jennifer Crane
For more on traumatized female veterans, check this out It is Jennifer's experience.
