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There’s no real homecoming for many of our veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They may go through the motions of daily life in their hometowns, but the terrible sights and sounds of war are still fresh in their minds.
This empathic, inside look into the lives of our combat veterans reveals the lingering impact that the longest wars in our nation’s history continue to have on far too many of our finest young people. Basing her account on numerous interviews with veterans and their families, the author examines the factors that have made these recent conflicts especially trying.
A major focus of the book is the extreme duress that is a daily part of a soldier’s life in combat zones with no clear frontlines or perimeters. Having to cope with unrecognizable enemies in the midst of civilian populations and attacks from hidden weapons like improvised explosive devices exacts a heavy toll. Compounding the problem is the all-volunteer nature of our armed forces, which often demands multiple deployments of enlistees. This results in frequent cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and families disrupted by the long absence of one and sometimes both parents.
The author also discusses the lack of connectedness between civilian society and military personnel, leading to inadequate healthcare for many veterans. This deficiency has been highlighted by the urgent need to treat traumatic brain injuries in survivors of explosions and the high veteran suicide rate.
Bouvard concludes on a positive note by discussing some of the surprising and encouraging ways that the chasm between civilian and military life is being bridged to help reintegrate our returning soldiers. For veterans, their families, and especially for civilians unaware of how much our soldiers have endured, The Invisible Wounds of War is important reading.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
- Sales Rank: #1160792 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-07-24
- Released on: 2012-07-24
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"The Invisible Wounds of War is an astonishing work of deep research, interviewing, reporting, and compassion that makes visible the personal, societal, psychological, and spiritual costs of the deep—and too often ignored—wounds suffered by many men and women who so patriotically volunteered their service in Iraq and Afghanistan. It should be required reading for every member of the US Congress, the press, and the rest of us who can learn how we also can be part of the solution."
—Florence George Graves, Founding director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University
"Too many of our veterans suffer in silence, unable to express the pain they feel, the losses they have endured, the transformation that has made them strangers to themselves. It isn’t easy to hear their voices, but Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard has done just that, by learning how to listen. And in this book of terrible truth, she encourages the rest of us to listen and to be far more understanding and angry and hopeful. We have a national tragedy to absorb—the impact of this decade of war on our sons and daughters, who will carry invisible wounds for many decades to come."
—Frank M. Ochberg, MD, Clinical professor of psychiatry, Michigan State University; former associate director, National Institute of Mental Health
"This book deserves to be read by everyone to both appreciate and understand our soldiers’ sacrifices. We all need to learn that their wounds are not just physical but also psychological, emotional, and spiritual, and that their families make tremendous long-term sacrifices after their return. Our soldiers should be honored and recognized for their service. Sharing their stories, and those of their families, is a way of healing in which we can all participate."
—Isaac Schiff, MD, Chief of service, Vincent Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Massachusetts General Hospital
About the Author
Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard is the author of The Path through Grief: A Compassionate Guide, a number of books on human rights, and award-winning books of poetry. She is a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. For many years she was head of the Political Science Department and a professor of political science at Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts.
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Opening Our Eyes to the War at Home
By Story Circle Book Reviews
As a child, I gave little thought to my father being a World War II veteran. The fathers of all my friends were veterans. Forty percent of Americans served in WWII. Yet for all its horrors, as many WWII veterans will tell you, it was a cakewalk compared to what today's troops have faced and continue to endure in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are many key differences, but as Marguerite Guzman Bouvard's new book, The Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan fiercely reveals, the most salient one is how few of our citizens are bearing the burden of today's wars: one percent. That difference is at the heart of all the other differences, especially the extreme nature of our new veterans' trauma. The Invisible Wounds of War has convinced me that our young veterans suffer a greater degree of trauma from that of veterans of prior wars.
Troops in World War II typically fought for nine months, some for two years. They knew who their enemy was. The rules of war applied. And their nation supported them, not just with words but with deeds: rations, victory gardens, work in manufacturing weapons.
Today's troops have known three, four, even five deployments. They have come home, only to leave again. Their enemy is invisible and omnipresent, taking the shape of even children. So many are returning now that, even though we are fully aware of the phenomena of PTSD, our Veterans Administration is overwhelmed. Accessing mental health care often takes two or more years. Because only one percent of Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, very few of us know such details. Very few of us know a veteran. Bouvard introduces them to us.
Noah Pierce enlisted in 2002, at age seventeen, his mother, Cheryl, unable to dissuade him. He participated in the invasion of Iraq, serving on the front lines, entering Iraqi homes, witnessing the deaths of close friends and innocent civilians. Yet as much as his mother tried to support him while he was deployed, she was "unprepared for the changes in her son" when he returned. After his homecoming, when she thought his war had ended, she watched a new one begin. Bouvard quotes from a letter Cheryl wrote to the members of Congress: "Even though (my son) came home physically, mentally, he never returned home. Noah had PTSD and was a prisoner of war in his own mind and left untreated, the PTSD progressively worsened." Unable to receive the help he needed from his local VA, Noah committed suicide to end his anguish. Cheryl has become an activist, working for the implementation of mandatory counseling for all returning troops within six months of completion of their service.
An awful pattern of psychic damage emerges from Bouvard's profiles of veterans and their families. In war, our service men and women helplessly witness brutal deaths of close comrades and innocent Iraqi and Afghanistans. They suffer sexual harassment and even rape by superiors. They become both agents and victims of violence and death and then return home to a nation not informed or interested in engaging with their suffering. Their training often prevents them from admitting the need to seek counseling. When they do, they encounter a Veterans Administration inadequately resourced. Our weak economy does not offer the jobs and support they need.
The veterans' spouses, parents, and children become the new front line, advocating for the veterans and fighting for them to have access to indispensable mental health care. Every day in this country, a veteran commits suicide, a terrifying fact. The families fight, every moment, to keep their son or daughter, their husband or wife alive. On that front line, even when their veteran survives, the family becomes traumatized.
Entire families are suffering, most of them very alone.
Because they are the one percent.
The Invisible Wounds of War tells their stories--those of the veterans, their mothers, their fathers, their spouses, their children--to create a full portrait of the consequence of these wars. Rather than presenting the interviews themselves, Bouvard expertly weaves the individuals' words into an overarching narrative of war's devastation of the spirit. She introduces these people in their full humanity, so we know their unique gifts, characteristics, and shattered dreams. (As excellent and succinct as the introductory overview of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is, I wish the book began immediately with the veterans' stories, as they are the key to engaging even the most clueless of readers. I also wish there was an appendix of the referenced programs and nonprofits that individuals have created around the country.) Bouvard's writing makes it all but impossible to read of the costs our wars have had for these veterans and not feel compassion. And outrage.
Stirring outrage in the reader is The Invisible Wounds of War's greatest achievement. Those of us in the ninety-nine percent not at risk in these wars must feel outrage for what our depending on a volunteer army has done to those who volunteer. If our government had instituted a draft after 9/11, would these wars have continued for the past nine years? The stories contained in The Invisible Wounds of War show us, without one word of commentary, how immoral our country's reliance on a volunteer army is. We are collaborators in our military making cannon fodder out of our service women and men. So the ninety-nine percent of us need not worry about our sons or husbands being called to war, those who go--because they want to serve our country or because a recruiter enticed them with deceitful promises--become subject to multiple deployments that seal their fate. The rest of us avert our eyes.
The Invisible Wounds of War opens our eyes wide. We see the devastation done in our names so we can keep shopping and watching "Survivors." We feel the outrage. Bouvard encourages us to turn that outrage into action and get out there and help these families.
by Leila Levinson
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Caring and being Informed
By Kym Adams
I watched the author being interviewed on CSPAN Book TV. The well being of our troops is always of interest to me. My Grandfather was killed at the Somme WW2, my fathers were in the Army and Navy during WW2, everyone in my family has been affected by war. My son was in the Air Force. War is a horrific experience on and off the battle field. I wanted to know how women and men handle so many deployments and how it affected not only them, but their families. There are no easy answers, and yet it seems so many untold numbers are not receiving the treatment and care they need. I am astounded that in this day and age we still put a stigma on the men and women who deeply affected by the horrors of war. We are human beings not machines.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Eye opening
By Amazon Customer
The book starts with a lengthy section about combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the situations our soldiers face. The book is worth the read for this alone. The issues returning vets face at home is perhaps even more sobering for these are things we should be able to fix or avoid. Excellent for raising awareness, provocative and even somewhat disturbing. A good read for anyone who feels a sense of gratitude for what our soldiers have done for us.
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