Distressed Soldiers Screaming Inside…

Green G, Emslie C, O’Neill D, Hunt K, & Walker S (2010). Exploring the ambiguities of masculinity in accounts of emotional distress in the military among young ex-servicemen. Social science & medicine (1982) PMID: 20739109

War debases us all. It derogates from those qualities about being human that together constitute the good society… love, care, kindness, compassion, and so forth. Whenever I read anything about the practice of war, that is, people killing, maiming, and torturing other people who they typically do not know, typically for reasons they do not understand, I remind myself never to fall into that trap of accepting this despicable barbarism as ‘normal’. It is not. War cannot and should not ever be conceptualised as a legitimate, cultural subset of how we organise our lives. That it has plagued us from history into the present makes it no less evil.

Hence, when I read this excellent article by Green et al. (2010), about the influence of hegemonic masculinity upon the soldiering experiences of 20 ex-servicemen in the United Kingdom, I immediately thought that it was essential to point out that these men had been stuck in an environment in which the usual rules of civil society do not apply. War, or the preparation for war, brings with it the ever-present fear of prospective death and so, human behaviour warps considerably through that end-stage prism. Few of us could even begin to contemplate how we might act or react in such a dreadful situation…

‘They’ve taught me how to kill people and be aggressive and if I had to go and do that now I’d be a murderer. But because you do it for the Army then you’re a hero until you leave the Army and then you’re a nobody (ID1, aged 26, who served for 7 years in the Scots Guards which entailed combat in Iraq)’ (2010).

Military culture embodies the ‘rugged warrior’ (2010) masculine ideals of ‘toughness, controlled aggression and endurance’ (2010). It also establishes, as the authors (2010) here note, a transformative process of turning boys into men and, of separating out the real men from the pewfs. Male soldiers must constantly demonstrate to their mates their religious ascription to masculine ideals (2010). They are obliged to drink a lot, bash a lot, and fuck a lot (of women) (2010). Any male soldier who falls short of these lofty expectations runs the risk of rejection by his peers and the taint of categorisation as a weak, unmanly failure… (2010).

The excruciating paradox, as described by Green et al. (2010), is that war provides a ‘potent example’ (2010) of how male soldiers are at once compelled to strictly adhere to masculine ideals while concurrently being entangled in the extremes of emotional distress. If you could think of any emergency department in any city hospital on a Friday or Saturday night, turning their triage schedule upside down and ejecting onto the street those patients most in need of medical attention, then that somewhat equivocates with what is happening to many male soldiers. Masculine ideals dictate that these men would rather hold onto what was tearing them apart inside rather than get tagged as something less than the rugged warrior archetype (2010)….

• The male soldiers responded to stress with a ‘stiff upper lip’ (2010);
• They felt that disclosing emotional distress was a ‘threat’ (2010) to their masculinity; and
• That seeking help for any mental health problem would dent their career prospects (2010).

You could drink yourself stupid to numb your emotional distress, since alcohol consumption was typified as ‘macho’ (2010) amongst male soldiers. However, you would be reticent to enunciate your darkest thoughts and feelings to anyone else (2010). Fessin’ up and seeking help for the lingering effects of your emotional distress signified weakness and so, was simply never tolerated (2010). That ex-servicemen in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere, experience ‘higher rates of homelessness, alcohol misuse, domestic violence, relationship breakdown and criminality’ (2010) is hardly a revelation. War creates an unholy mess in which its predominantly young male recruits become willing yet pathetic collateral damage…

‘Well, I didn’t see…until I actually ended up going through a breakdown…I look back now I can see it, especially in terms of drinking too much and things like that, that I started to feel really bad about things. I started to get really bad flashbacks and that, and there was nobody ever there. It wasn’t identified, you know (ID4, aged 35 with a 16 year service record)’ (2010).

My heartfelt respect to the 20 men interviewed for this study…

See also…

Bryan, C., Cukrowicz, K., West, C., & Morrow, C. (2010). Combat experience and the acquired capability for suicide Journal of Clinical Psychology DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20703