Granted that serving in war is no walk in the park, what happens when soldiers return, trying to readjust to peaceful civilian life? Sadly, the bloodier the experiences one had gone through, the harder it is, even if home is much craved for. Appropriately, this film is inspired by true accounts. Even an experienced solider who heroically carried a shot fellow soldier to safety, still tasted his blood trickling onto him. Imagine how it might had been if it was that of a deceased comrade.
Beyond classic hopes of glory, veterans often face the haunting rounds of blame-shifting and self-blaming for life-threatening situations. When unbearable guilt overruns, suicide can even result, with 22 veterans taking their lives a day in America. The ‘opposite’ of replaying horror are memory lapses, while possibly imagining absent enemies. Such are some very real effects of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), the tip of the iceberg of unimaginable hardship after war.
With hundreds of thousands of veterans in line to seek help, war does not end physically, but resumes in the mind, in the struggle for peace of mind. So serious are the karmic side-effects of killing and being exposed to it. If war starts with conflict in the mind, it has to end by winning of peace there. Due to lack of timely support facilities, some even resort to illegal drugs to ‘manage’ their trauma, creating new rounds of problems. With costs of war always higher than expected, may call for war be the last thing on anyone’s mind.
