The Surprise Attack After Deployment

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Stress can mess with your head. And sometimes you don’t see it coming.

I’ve been deployed three times, each time to Afghanistan.  After my first deployment, I wondered what everyone was talking about. I didn’t feel different, wasn’t acting different. My wife claimed my driving was scary for the first few weeks, but other than that, no issues to report.

So I expected life to be the same after my second deployment.  But I didn’t know stress reactions are cumulative. I hadn’t taken time to cool down after the first trip; apparently the tension was still hanging around when I got home from the second trip. I went back to work less than two weeks after returning.

photo courtesy of the US Army

I should have known better.

My first deployment was to Kabul, Camp Phoenix, where we ran the computer networks. Communications is a different kind of stress than combat. Not doing your job, or not doing it well, affects other people’s lives. Then there was Kabul traffic to contend with. We drove all over Kabul and often to Bagram for meetings, traveling in thin-skinned Ford Rangers. I kept waiting for someone to dump a grenade in the bed as we passed in slow traffic.

For my second deployment, I was detached from my common platoon, attached to an infantry platoon and sent to Kandahar. In a lot of ways it was a great mission and I really learned and grew as an NCO and a Signal guy. The platoon ran convoy escort. I kept their gear working and gave them classes on operating it. But, I was also isolated – removed from the group I had trained and prepared with and now surrounded by people I didn’t know well.

I was slowly convincing myself that my unit leadership and the rest of the platoon didn’t want me around – that they were angry with me and sent me to Kandahar on purpose.  This was crazy, I knew. I had volunteered when the mission was brought up. But no matter how often I reminded myself of the truth, the thought kept creeping back. I was not sleeping properly, eating at odd times, and even gained weight. And the little persecution complex grew.

I also started thinking my wife was unhappy with me and was planning to leave me. It was my wife, Jennifer, that saved me. During one of our calls, I told her about the crazy thoughts. Her reply: “Bless your heart. You’re stupid.”  That shocked me back to reality.

Mounting pressure

photo courtesy of the US Army

Given my issues while deployed, I should have been forewarned. But, as my wife pointed out, the bulb over my head is sometimes pretty dim. When I returned from my second deployment, I charged right back to work and tried to force normal, which is a normal thing for a soldier to do.

Two weeks later I decided I need help. I was crying at my desk, after stopping myself from not going down the hall to show someone who had e-mailed me about an “emergency,” what a real emergency was. It wasn’t their fault, of course. At work, “urgent” and “emergency” are just words intended to make someone move a little faster. While on a deployment, those words mean a loss of life, limb, or eyesight.

I had hit a stress trigger for the first time. The surge of adrenaline had worn off and made me angry, then depressed, over something that was really nothing. I learned from a counselor that while I was deployed, I had adjusted to a new normal level of stress, quite a bit higher than normal at home. Along with that new baseline was a new spike point for an emergency. Because I hadn’t taken the time to readjust, I was leaping from “home normal,” straight to “deployed emergency,” skipping “home emergency” altogether. Once I learned this, I could control my reactions.  I started getting better.

Talking it out

In fact, the counselor was one of many people I started talking to about how I was feeling. I spoke with my fellow troops. When I discovered that confessing to my wife was a huge relief, I soon did the same with members of my platoon. It worked.

I found my counselor, at no charge, through Military One-Source (MOS). MOS is a fantastic resource, and not just for emergencies. Any problem you have, or your spouse or children have, you can call, tell them what’s up and they’ll find a program, counselor, support group – whatever – to get you that help.

That help got me through.

SFC Robert White serves as a US Army Signal Corps. He has been deployed three times to Afghanistan.  He likes to blog about the Army, radios, defense, politics, or anything else that comes to mind at http://signaleer.blogpot.com.

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