NPR Military Interview

NPR Military Interview

        In the article I read and listened to, Thousands of Returning Soldiers Face a New Enemy, Guy Raz interviews a military veteran named Colby Buzzell, Dr. Gregory O’Shanick the medical director for the Brain Injury Association of America, and NPR'S Daniel Zwerdling. Colby was an infantryman in the United States Army in the Stryker Brigade and was in Iraq late 2003 to '04.

        At 26 years old, Colby arrived in Iraq in the late fall of 2003, about five years after President George W. Bush announced the end of the fight. Colby was sent to a base in Mosul where he didn't stay for long, his tour wrapped up in late 2004 and he was soon on his way back home. Once he got home though Colby started drinking heavily which soon became a serious problem. Colby would get terrible nightmares, and he soon received a letter saying that he was to report back to Fort Benning three weeks from when it was sent. Suspecting that he had PTSD, and after receiving this letter he just knew that he could not return to Fort Benning, so Colby later visited a V.A. hospital to get evaluated by a psychiatrist. Colby was later diagnosed with PTSD and the psychiatrist sent a letter with him to Fort Benning which later resulted in the Army saying he was not deployable, so he never again returned to Iraq.

       Thousands of Returning Soldiers Face a New Enemy relates to All Quiet not only for its main subject of war, but also the thoughts that the soldiers have about coming home once their time in the war is over. Like Colby, Paul and his comrades would often sit around and think of how wonderful life would be for them after the war, if only they would have known how different it would be from that of their imagination. When Paul returned home he was taken aback by how people treated him, and how little people actually knew about what went on in the war. I believe this might have been how Colby felt when he returned home as well.

        Realizing how differently you view things after being in the war and then coming home to see that the war doesn't affect anything going on here can do a drastic toll to the mentality of someone. Once Coldy was diagnosed with PTSD he quit drinking and decided to put all of his time and thought into something else besides Iraq and what he did there. Colby started attending school and letting it take over every morsel of his brain. He wanted to begin a new life after the gruesome one he left behind in Iraq.