The Tribal Bonds of Soldiers

“We hear of of war and the rumor of war.” We thank our soldiers for their service and we think that we are welcoming them back into society. But what are actually welcoming back into? They return often with an experience we cannot really comprehend. An experience that often bonds them together into their own tribe. One that makes them different from us.

In fact as many of us work hard to breakdown the tribal bonds that divide us as a society, as globalization continues to homogenize us, both domestically and internationally, the experience of war often forms new, personal and deeper such bonds among the soldiers. In so doing, it makes it so much harder for them to be among us.

Sebastian Junger the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont and Fire takes a look at this phenomenon in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

My conversation with Sebastian Junger:

A Biography of PTSD

Sometimes the reality of war is just too complex and absurd to be understood in real time. Perhaps that why books about war are so powerful and important. That’s why novels like Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, The Things they Carried, A Rumor of War, and The Yellow Birds, have been essential for our understating.

Equally important to our understand is grasping the impact of PTSD on those who served or who, for whatever reasons, journeyed into the heart of darkness that is combat.

While embedded with troops in Iraq, journalist David Morris almost died when a Humvee he was riding in encountered an IED. His book, explores his own trauma from that event, as well as the history and science of post-traumatic stress disorder.The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

My conversation with David J. Morris: