Remember that iconic Marine from the time of the Battle for Fallujah? The picture of him smoking a cigarette during a moment of relative calm made the front pages of many newspapers (including the one on the cover of the New York Post to the left) and gave him instant fame as the new “Malboro Man”.
Well it seems that since he’s returned to the United States after his tour of duty he’s had a little trouble adjusting to life outside a war zone. In fact, he’s been honorably discharged for suffering from PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Editor & Publisher (hat tip to Raw Story) has the details:
NEW YORK So whatever happened to Lance Cpl. Blake Miller — the U.S. Marine pictured as a kind of war-weary “Marlboro Man” in one of the most widely published iconic images of the Iraq war?
The 2004 photograph by Luis Sinco of the Los Angeles Times showing Miller, face dirty under a helmet, a cigarette dangling from his lips, went around the world and back again, hitting front pages everywhere. Now Miller, of Jonancy, Ky., is a civilian “and is having trouble adjusting to civilian life,” CBS News reports.
Back home, he got married in June, but on duty during the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, Miller suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and was granted an honorable discharge from the Marines in November.
Miller told CBS this morning, “For the most part, I mean, it was a big adjustment [when I got home] just trying to get in that mindset of being able to just roam, run around without fear of being shot at or where to look for danger. … It’s unexplainable. I mean, just to go from that mindset to being able to walk around freely and just enjoy it.”
He goes on to describe an incident during his duty on the USS Iwo Jima during the Katrina relief effort of reacting to a sailor mimicking the sound of a rocket propelled grenade this way:
“For anybody to duplicate that sound,” Miller said, “they’ve had to hear it. Without even knowing what I’d done until after it was over, I snatched him up, I slammed him against the bulkhead, the wall, and took him to the floor, and I was on top of him.”
Miller told CBS that he’s gone into therapy (good for him!) and that he knows there are many more soldiers who are suffering from PTSD as a result of their Iraq service. He’s to be commended for going public and making a point about his therapy, which is just as heroic a deed as any he did in Iraq. Hopefully the publicity generated by his story, and his interview with CBS, will encourage other service members to seek help for their own afflictions.
to him and his wife — glad he’s recognized the need to get help…too many men go into the “tough it out soldier” mentality. And of course BushCo. “supports the troops” by cutting veterans’ benefits…once you’re no longer useful, might as well throw you overboard…
Garry Trudeau has been trying to highlight the PTSD issue in Doonesbury, but it might take a few more real-life cases to really bring it home.
For posting this up, hadn’t caught it myself yet and didn’t see any reverance to it on any of the few boards I’m on!
With your permission I’ll be sharing this with those same Pro-Peace and Veterans Boards, linking back to you post!
Thanks Again,
Jim
Thanks, I had no inkling of this story until now.
Of course Jim. Permission is granted.
To the Boards and Friends!
Sent it to David over at AfterDowningStreet and you can find it HERE!!
It’s up just as I sent it out to everyone, your Diary with Article Below, just added that notation in your Diary about the Articles place!
Thomas has it at G.I. Special but I don’t think he has another coming out untill tomorrow, he took abit of a vacation for the New Year.
All these soldiers with all this PTSD? How did this happen? As soon as I feel top notch I will post all the photos of the bedroom I redid (Cabingirl has of course reminded me that she waits patiently still to see it). For now please feel free to enjoy a photo of the lion’s head that covers the whole in the wall from my husband’s head going through it due to his own PTSD. Try not to flinch at the Marigold Yellow all you guys….it is glazed over in the end product.
Yeah, who would ever think that sending people into a war zone with whatever equipment happened to be available at the time (hey, you go to war with the army you have) and leaving them there for extended periods of time to be attacked with homemade bombs and then sending them back there repeatedly would have any effect on their mental status?
(mmm…butternut squash…you are such a tease with these half-finished pictures, ya know.)
That mother fucker George Bush and that other mother fucker Dick Cheney and that Bitch Condi and that super mother fucker Rummy. How could you all have felt so cool and confident about all of your lies and still to this day spin the spin so demandingly about how you all did the right thing when you have so damaged your countrymen. Not even counting the innocent of Iraq, just the American’s that are affected and how they are affected and how they will have to fight the fight of their lives just to manage this. This soldier is fresh right now and new to this PTSD thing……20 years down the road though he ain’t gonna be so fresh! Here’s a photo from last Christmas, my last Christmas with my beautiful Uncle. We had all just got up and were doing our stockings and he has bedhead. He was another American who they sacrificed for “ideas” and they really don’t want to own that fact that a lot of the soldiers who returned home alive from Vietnam really weren’t alive, they were clinging to whatever small thread of sanity they could find on some days and that ain’t living……that is dying one second at a time!
I’ll help you shout that loud/clear Tracy.
The whole lead into the Iraqnam War had me thinking constantly about Vietnam and how it effected so many returning vets and their families and the whole country..the longer term effects of war as you say Tracy do not ever go away once we simply bring all the troops home…that in fact is just the beginning really for the long term horrors that can await vets and families. To say nothing of the massive cost of treating the vets that do manage to get treatment for any war related problems. PTSD is like a long term ticking time bomb just waiting to go off…anywhere at anytime.
Even me on some days. My husband will never be the same, he has been altered by life and death situations and the affect of living in that mode daily for a long period of time, and totally unpredictable IED’s blowing up below him and hearing guys screaming over the radio and being able to do nothing except wait for the next one to go off some place some where! He says that on some days he is “tender”. We are one of the lucky ones too and we know it……my husband’s exposure to extreme life and death threat and body parts strewn around one in the middle of a blood bath was nothing compared to what some of the Marines on the ground from the Fallujah area are going to come home with.
I’m afraid that it will be even worse for the Iraq vets than it was for the vietnam vets, just based on the surroundings they are in. Vietnam was pretty much a jungle full of threats, and in Iraq they’re in cities. So when the soldiers come home to cities and towns here, how do they cope with it? Similar stimuli, but they have to learn not to respond to it anymore. I can’t imagine how hard that must be. And with the cuts that keep being made in services and healthcare for the military, how will they get help?
(It’s late, so I’m sorry if this sounds garbled)
Expect him to attacked and smeared, just like Rep Murtha. The Gop “supports our troops” only until they speak up. Then they are gay, commie loving America haters.