The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 29 per cent of veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan will experience PTSD at some point in their lives. The comparable figure the VA gives for Vietnam veterans is 10 per cent, and for those who served in the Second World War and Korea, 3 per cent. That spread looks like a twentyfold rise in trauma across three generations of war. It may partly be a rise in reporting. “Back in those times, I don’t think the rates were really lower if we look at actual cases, but I think a lot of people could not come forward,” Timothy Hoyt, chief mental health officer with the U.S. Defence Health Agency, told CBC News. “We’ve seen a lot of progress in addressing those stigma concerns in the last 20 years.”
Barry Sward is one of the measured cases. As CBC News recounts, chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault tracked Sward down this August in Falmouth, Va., 24 years after first interviewing him while reporting on post-9/11 recruitment. On Sept. 11, 2001, Sward was a high school senior in Woodbridge, Va., who had already enlisted in the marines. Watching the towers fall, he told Arsenault then, confirmed the decision: “There was a spike of revenge … and I did want to get the people that did this and hurt them really bad. I don’t know why they’re doing it.”
A blip, not a surge
The recruiting-wave story Sward seemed to embody does not survive contact with the numbers. Media reports in late 2001 described long lines outside recruiting offices, but figures provided by the four main branches show no dramatic rise in enlistment after the attacks relative to other years. “Post-9/11, you have a burst of patriotism and a need to serve,” said Jason Dempsey, who studies civil-military relations at Columbia University. “But that was not the majority of folks entering service. And in the grand scheme of things was a very temporary blip.” Dempsey said the reliable drivers of enlistment are family history of service, pay and education benefits, and a weak job market — Sward had signed up before the attacks, not because of them.
What changed for his cohort was not why they joined but where they were sent. A 2019 Pew Research survey of 1,284 veterans found post-9/11 veterans roughly twice as likely as earlier ones to have served in a combat zone. In the same survey, half reported emotionally traumatic or distressing experiences, and only about a third sought help for them.
Nasiriyah, March 23, 2003
Sward began basic training at Parris Island, S.C., in July 2002. In March 2003, days after President George W. Bush announced the invasion of Iraq, his unit — the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines — crossed the border with orders to seize bridges on the road to Baghdad. On March 23 the unit entered the Battle of Nasiriyah. Eighteen marines were killed, including a friend Sward had made in basic training.
It was tough. There was a lot of screaming, obviously, and we could hear it happening. And that was the frustrating part — knowing that something else was going on, not too far away from you, but can’t do anything about it.
His unit later patrolled Nasiriyah hunting for leaders and for the weapons of mass destruction that the invasion’s unverified intelligence case had asserted. No such weapons were ever found. Asked in August what that means in hindsight, Sward said: “It’s frustrating. Still proud to have served, but maybe there were some political aspects that were at play in the background.” The Pew survey suggests he has company: 64 per cent of veterans said the Iraq war was not worthwhile, and 58 per cent said the same of Afghanistan. Brown University’s Costs of War project counts more than 7,000 U.S. troop deaths in the post-9/11 wars — and four times as many subsequent deaths by suicide among military personnel.
Fourteen years to a diagnosis
Sward’s deployment ended early. A spinal problem left him with chronic back pain; he was back at Camp Lejeune, N.C., within the year and processed out of the corps. The deeper injury went unnamed for 14 years, until he was diagnosed with PTSD. “Mine tends to show up as anger. I was either sad or I was pissed off and there wasn’t any in-between,” he said. “I was either going to get help or I was going to lose my wife and my wonderful kids. I definitely made the right choice.” His wife Rebecca, whom he met after coming home, is a licensed psychotherapist; they have been married 21 years and have four children. “As he’s gotten older, I think he’s been more open to unpacking trauma and trying to heal,” she said.
The war Sward fought ended on paper only weeks ago, when Iraq marked the final departure of U.S. troops with a four-day holiday — 23 years after his battalion crossed the border. Canadian research into treating veteran trauma, meanwhile, is now reaching back to even older cohorts, including Desert Storm veterans experimenting with diet changes for pain and PTSD. Sward keeps his mementoes from Iraq — a service cap, cassettes, a half-finished pack of cigarettes — and says his pride in serving is intact. It is his advice to the next generation that changed: he will not encourage his children to enlist. “I have no regrets. All my choices have led me here to this moment where I have my beautiful wife and four kids.”