I woke to the sound of my own scream. A soviet apartment block had collapsed in front of me, five stories of concrete folding in on itself. In the dream, my ex-girlfriend was inside, gone in an instant. Then I was back in my bed, chest heaving, staring into the stillness. None of it had happened. But nightmares don’t need to be real—only possible. That is enough.
That afternoon, I was at a cookout with my old platoon sergeant from Iraq. Smoke drifted from the grill and clung to our clothes. He leaned back in a lawn chair, a beer sweating in his hand. Six deployments—Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq. Wars that chewed men up, then faded into history books no one reads. I asked him quietly, “Do the nightmares ever go away?”
“No,” he said. That was all. He didn’t need to explain further. He knew my story. I knew his. Peace only throws the memories into sharper relief.
The history of trauma is as old as war itself, but each generation has given it a different name. In World War One, it was shell shock, captured on grainy film—men trembling, stammering, blank-eyed after months of trench slaughter. Psychology was still in its infancy, fumbling for language.
In World War Two, veterans came home to parades and prosperity. Popular memory says they adjusted easily, but many carried their scars in silence. The culture of the time masked reality under the veneer of stoicism. Masculine ideals drove men into bars where liquor dulled what they could not say, and behind closed doors, domestic violence was rampant. If you were a veteran of color, there was no parade at all—only the same discrimination as before, cut deeper by the indifference to your service. The image of the untroubled veteran left little room for admitting nightmares or rage, and so much of it went unspoken.
Korea came next, already half-forgotten, yet one veteran once told me, “At least we knew who we were fighting. You poor guys had to guess.” His words cut deeper than he realized.
Then came Vietnam. Men returned from a war their country despised, carrying the same wounds as those before them but receiving scorn instead of welcome. The trauma deepened when they realized home was no refuge.
Our generation—the Americans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan during the long wars of the Global War on Terror—has had more recognition, at least in name. The VA tries harder. Society speaks the word PTSD without flinching. But better doesn’t mean healed. The war still follows us home, into the night, into the dreams where buildings collapse and voices we loved vanish into rubble. We wake, we breathe, we steady ourselves. And we carry on, knowing it will come again.
That is the inheritance of all these wars. The question is what we do with it. We cannot change what happened, but we can reach for the resources that help.
The Veterans Crisis Line is one of them: 988, then press 1. It may sound cliché, but when I called, someone answered. They talked me down from the edge. Sometimes that simple act saves a life.
There are other options. Domestically, Home Base in Boston—a program run by Massachusetts General Hospital and the Red Sox Foundation—provides inpatient and outpatient treatment, clinical care, and family support, with a focus on post-9/11 veterans.
For those overseas, the VA Foreign Medical Program (FMP) can be a lifeline. After Ukraine, I spent three months at the Zeus Centre in Poland, primarily for a narcotics detox—I was addicted to clonazepam. Their staff included psychologists, therapists, and counselors who understood combat trauma. They treated substance abuse and psychological wounds together, and I saw them turn lives around, including my own. Normally, private care abroad requires upfront payment, but through FMP, the VA reimburses approved treatment. The Zeus Facility, unusually, does not require payment in advance.
If you can pay upfront elsewhere, treatment abroad can help you bypass VA wait times. Afterward, you file the paperwork, and the VA reimburses you. At present, they still issue paper checks, though they say direct deposit is coming.
If you don’t yet have a VA disability rating, it is never too late to file. Some veterans feel shame about asking for government support, but we should remember that corporations profited billions from these wars while our friends never made it home. Securing a rating for mental health will not strip you of civil liberties or block you from federal employment. There is no shame in asking for help.
If you have further questions, reach out to me on Instagram at @benjamin_based and I will do what I can. We all need to work together to confront veterans’ mental health—moving beyond slogans like “22 a day” and taking real steps. We survived the war. Surviving the aftermath is just as vital.