Thank You for Your Service by
David Finkel
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
David Finkel starts out by explaining that soldiers who come home from war and have trouble with PTSD or traumatic brain injury or one of another myriad injuries seen and unseen from the latest wars, if seen as red dots on a map would make America glow from coast to coast. But instead of choosing the many, Finkel concentrates on a few of the individual dots. Apparently he followed the same soldiers during their tour in a previous book, but it is not necessary to read it to understand or know these vets. Most of his vignettes are typical day to day occurrences, yet he writes with such style and poetry, you find yourself getting caught up in their minutiae and it in fact better informs the reader how every day, from nightmares at night to trying to keep a job, and especially interacting with loved ones is a daily ordeal. It highlights the struggle to go through the military beauocracy to get help, and the randomness as to what program they get help from. It also helps you see the struggle family members, especially wives, have of ttrying to understand and empathize with this man who no longer acts like their husband. And they seem to get no help at all from the military community. Althogh focusing on a handful of soldiers is helpful for creating empathy, I still wish Finkel might have included a picture for the whole...are there programs that have been shown to work? Are women vets as affected with PTSD? Are there any preventative measures we can take? What can the public at large do? (It seemed the soldiers found any sympathy given from civilians both paltry and insincere). Great read.
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