17 million people follow the “Humans of New York” page on Facebook. That means 17 million people got to hear the stories told by veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq last month when HONY did a photo/story series called “Invisible Wounds.”
Most of the stories involved PTSD, and more importantly its treatment. Everyone who has served in the military, or is currently serving, and the family members of those who have served or are serving should take a few minutes to look through the pictures in this series and read the stories that accompany them.
All of the photos/stories are amazing, but this one really stuck out:
“I didn’t fit in too well in training. I came back from drinking one night and I was three minutes after curfew. My senior drill sergeant told me that he was going to punish me because a few medics had noticed I was late. So I asked him: ‘Do you decide what kind of leader you are based on who’s watching?’ He didn’t like that. He screamed at me and made me do a bunch of pushups, and me being a drunk-ass, I was calling him a ‘pussy’ and ‘motherfucker’ the entire time. So he reported me to the company commander, who reported me to the battalion commander, and I end up at this formal hearing where they make me listen to all this awful shit about myself. And then they asked me if I had anything to say. I’m pretty sure that I was supposed to keep quiet, but I had typed out this whole speech about how my senior drill sergeant didn’t embody Army values. So I read my speech, and when I finished, everyone was pretty mad. A command sergeant major started screaming in my face. He looked like Clint Eastwood if Clint Eastwood was only five feet tall. After he was done yelling, he ripped my insignia off my uniform, escorted me from the room, and with a mix of disgust and pride, said: ‘You’ve some got balls.’”
