A review by heatherbermingham
Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel
5.0
This book is, in a word, devastating. Finkel wrote about being embedded with the men of the 2-16 in his previous book, "The Good Soliders." In "Thank You for Your Service," he checks in with a few of them as they struggle to reintegrate into life at home.
The main figures in the book are Adam Schuman, a solider evacuated mid-deployment because of mental health issues that have overtaken him during his third trip to Iraq, and his wife, Saskia. Schuman struggles with many of the things that I've read about in other articles about this kind of thing: angry outbursts, paranoia, extremely high frustration, lack of motivation, nightmares, suicidal thoughts, and an overabundance of medications to help him deal with all of the above. For me, the most interesting part of the book was Saskia's story. I don't think we hear as much detail about what the wives of these soldiers experience and it's pretty harrowing at times. On one hand, she wants to do everything she can to support him as he tries to heal, on the other hand she wants him to just be better already. On one hand, she knows she needs to be extra patient and loving, on the other hand she's as angry and frustrated as he is. When he first points a shotgun at his head and threatens to pull the trigger, she almost wants him to, just so it's all over. In the next second, she's panicked and desperate to get the gun away from him. She's trying to hold him together, trying to hold their children together, trying to hold herself together, trying to make sure money is coming in, that bills are getting paid, that the house is still standing around them. And she's doing all of this while dealing with the fact that the husband who came home to her is so different from the husband she sent off to Iraq that he may as well be another person. Extremely powerful stuff.
Finkel does check in throughout the book with some other people: a solider who was shot in the head and is learning to live with new physical and mental limitations, a widow who lost her husband during the war, and a widow who lost her husband to suicide during the after-war. Alcoholism, domestic abuse, divorce, suicide, PTSD, TBI, it's all here and all pretty awful. Finkel does look at different programs and treatments and what may contribute to certain people being particularly susceptible to PTSD. He also checks in with the Pentagon and how it's struggling to make sense of what's happening post-war and how it can best support soldiers like these and their families. They don't have a lot of answers, however.
Overall, definitely a bleak but needed reminder of just what we're asking of people when we send them off to war.
The main figures in the book are Adam Schuman, a solider evacuated mid-deployment because of mental health issues that have overtaken him during his third trip to Iraq, and his wife, Saskia. Schuman struggles with many of the things that I've read about in other articles about this kind of thing: angry outbursts, paranoia, extremely high frustration, lack of motivation, nightmares, suicidal thoughts, and an overabundance of medications to help him deal with all of the above. For me, the most interesting part of the book was Saskia's story. I don't think we hear as much detail about what the wives of these soldiers experience and it's pretty harrowing at times. On one hand, she wants to do everything she can to support him as he tries to heal, on the other hand she wants him to just be better already. On one hand, she knows she needs to be extra patient and loving, on the other hand she's as angry and frustrated as he is. When he first points a shotgun at his head and threatens to pull the trigger, she almost wants him to, just so it's all over. In the next second, she's panicked and desperate to get the gun away from him. She's trying to hold him together, trying to hold their children together, trying to hold herself together, trying to make sure money is coming in, that bills are getting paid, that the house is still standing around them. And she's doing all of this while dealing with the fact that the husband who came home to her is so different from the husband she sent off to Iraq that he may as well be another person. Extremely powerful stuff.
Finkel does check in throughout the book with some other people: a solider who was shot in the head and is learning to live with new physical and mental limitations, a widow who lost her husband during the war, and a widow who lost her husband to suicide during the after-war. Alcoholism, domestic abuse, divorce, suicide, PTSD, TBI, it's all here and all pretty awful. Finkel does look at different programs and treatments and what may contribute to certain people being particularly susceptible to PTSD. He also checks in with the Pentagon and how it's struggling to make sense of what's happening post-war and how it can best support soldiers like these and their families. They don't have a lot of answers, however.
Overall, definitely a bleak but needed reminder of just what we're asking of people when we send them off to war.