Among the Walking Wounded: Soldiers, Survival and PTSD

This valuable contribution to the growing body of literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a piercing personal memoir by a veteran Canadian battalion commander who brought the war in Afghanistan home with him. Conrad (What the Thunder Said) writes with a fierce urgency that paints an unflattering portrait of the Canadian military’s upper ranks while questioning the justification for a military occupation that the generals preferred not to call a war. From the book’s introduction by Conrad’s spouse, Martha—a penetrating, surreal analysis of the Canadian home front—to Conrad’s rage at the ways the government treats veterans like insurance clients, this title is strong medicine. Conrad pulls no punches in describing his own descent into hellish trauma. Some difficult sections detail gruesome scenes involving injuries caused by improvised explosive devices, providing an important illustration of the images, voices, sounds, and smells that haunt soldiers’ dreams and invade idle moments long after the soldiers leave the battle zone. Conrad’s poignant attempts to provide care and support for younger soldiers who returned home grappling with PTSD, some of whom later took their own lives, underscore a tragedy whose telling here should be required reading for anyone still dismissing the unseen wounds of warriors. (May)