The military isn’t always as exciting as it seems. In fact, the vast majority of military personnel have jobs as dull as bankers, the only difference being that sometimes those jobs are on submarines or remote air bases. In my career, most days have been more Office Space than Saving Private Ryan. Only 10-15% of soldiers will ever see combat, meaning the rest of us are more likely to be found hiding behind a desk than in a foxhole.
This is by design, of course. For better or worse, the modern military industrial complex aims to replace people with technology. That doesn’t mean our personnel are totally removed though. Stories of drone pilots suffering PTSD have drawn new attention to this thoroughly modern concept of digital proximity in war. Soldiers are often no longer face-to-face with Death, so much as on a Zoom call with him.
Modern warfare is Death Adjacent
My work in Germany is far from the trigger-pulling deployments of my predecessors in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m thousands of miles from the battlefield, so my life has never been in danger, nor the lives of my teammates. I haven’t had to carry a weapon, let alone fire one, and I haven’t been even remotely close to a dead body. I basically just wear a uniform in a fancy office.
But then again, it’s still war, and its perils are ever-present. Death is like a smell in the room that won’t dissipate. One way or another, all the office work I do is sort of cloaked in it. From powerpoints to video feeds, it’s always there, even if at a safe distance.
The degree of removal depends on the job. Just imagine:
A mission manager in a hidden office somewhere, studying the video feeds from a drone on the other side of the world. He watches a target that has been positively identified and confirmed by multiple sources to be the mastermind of some heinous act. An enemy combatant, to be sure, but on the screen here, he is seen playing with his kids or fixing his car, totally unaware that he’s been tracked and geo-located. The mission manager studies his pattern of life looking for an opportune time to strike, and although he may never see the missile, he has watched the target’s life like a game of Sims, and moreover, he’s seen the relationships that will be severed by his elimination, as righteous as it may be.
A pilot remotely flying an unarmed surveillance drone in the aftermath of a horrible natural disaster, providing overwatch to help guide emergency services to the victims. Like the mission manager, he’s half a world away, but he’s also there in High Def. He watches helplessly as emergency services are unable to cross a damaged bridge to reach a woman in distress. He is still there later when they finally make it across to collect the body, along with many, many others, and load them up into pick-up trucks or bury them in the fields. And unlike a movie, this all happens in painfully slow real-time.
An open-source intelligence analyst studying social media accounts of terrorist groups, trying to glean information that may be helpful for the security of friendly forces. To this end, she reviews everything from propaganda to live streams, Telegram to Facebook, witnessing the most graphic depictions of atrocities served up with braggadocio and fervor. The content floods in from all around the world— a video of Gaza can be followed by a publication in Niger, a thread in Syria, and a livestream in Ukraine— each competing for shock and fear.
None of these service members have seen combat, and all of them return home each night. It’s not immediately apparent to them, but over time, the repetitive stress of being so close to death, adds up.
The best term I've found is "moral injury", which is related to, but distinct from, PTSD.
"moral" because it's intangible and deep and can be very difficult to put a finger on and describe with any amount of accuracy.
"injury" because it may hit in a moment like a pulled muscle, but it's also the cumulative result of constant overuse. It feels temporary and recoverable with some space and time. Like a sprained ankle, you just need to stay off it for a little while.
In my experience, “mental health” is elusive to us, and as we find more and more ways to put ourselves in novel stress environments, that challenge increases. It’s even harder to decipher when the cause isn’t obvious. Moral injuries are not shell shock, they’re a slow burn on the soul.
Look out for yourself, look out for your friends, and always talk it out.