Helping Others Tell Their Stories

Darby being awesome!

I hope all of our readers have enjoyed all of our regular posts, but you might not know that Scott, Travis Martin, Michelle Monte, and myself all spend a lot of our time helping others tell their own stories. Writing helps us a lot so we try and take time to help others do the same. If you enjoy the regular posts here then there is no reason why will not enjoy our Blue Nostalgia.

It is free to read and free to join Military Experience & the Arts online writing workshops.  We are always accepting new submissions and you will never be turned down without someones helping you finish your writing. The most impressive thing about this issue is not how many views it has already received in less than forty-eight hours, but how everyone of the writers wants to continue participating in the online community. Even those whose writing never makes it online, often take advantage of online support groups and being apart of a community of veterans all going through the same things. I often think about the Military Experience & the Arts's online community as this generations version of the WWI expatriate writing community in Europe. We may not live up to that generation's legacy, but there is the same sense of community, and we are always welcoming and training a new generation of trauma writers. For me it is an honor to know all these people let alone playing a key role.

Symptoms Appear Suddenly But Control You Over Time

By Travis L. Martin

My hands shook for the first time after an ambush on one of our convoys in 2003. I figured it was the adrenaline; but it didn’t go away.

We came home to protesters outside the gates of Turley Barracks in Mannheim, Germany.

The next year, while serving in garrison, my friends made fun of me because I was always covered in sweat. Typically, I sweated the most when out in the city or in a confined area with lots of civilians. Maybe I was just fat?

We all drank. I drank my entire first deployment’s savings away. I’d wake up shaking uncontrollably and blacked out three-or-four nights a week.

I had never heard of “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

Add another deployment in 2005.

I went through withdrawals the first two weeks.

It was infinitely more luxurious with the hot chow and air-conditioned rooms. We were better at our jobs the second time around, too. But so were the bad guys.

I returned to Germany and finished up my four-year enlistment in 2006.

Sometimes, it took me an hour or more to get out of the bed. The dreams were so violent. I couldn’t imagine how a good person could dream up such horrible things. I shook everyday: in formation, before PT, when talking on the phone. Eventually, I isolated myself.

I passed barracks inspections with flying colors. My room was immaculate, the product of hours and hours of crawling around on all fours, picking lint out of the carpet, scrubbing the wall lockers with lemon-scented pledge, and meticulous spacing between the hangers on which my uniforms hung.

Maybe all those stupid rules taught in basic were invented by other soldiers with shaking hands. Maybe they were looking for some measure of control in the outside world because they couldn’t find it within themselves.

I decided to get treatment.

End, Part 1

Travis L. Martin served two tours of duty in Iraq as a sergeant in the 51st Transportation Company. He holds an MA in English from Eastern Kentucky University, where he founded The Journal of Military Experience. Currently, he teaches and is a PhD student at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include trauma, autobiography, and war memoirs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.