Caring for the Military

A Guide for Helping Professionals

Joan Beder, Joan Beder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317312574
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Conseil en psychothérapie

With overseas deployment scaling down in recent years, helping professionals need practical tools for working with servicemen and women returning from deployment. Caring for the Military, with its case studies and clinical discussions, is indispensable for social workers and other helping professionals working with these populations. Leading experts contribute chapters on the challenges faced by reintegrating members of the military, including returning to a family, entering the workforce, and caring for those with PTSD, TBI, and moral injury. This text also features unique chapters on telemental health, multidisciplinary settings, and caregiver resiliency.

I The World of the Military: Culture and Transitions

1 MILITARY CULTURAL COMPETENCY

Yvette Branson

DOI: 10.4324/9781315652276-1

“No one understands,” they say, “nobody cares about us.”

“They make too many assumptions about who we are!”

“When I’m angry and they know I am a Vet, they think it’s PTSD. My anger has more to do with my childhood than the military.”

These are some of the comments we hear when we press OIF/OEF Veterans to tell us what they are experiencing while transitioning to civilian life. (OIF/OEF = Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, terms used by the military to refer to recent military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.) Perhaps the biggest desire of US returning Veterans is to feel like everyone else, to blend in. The eventual realization that they are different can be helpful and disturbing. While in combat, they may have an idealized longing for the comforts of home. Once they separate from the service and return home, it inevitably looks very different from those daydreams.

It is our job as civilian practitioners and citizens to help support the returnees as best we can. This requires effort on our part, though small compared with the risk and danger they face while serving this nation. We must do everything possible to understand the trials they dealt with emotionally, physically, and spiritually that will forever change them. The attention we give to become informed about military culture, enough to have even minimal competence when addressing Veterans, will go a long way.

This chapter will focus on the military culture and how it impacts our returnees. Nuances of the culture will be explored and certain areas of concern highlighted as we attempt to embrace our service members and honor their efforts.

Understanding Military Culture

To achieve military cultural competency, it may be useful to review the basics starting with the five branches of the armed services. Each branch of the service is unique in its combat role; likewise, a warrior’s self-identity and group identity will vary according to the branch in which they have served. A seemingly innocuous reference to a sailor or marine as “soldier” has surprising consequences. Though Veterans are used to being mislabeled by civilians, an easy expression of our interest in who they are can be facilitated by knowing a few simple facts: the Army is the oldest service branch; founded in 1775, they operate under the Department of the Army and are referred to as Soldiers. The Navy and Marines were also founded in 1775, and they both operate under the Department of the Navy. Members of the Navy are referred to as Sailors, while members of the Marines are simply called Marines. (You may have heard the line “Semper fidelis – Always Faithful,” which is the motto of the Marines specifically.) The Coast Guard was founded later, in 1790, and operates under the Department of the Navy or sometimes the Department of Defense (depending on federal mandate). Its members are referred to as Guardians or Coasties. The Air Force was founded in 1947 and was originally known as the Army Air Corps; they operate under the Department of the Air Force, and its personnel of any gender are referred to as Airmen.

There are benign prejudices that members of each branch tend to hold toward the other branches. Spend enough time with Veterans and you begin to learn the partisanships. Beyond the rivalry between branches, the distinctions within the rank and structure of the military hierarchy are important to grasp. There are three rank types: Commissioned Officers, Warrant Officers, and Enlisted. Commissioned Officers are among the highest ranks; similar to managers and executives of a corporation, they comprise 14% of the military. Warrant Officers are highly specialized subject matter experts and are 2% of the military. Enlisted personnel include noncommissioned officers, making up 84% of the military. There is a clear hierarchy and bureaucratic structure in the military; social status is clear as officers hold a higher status than enlisted personnel. Duties, responsibilities, pay, living arrangements, and social interactions are all determined by rank (Coll, Weiss, & Metal, 2013).

Commissioned Officers are appointed a rank after they complete Officer’s Training School. There are several ways to become an Officer: to attend a Military Academy; to enroll at a college with a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program; to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS) after graduating from college; or to receive a direct commission after earning a professional degree, for example an MD or PhD.¹

All individuals who serve in the military are required to complete basic training, also called “boot camp” (slang used by the Navy and Marines, now commonly appropriated by fitness-crazed civilians). The boot camp experience is intense, demanding and has as a goal to transform the individual into a warrior. There is also the goal of creating cohesion within a unit between the trainees. This sense of cohesion often endures far beyond their military service. The interpersonal bonds that begin at boot camp are a central factor in the military culture.²

At boot camp the enlistees are introduced to the values, beliefs, traditions, norms, perceptions, and behaviors that govern how members of the armed forces think, communicate, and interact. It does not matter which branch one serves, the shared threads of all Veterans are reflected in the indoctrination and socialization of the military core values: honor, courage, loyalty, integrity, and commitment. These values serve as the standard of conduct for military personnel, regardless of whether the service member is in uniform (Coll et al., 2013).

Within the boot camp experience, unlike civilian culture, individuality is downplayed and the unit has central importance. From the point of arrival at boot camp, depersonalization occurs as apparent in the homogeneous uniforms and haircuts. The military environment is such that there is a clear understanding that an individual’s purpose is to support the mission; individual achievement is important to the degree that it supports efficient and effective completion of the assigned task/mission and that in so doing, they put their life at risk (Exum, Coll, & Weiss, 2011).

Military recruits, or people who enlist, represent racially and socioeconomically diverse communities across the nation. In order to enlist, recruits must hold a high school diploma, the equivalent, or have scored above 50% on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT). Those who join have many reasons for doing so. A good number seek the educational benefits offered through the GI Bill.³

In addition, many join because of patriotism, family tradition, and/or job scarcity in the US economy. Enlistment has supported many with the opportunities to gain employment and attend college, which may not previously have been possible.

All military personnel have a job specialty for which they go to training school after “basic.” If you ask a Vet, “What was your MOS while you were active duty?,” they will know you mean “Military Occupational Specialty,” even though this is technically the term used only by the Army and Marine Corps. The Air Force goes by Air Force Specialty Code and the Navy’s job designation is called Rating. This career training in the military is known as Advanced Individual Training (AIT), or “A” school by some of the branches. Examples of AIT training include Medic, Infantry, and Logistics. The author’s nephew, for example, went to “A” school to become a linguist for the Navy, and is now fully employed as a professional translator.

Military training is dedicated to building professionalism and mastery while teaching its members basic skills as warriors. The training is physically and mentally challenging in order to create a disciplined corps, a corps that is warrior ready, and that “meets the challenges of combat and the mastery of fear.”⁴

Houppert (2005) explains that basic training is not designed to move an adolescent into independence but rather to shift the recruit from independence on his/her family to dependence on the team_ “the soldier must learn that he can trust no one but his buddies” (p. 84). This powerful commitment to the unit often creates difficulty at home with family members, especially when the family may be secondary to the unit/mission. Segal (1986) eloquently described this potential conflict in her article “The Military and the Family as Greedy Institutions.” She discusses the ‘military’ and the ‘family’ as social institutions, noting that each institution depends on the loyalty and commitment of its members. But, all too often in military life, with its emphasis on the primacy of unit cohesion, the family becomes less valued/important or at a minimum the service member can predictably experience a conflict of loyalty. Once training is complete, the service member moves on to active duty placed within a unit. The demands of a total commitment to the military – typically a commitment to one’s unit, the unit’s mission, and its members – are the very essence of military unit cohesion (Martin & McClure, 2000).

While on active duty, a service member is considered a full-time employee who may be required to work 24/7. This active duty may be stateside or on a deployment. Before or after a deployment, the service member is stationed at their home installation. Not every service member you meet will have been deployed, but it is common to meet Veterans who have been on multiple deployments – three, four, or even five. A deployment is six to 15 months during which a service member will move from a home installation to a designated theater of operation, which may or may not be an active combat zone. If one’s military service is part of the Reserve or National Guard, the service member is considered a part-time employee. They train one weekend a month and two weeks annually thus invoking the pejorative, “weekend warrior.” Stresses on these personnel include the possibility of being called suddenly for active-duty deployments, leaving jobs, family, and community often on short notice. Some military personnel will continue to serve in the Reserve after finishing their active-duty contracts.

As with any culture the Military has its own “language” which often takes the form of an acronym. Military acronyms can be bland or colorful depending on their usage. The acronyms included here are meant to give a sense of what you may hear when in the vicinity of service members. An attempt to explain and provide an example will follow: BAH: Basic Allowance for Housing; FOB: Forward Operating Base (used in combat theater); GI: General Issue (belief that they are interchangeable); IED: improvised explosive device; JAG: Judge Advocate General (legal branch of military); MEDEVAC: MEDical EVACuation (air ambulance); MIA: Missing in Action (unknown whether alive or dead); MP: Military Police; PSYOP: Psychological Operations.

The IEDs we hear about in the news can best be explained as guerrilla warfare, small-scale actions against orthodox military, the US Armed Forces, in this case.⁵ The IEDs are surprise hits that are devastating on morale and mortality rates. Highly stressful situations, such as an IED exploding randomly on a convoy, might not be interpreted by a service member as “combat.” If the Vet was fired upon or targeted while on a convoy there may be serious damage inflicted on the unit yet if the Vet did not “discharge” his/her weapon they may not consider this experience combat! Regardless of personal acknowledgement of the dangers in which they served, civilians need to understand the traumatic potential of such a situation. The tendency to downplay traumatic experience is emblematic of these warriors.

Another example: if a service member’s MOS is to provide support service to the mission, they may not leave the FOB and will sometimes be referred to as a FOBBIT (person who rarely leaves the FOB while deployed or has not “seen” combat). This term may sound derogatory, and it is meant to insult those who did work considered less important than a “Grunt” (general term for Infantry). While a Grunt may be in actual combat, kicking in doors while on “search and clear” missions, anyone other than a Grunt, or “Pogue” (Personnel Other than Grunt) might be on the FOB working on combat vehicles or computers, in support of the mission. Awareness of this hierarchy within enlisted circles is important as a service member may also underplay their role in the military by denigrating its significance. It may also breed arrogance and create distance between those who served. We can address this issue by reassuring any service member of the importance of service to their country, regardless.

The emphasis on group cohesion and bonding in all branches of the military can have a lasting effect on Veterans. Some may feel an acute loss of connection upon leaving the military leading to isolation and depression. Survival in the theater of war depends not only on the discipline and organization of the ranks but the intense relationships that develop during training. Trainings rely on teamwork, encapsulated in: “I got your back.” This topic will be revisited when we discuss the Veteran upon transition out of the military.

Common military stressors and experiences while in the service include the wear and tear of the mission when one may become physically and mentally worn down. Lack of control of one’s coming and going, exposure to combat or life-threatening situations, loss of a close friend or team member, limited access to food and water on deployment, the operational stress as a result of lack of sleep or rest, high expectations at all times, military sexual trauma, and harassment. These stressors when compounded by multiple and lengthy deployments can create a very onerous load to carry once expected to return to the civilian world.

One stres...