Veterans

My Dad served in Vietnam. I was never eligible to serve as I've been an insulin dependent diabetic since 1982. He spent the whole year in the field, he felt it was better for his career that way and may have been to protect himself from his alcoholism too. I had a great math tutor in university in the 80s, he was a war vet and found his way to academic physics, this was a jump for him as he was from a poor background. The one other veteran I knew was my godfather who I became close to after he partially recovered from a stroke in his early 40s. He had stopped drinking with twelve steps but then was severely disabled. This one rule I was given was no questions about WW2. He was enlisted during 1944 he was battlefield promoted to officer. He was a POW and octor served 20 years retiring as a Colonel. So I was aware of the issues but none of the details, that generation just didn't share. I became a pacifist when I saw the look in my father's eyes when I asked him if he sot anyone, he had the ride in the helicopter out to a remote medic unit up on a hill that the VC had surrounded. He had to man the gun during those runs. He was just a medical administrator, basically like Colonel Potter from MASH, except he was in charge of everyone but the Doctors. A Doctor was in 'charge' but he just signed paperwork and stuck to being a doctor as much as he could.
So now I'm thrust into an emerging field of PTSD treatment and now pre-injury prophylactic treatments. The PTSD treatment findings are going to print by a Scientist out of Stanford studying the remarkable recovery for PTSD patients treated at a clinic in Mexico. Their MRI results show a relative improvement in brain age scale of 18 months on average. These were a cohort of special forces veterans with PTSD and substance use issues. So here we are going from treating those in recovery to now being dragged into current conflicts with this emergent prophylactic idea. I'm still not sure how I feel as being a pacifist but am reconciling it as it may help reduce PTSD and even lessen the severity of brain injuries.