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A 44-year-old former Canadian soldier who is haunted by an anti-tank mine explosion that injured him and a fellow soldier during a tour in Yugoslavia made a stop in Ottawa Friday during a cross-country march to raise awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Steve Hartwig and two other former soldiers who have PTSD started their march on June 23 on the front lawn of the B.C. legislature in Victoria. They hope to arrive in Saint John’s, Nfld., by mid September by walking 32 kilometres a day, six days a week with legs of driving in between.
Strapped to Hartwig’s old rucksack during his march is a white cross imprinted with the words “Into no man’s land” to bring awareness to PTSD, a disorder he says is growing at an alarming rate.
Hartwig will stop in towns along the way to talk about his personal struggles that stem from when he served for four years with the Royal Westminster Regiment as a paratrooper, infantryman and peacekeeper.
At 22 years old, Hartwig was the crew commander of a personnel carrier that hit an anti-tank mine on Oct. 28, 1992. The force of the explosion sent Hartwig flying up from the commander’s cupola onto the top of the vehicle.
So powerful was the blast that right afterward Hartwig couldn’t hear and could only see in black and white. He fractured his arm and smashed his knee and the driver cracked his skull. A third soldier in the back was not injured.
“When somebody is in an explosion, it’s a split second,” Hartwig said. “That split second — you deal with the affects for a lifetime.”
Hartwig said that explosion, along with several other harrowing experiences, led to years of suffering. He said he constantly re-lived an incident in which a fellow soldier he met in Yugoslavia, Scott McFarlane, caught fire after a can of gasoline exploded. For years, the smell of gasoline and burning hair sent Hartwig back to the day he had to extinguish the fire that gave his friend third-degree burns.
Hartwig said when he returned to Canada, he wouldn’t walk on the grass and was afraid of the dark. Hartwig spent three months after his deployment blowing his money on alcohol. Hartwig’s family worried that he was constantly angry, irritable and withdrawn.
“I felt really alien when I came home. I felt like I didn’t fit in,” Hartwig said. “What I found was the deeper PTSD grabs you, the smaller your world becomes.”
Hartwig said PTSD wasn’t a well-known disorder in the 1990s and soldiers had to wait months for treatment. Most, however, felt like they should suffer in silence, he said.
Hartwig eventually realized he needed help and started to look for it in 1997, although he put off getting treatment for another few years.
Since then, the military has made strides in helping soldiers suffering from PTSD. Gen. Tom Lawson, chief of the defence staff, announced last February that seven mental health workers were hired to address a series of soldier suicides.
Hartwig says there’s still a long way to go before veterans will have all the resources they need to deal with PTSD. You can learn more at the group’s website intonomansland.com
mhurley@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/meghan_hurley
查看原文...
Steve Hartwig and two other former soldiers who have PTSD started their march on June 23 on the front lawn of the B.C. legislature in Victoria. They hope to arrive in Saint John’s, Nfld., by mid September by walking 32 kilometres a day, six days a week with legs of driving in between.
Strapped to Hartwig’s old rucksack during his march is a white cross imprinted with the words “Into no man’s land” to bring awareness to PTSD, a disorder he says is growing at an alarming rate.
Hartwig will stop in towns along the way to talk about his personal struggles that stem from when he served for four years with the Royal Westminster Regiment as a paratrooper, infantryman and peacekeeper.
At 22 years old, Hartwig was the crew commander of a personnel carrier that hit an anti-tank mine on Oct. 28, 1992. The force of the explosion sent Hartwig flying up from the commander’s cupola onto the top of the vehicle.
So powerful was the blast that right afterward Hartwig couldn’t hear and could only see in black and white. He fractured his arm and smashed his knee and the driver cracked his skull. A third soldier in the back was not injured.
“When somebody is in an explosion, it’s a split second,” Hartwig said. “That split second — you deal with the affects for a lifetime.”
Hartwig said that explosion, along with several other harrowing experiences, led to years of suffering. He said he constantly re-lived an incident in which a fellow soldier he met in Yugoslavia, Scott McFarlane, caught fire after a can of gasoline exploded. For years, the smell of gasoline and burning hair sent Hartwig back to the day he had to extinguish the fire that gave his friend third-degree burns.
Hartwig said when he returned to Canada, he wouldn’t walk on the grass and was afraid of the dark. Hartwig spent three months after his deployment blowing his money on alcohol. Hartwig’s family worried that he was constantly angry, irritable and withdrawn.
“I felt really alien when I came home. I felt like I didn’t fit in,” Hartwig said. “What I found was the deeper PTSD grabs you, the smaller your world becomes.”
Hartwig said PTSD wasn’t a well-known disorder in the 1990s and soldiers had to wait months for treatment. Most, however, felt like they should suffer in silence, he said.
Hartwig eventually realized he needed help and started to look for it in 1997, although he put off getting treatment for another few years.
Since then, the military has made strides in helping soldiers suffering from PTSD. Gen. Tom Lawson, chief of the defence staff, announced last February that seven mental health workers were hired to address a series of soldier suicides.
Hartwig says there’s still a long way to go before veterans will have all the resources they need to deal with PTSD. You can learn more at the group’s website intonomansland.com
mhurley@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/meghan_hurley
查看原文...
