This document provides an autobiographical account from the author about their experiences that have prepared them to tell stories of wounded veterans, despite not being a veteran themselves. The author details experiencing violence as a child in Africa, working as a prosecutor and seeing traumatic crime and suicide cases, experiencing their own mental health struggles, and bonding with veterans struggling with mental health in treatment facilities. The author argues these experiences have taught them to ask the right questions, listen carefully, and understand veterans, though they cannot fully understand the experience of combat. The goal is to honor veterans' stories and bring more nuanced understanding of mental health issues.

1. CHARLES BLOESER · TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2018 173 Reads
Writing is About Turning Blood Into
Ink: ‘time to ‘fess up
unable to attribute so far. if you can help
with that information please contact this
author
“We choose to serve. And when we choose to
serve, sometimes chance chooses us. Every
deployed service member leaves behind someone
who cares, someone who, when giving one last
hug before their warrior ships out, feels their
pride clash with the fear that this last hug might
be the last hug. After that, every call from an
unknown number, every unexpected knock on the
door, reignites the constant worry in the daily
lives of those on the home front, making them
shudder at the prospect of what might be.” - Gus
Biggio served as a Marine in Afghanistan in
2009.
Last week I[i] wrote to an Army general that the
life I’ve known since first being introduced to the
ill-mannered end of a bayonet in Africa at age 5
has prepared me better than most civilians to tell our wounded warriors’ stories. I asked him
to support my work.
“‘hope he agrees that I’m up to the task and will do what he can to see that happen,” I
thought. After all, my record of research products that other writers still cite in their own
published works began in the early ‘90s with an article about Libyan-assisted Jihadi
terrorism in this hemisphere. And it’s not a secret that Tennessee Bar officials turned to me
for an article after six of my fellow attorneys killed themselves in short order. Besides, I’m a
son and grandson of veterans.
But he may say “so what? You’re still a civilian. You don’t get what military service is like.You
don’t know anything about why 20 American vets kill themselves each day.”[ii]
Edit Note

2. The general would be right. When I wrote a Memorial Day piece about the men from the U.S.
Army’s 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division who were owned by Uncle Sam lock,
stock, and barrel when, in late 1950, they were ordered into a Communist Chinese hornets’
nest they had heard didn’t exist,[iii] I didn’t know how even one soldier felt when he learned
that what he’d been told about being home by Thanksgiving wasn’t true. I don’t have a single
reference point to help me understand how grandad felt as his soul bled out on the
battlefields at Unsan, DPRK.
As much as this writer agrees that he should feel what those warriors felt and know
intimately what too many still experience, I don’t have a way to make that happen.
But I want to propose something to that general. And I hope he’ll agree with me.
It’s this: the thing about meeting the unfriendly end of a bayonet when you’re a five-year-old
kid living below the Sahara is that early on you get to see things different from most folks
back home. It’s even better if – like I was - you’re a kid living in a place where the bodies of
family members who vanish are sometimes returned in horrible shape but with a certificate
of natural death. Of course, as a lot of veterans’ kids know far better than I, it sucks when
each moment is drenched in fear that those who love you and protect you will end up dead,
leaving you to ask, “what’s gonna happen to me?”
There’s also the business of “slumming it.” You get issued a new set of lenses when, almost
without notice, you have to give up your idyllic life in a dusty Nigerian city on the outskirts of
the Sahel, a modernizing metropolis that’s graced by a soothing, five-acre greenway that
hides a dumping ground for losers of a recent ethnic spat.[iv]
In my case, I learned early on that my country and those
tasked to do its work operate under threat 24/7. The only
question about my duty to God and country has always
been nothing more than how I would carry it out. And
even though it didn’t work out for me to serve in my
nation’s armed forces, as an attorney I still have a sworn
duty as to the United States Constitution.
One thing about being a lawyer who works to send people to prison and then a lawyer who
works hard to keep your clients out of prison is that you ask a lot of questions and you listen

3. carefully to what people say and to what they don’t say. There’s not a critical fact that a
prosecutor presents that doesn’t have to be proved or “stipulated” to by a criminal defendant.
There’s not a consequential fact alleged against a defense attorney’s client that shouldn’t be
met with “prove it.”
Fortunately for some of the men and women I’ve defended over the years, a lot of those
questions and answers came during my time as an assistant D.A. in a rural judicial district in
Oklahoma.
Members of our team took one-week turns being available to law enforcement any time of
day or night that they thought it best that a lawyer come see a dead person who’d been found.
My experience was that the ME often arrived just minutes before I did.
I’m pretty sure that we all saw some pretty nasty stuff during our weeks on death duty. I
can’t, and don’t think that I should, forget one bright afternoon not far from the Kansas line.
I had been called to a forlorn house two blocks from the D.A.’s office. Marty got there about
the same time that I did, and we followed a sheriff’s deputy down a short hall to a room that
had been spray-painted in blood earlier in the day. Marty had this ritual he had to go through
before I asked any questions. So, the ME lit his cigar, pulled on his rubber gloves, and
donned a hazmat suit stitched from gallows humor.
I had a hard time figuring out what exactly I was looking at in the place where a mother’s
head should have been. Deputies told us that the woman’s son had been to visit her a few
hours before she stripped naked and fired a shotgun into her mouth. What I experienced in
that room sticks with me and is probably why it was important to me years later that if, as I
had planned, I fired a round into my skull with the revolver I was clutching in my hand, it
was only right that I leave as small a mess as possible for those who cared about me to clean
up.
My particular mix of work at the D.A.’s office meant that more often than not, I was the
lawyer who represented the State in mental health commitment proceedings. These might
happen in a courtroom with the judge robed and managing the hearing from the bench.
That’s the way it was the day that an obviously brilliant, articulate gentleman eloquently
explained that he was Jesus Christ and that he had some killin’ to do.
But the courtroom wasn’t the only place these emergency proceedings were held. Frequently
the commitment hearing met legal standards but was a rather ugly, duct-taped proceeding
held in the middle of the night in the local ER. Or, as happened one day, the judge held court
at the jailhouse in a bare, all-concrete holding cell. Those of us who had roles in that hearing
happened to be men. So, we averted our eyes and hurried through the hoops that the law

4. required us to pass through; the person whose life was in our hands was a young woman in a
nearly catatonic state. She sat buck naked in front of us, a deputy explained, because she had
been so persistent in trying to kill herself that jail staff decided the only way to keep her from
getting it done was to take away any clothing item she might weaponize.
There seemed to be rhythm to the series of commitment hearings held each month. But god
help the families, first responders, and my secretary each time the full moon paid a visit.
Years ago, a psychiatrist I called to the stand told jurors that some of the smartest, most
creative, and most accomplished members of society have, in my words, fought the devil to
stay alive. The people he listed had household names.
The questions that I asked gave the doctor a chance to testify about a few things the jurors
might not have heard of in our “if it bleeds it leads” news culture. Jurors found his testimony
helpful, and the trial ended the way that I thought it should.
I accepted everything that expert witness had said with professional detachment. As with
most witnesses, I doubt that I felt an emotional response to anything the doctor had told
jurors. But I knew this was good stuff to keep at the ready.
A few years after that trial, a lot more of what the psychiatrist told jurors became personal for
me. And I was forced to learn at least a few intimate truths about the wicked high wire that
life demands so many of our veterans walk.
I’ve never been quite able to figure out why that happened. But at the time I was trench deep
in reviewing seemingly never-ending evidence that federal prosecutors had turned over in a
multi-state child-sex-trafficking case. I was having a hard time shaking an image my mind
had created while reading through FBI FD-302s and other investigation documents: a ten-
year-old girl who’d been kidnapped and taken from her home state so that she could be sold
out for sex. What was left of the child’s broken body had been found in a dumpster behind a
grocery store. The poor kid had refused a bottom bitch’s order to let an over-the-road trucker
rape her.
My little girl had been that age not too many years earlier.
As far as I know, I was never involuntarily committed for treatment. And only once was an
ambulance sent to collect me. It seems that once I finally decided to call the number on the
“please don’t jump” sign in front of my jeep, I spent too long discussing the merits of crashing
onto State Route 96 from a popular diving bridge in Williamson County, Tennessee. Number
7 on Forbes 2017 list of 10 wealthiest counties in America.

5. Bridge on the Devils Backbone aka Natchez Trace. Williamson
County TN USA. Image attribution Galen 911. accessed 12 June
2018
One Size Fits All
Recently departed British
historian Ben Shephard reports
unsettling truths about how we
now decide who suffers from shell
shock aka combat trauma aka
post-traumatic stress. He writes:
“The rapid growth of
‘traumatology’ within medicine
was helped by the authority
which Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder quickly acquired by being included in the American Psychiatric Association’s
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III) in 1980. Not only was there now a ‘Chinese
menu’ of its symptoms, easy for both doctor and patient to read, there were also
standardised packages of diagnostic questionnaires and psychometric devices. No longer
need the doctor struggle to understand his patient’s life history and personality, assess his
ability to cope, make a ‘subjective’ judgement on his state. Now, the checklist of symptoms
told him at a glance whether the patient’s condition was PTSD or not; it was all ‘objective’,
taken out of the clinician’s hands.”[v]
I don’t claim to have PTS(D). And the experts I met with back then seemed to split on that
question.
In fact, I’ve had a pretty trauma-free life. At least when compared to those we send into
combat and their spouses and children who may never get back the same person who left. So,
I don’t even want to go down that road.
But Mr. Shephard’s point that we’ve objectified away even the process by which a clinician
asks the right questions, listens deliberately, and tailor-makes a treatment plan helps explain,
at least to me, one of the reasons that veterans who suffer from PTS(D) don’t get the help
they need.
People who should know better can be quick to attach labels that lack nuance. And knowing
that we do it to our vets makes it easier for me to divine the frustration flowing through the
words of a former Navy SEAL who broke silence in order to let others in the NSW community
know about new evidence from post-mortem studies of explosive-blast traumatic brain
injury. If I read the 40th Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate correctly, evidence of
blast-wave damage to the brain structure confirmed his concern that those who treated his

6. U.S. Navy SEAL Ryan Francis
Larkin, fallen 23 April 2017. image
courtesy navysealfoundation.org
son for PTS-related symptoms took the easy way out
when it came to diagnosing and treating U.S. Navy SEAL
Ryan Francis Larkin.
“Throughout Ryan’s painful journey, the ‘system’
defaulted toward treating him as a behavioral problem
or a mental health patient. The ‘system’ hung all types of
labels on him to justify their assessments and
actions.”[vi]
As his father put it, “[o]ne Sunday morning this past
[April 23, 2017], Ryan ended his pain, but ours only
continued.”
“Time for Group!”
There are a few things only experienced by those of us lucky enough to have spent a few days,
a few weeks, months, or maybe longer in a hospital with doors that lock you in, staff who
immediately take your phone and shoelaces, mandatory queue for meds and meals, and
maybe an hour or two during the week when the people who love you come by, avert their
own eyes, and fumble for something to say.
One of those is that even if, as I did back then, one goes voluntarily into one of these places,
once the doors lock behind you, you can’t just walk out of the place at will. I was there
because I knew that I needed the help of professionals who know a lot more about the brain
and mind than I did. But I also wanted to get the hell out as soon as I could. So, I learned
quickly how many “group” therapy sessions I could miss and how much I had to participate
in those groups if I wanted to be reported in staff notes as being committed to my “recovery.”
The more committed you are, the earlier they let you out. At least that was my experience.
I learned how much I had to comply with staff directives. And I kept my mouth shut around
the staff person we all called “Nurse Ratched.” This approach worked well, and I never had to
stay in one of those places very long.
Speaking just for me, though, two facts of life about those facilities and the reasons that they
exist have a way of beating up on you years after I needed that kind of specialized care. One is
that while on the way there, it’s damned easy to burn just enough bridges that no matter how
good you are at what you do you find yourself without enough work references to complete
the job application on the back side of a McDonald’s tray liner.

7. United States Marine Deana Martorella Orellana,
USMC, RIP. image courtesy NPR/WUNC
The other thing is that even though they tell you not to, you come to care a lot about those
who intimately understand what you’ve been through – about those who “get it” – and you
stay in touch after y’all leave the place.
But too many times, these people – whom you’re sure will make it - don’t. And our hearts get
rubbed raw, as mine did today on reading a Facebook post from not long ago, written by the
only son of someone I shared a lot of meals and down-time with at one of those places. Both
of us in love with Tennessee but with Arizona ties. Someone who made you think. Made you
feel. Someone I came to care a lot about who lost her fight with her demons a few years ago.
Her son, a child she always talked about and who’s now older, writes a note to his mom in
cyberspace to tell her how much he loves her and how much his life hurts without her and
how much he just wants to give up so that he can be with her.
My message for those I hope will help me
get our veterans’ stories to those who can do
the most good with them is NOT “I almost
put a bullet through my skull, so I must
know how those guys feel.” It’s not “I was
scared dad would get killed so I know what
that American soldier in Afghanistan’s
Korengal Valley felt when he said that one
tough thing about losing the guy everyone
considers the best fighter is that you wonder
“what’s going to happen to me?”[vii] My
suggestion to that general is also not “I blew
my family apart and ran off the one woman
who brought me tranquility, which had been
a stranger to me; so what that means is that
I know what that B-24 co-pilot’s going through when says that PTSD made him such a bad
father that he hasn’t seen his 3 sons in 25 years.”[viii]
It’s none of those things. I’m still a civilian who’s never been in combat, and I still don’t get it.
I can’t get it.
The reason that this duct-taped, Bondo-filled life gives me a better shot than most at telling
our wounded warriors’ stories is that I’ve become very good at sorting out what questions
need to be asked and figuring out where – and who[ix] – I need to go to for the answers, if

8. Charles Bloeser at a souk, likely in Kano, Nigeria 1969
there are any. I listen deliberately
to the words that someone speaks,
but I also listen hard to the words
a person might never have been
able to utter.
Another thing is that during my
four years with a local non-profit
that still does a lot right by a lot of
people - veterans included - I got
better at looking forward and
observing how one domino in someone’s life falls onto another. And that one falls onto the
next one. And so on.
That’s why it’s so troubling when we impose multi-generational costs on families by turning
away immune-compromised or otherwise at-risk veterans, especially those with kids.
Perhaps a young Marine who’s been sleeping rough since her return from a war zone. A
woman who desperately loves her children but who still can’t look in her children’s eyes
without recalling in living color and odor and sound and sensation what happened to young
children like the ones she comforted in her arms the day before. That’s the kind of shit that
makes NPR have to remind us just two weeks ago that female veterans kill themselves at a
rate 250% that of women who’ve not served.
But then there’s that non-analytical, non-linear, usually concealed part of me that is a
cocktail of everything from before and after I met that discourteous bayonet. It’s the part of
me that refuses to hold back my tears and which barely conceals my rage when I hear what
we did to a warrior whose whole family has devoted themselves to the underpaid,
underappreciated, and completely misunderstood work of defending this nation and its
interests. A former special operator who trained SOF medics and who explains to
documentarians what he learned only after he had to make 15 freedom-of-information
requests: that the last phone call he ever had with his son was after the soldier had been
accused of faking his combat trauma and before that soldier was taken back to his quarters,
handed his weapon and ammunition, and told to go clean his gun.[x]
ENDNOTES
[i] Charles Bloeser is a trial and appellate lawyer with advanced training and research
activities in comparative politics and international relations, as well as research design and

9. quantitative methods. Among his published research are works re foreign-funded Jihadi
terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, civilian-military law enforcement relations, federal
criminal law, and Federal court procedure.
His previous work has been cited, among other places, in publications of the CATO Institute
(2009) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine (2006), as well as
inthe Mississippi Law Journal (2016), Small Wars Journal (2011), Georgetown Law Journal
(2008), George Mason Law Review (2007), William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (2006),
University of Florida Journal of Law & Pub. Policy (2006), and Indiana Law Review (2003);
also cited in: James Seger, The Occupy Movement: Signs of Cultural Shifts in Group
Processes Shaped by Place, PhD. diss., Pacifica Graduate Institute (2017), Spencer Mawby,
Ordering Independence: The End of Empire in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1947-69. Palgrave
Macmillan UK (2012), and in Brandon Oliveira & Darby Avilas, Disrupting
EmergingNetworks: Analyzing and Evaluating Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM) and the
Development of an Extremist Threat in the Caribbean, M.S. thesis, U.S. Naval Postgraduate
School (2012).
The author’s research and writing agenda seeks to translate the experiences of combat-
wounded veterans into language his fellow civilians might understand. A research article
telling the stories of combat - wounded Allied airmen flying bombing missions over occupied
Europe – crafted around the successful escape and evasion of a B-17 bombardier from
Memphis, Tennessee – is in the works.
[ii] See, Nicole Fisher. Suicide Rates Show Veterans’ Biggest War Can Happen in Their
Minds. Thefederalist.com. 28 May 2018. Accessed 11 June 2018. Ms. Fisher notes that
“veterans’ suicides account for 18 – 20 percent of suicide deaths in the country, while they
make up only about 8.5 percent of the adult population. . ..[T]his is not a new trend,” she
writes. “While the Vietnam Memorial has the names of 58,315 Americans who died overseas,
the wall does not document any names of the estimated 50,000 – 150,000 Vietnam vets who
died from suicide in the years after returning home.”
SOFREP journalist and former Team Leader from 3rd Ranger Battalion Luke Ryan offers his
opinion re recent suicide data reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control:
“A lot of these statistics don’t seem to make sense — especially in regards to those who don’t
have diagnosed mental health problems. Many of us live more comfortable lives than ever,
and violent crimes are at an all-time low. Why then are rates of depression skyrocketing?
Why the massive increase in suicide? Why the increase in seemingly pointless violent crime
(like school shootings, as opposed to gang violence, war or personal feuds)?
“A lot of answers aim to blame the easy targets like “this generation just sucks,” or “it’s all
XYZ politician’s fault.” However, the only source that makes sense to me, that really speaks to

10. these seemingly contradictory numbers, is Sebastian Junger’s book, “Tribe: On Homecoming
and Belonging.” I would recommend it to anyone living in modern, western culture, and
though it has garnered a great deal of attention, I don’t think it is nearly enough to do the
book justice. It does not provide the path forward, but I think it speaks to the origins of these
issues we are seeing in our modern culture.” Luke Ryan, (referencing Sebastian Junger,
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, 4th Estate (London 2016)). Luke Ryan. CDC reports
massive increase in suicides since 1999. SOFREP.com. 9 June 2018.
https://sofrep.com/104377/cdc-reports-massive-increase-in-suicides-since-1999/
A recent segment from North Carolina Public Radio about depression and suicide among
female veterans lends further support to the argument espoused by Mr. Junger in Tribe:
“Human connections are crucial for mental health, and especially when women are just
getting out of the service, said Corchado.
"The military really made it seem like all you do is this, this and this, and you need LinkedIn
and you'll be good," said Corchado, who's a personal trainer and real estate agent.
“Once out of the service, though, she didn't feel tied in to any kind of support.
"You get into this free fall and you don't know how to climb back out of it," Corchado said.
"But I didn't realize until years later that every veteran, but especially female veterans go
through that free fall." https://www.npr.org/2018/05/29/614011243/battling-depression-
and-suicide-among-female-veterans
[iii] Charles Bloeser. Owned Lock, Stock, and Barrel. Facebook Note May 28 2018.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/charles-bloeser/owned-lock-stock-and-
barrel/10156213813571438/
[iv] I’ve been able recently to revisit and fact check those days while mom finished her four-
year project of writing the manuscript for an historical memoir about our years in Africa. It
turns out that I’ve repressed a lot. Vaccines & Bayonets: Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid
Tribalism, Terror and the Cold War. www.vaccinesandbayonets.com
[v] A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century at 385. Harvard
University Press 2001. [author notes in chapter 27, fn. 3 that, “I have stolen the phrase
‘Chinese menu’ from G. E. Vaillant, ‘The disadvantages of DSM-III outweigh its advantages’,
AJP 141 (1984), p. 543.]

11. [vi] Open letter to NSW community from former Navy SEAL and 40th U.S. Senate SAA Mr.
Frank Larkin, featured in an SOFX Special Presentation: “Blast, Traumatic Brain Injuries,
and Suicide within Special Operations.” Sept. 29, 2017. “Like many special operators
suffering from PTS and TBI,” wrote his father, “it was a struggle for Ryan to move through
daily tasks; sleep was elusive and nightmares were abundant. He was always on guard for
something to happen, often dealing with unannounced attacks of anxiety and depression.
Ryan often expressed he was haunted by things he experienced in combat; where at times he
questioned his own survival. He sought help while in the Navy and upon discharge with the
VA. The help more often involved being prescribed a new psychotropic drug that only made
him feel worse not better. Focus was on treating and suppressing symptoms, not identifying
the root causes of his issues.”
[vii] Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington (deceased). RESTREPO: One Platoon, One
Valley, One Year. National Geographic and Outpost Films 2010.
[viii] John Alpert, Ellen Goosenberg Kent, Matthew O’Neill with James Gandolfini.
WARTORN: 1861 – 2010. HBO 2011.
[ix] For example, in a 2014 article looking at the use of complementary and alternative
medicine (CAM) among Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom
(OEF/OIF) veterans and OEF/OIF-era veterans, Professor Katharine Bloeser and her
colleagues note that “[v]eterans deployed to a combat zone report poorer health than
veterans not deployed. Conditions associated with CAM use including depression, anxiety,
PTSD, and chronic pain are also associated with deployment to OEF/OIF.”
Matthew J. Reinhard, Thomas H. Nassif, Katharine Bloeser, Erin K. Dursa, Shannon K.
Barth, Bonnie Benetato, and Aaron Schneiderman. CAM Utilization Among OEF/OIF
Veterans: Findings From the National Health Study for a New Generation of US Veterans.
Medical Care Volume 52, Number 12 Suppl 5, December 2014.
[x] Id.
Author note:
The VA encourages those who need help to reach out:
“Veterans, Service members, and their loved ones can call 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1, send
a text message to 838255, or chat online to receive free, confidential support 24 hours a day,
7 days a week, 365 days a year, even if they are not registered with VA or enrolled in VA
health care.” https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/

12. A 2016 VA OIG report found that callers didn’t always get through to someone at the hotline.
I don’t want to suggest that things haven’t gotten better, but I still provide the link to one
such story because it includes information that may help those doing contingency planning.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/va-suicide-hotline-calls-went-to-voicemail-report-finds/
The title of this essay derives from a comment attributed to T.S. Eliot: “The purpose of
literature is to turn blood into ink.”
More info re author of this essay @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesbloeser/
#woundedwarriors #vetsuicides #combatstress #combattrauma #PTSD #TBI #Army
#Marines #AirForce #CoastGuard #Navy #RAF #SAS #SBS #RoyalMarines #BritishArmy
#RCAF #RCMP #Tribe #SOF #SOFREP #SOFX #charlesbloeser