Fort Bliss Soldier With PTSD Featured In HBO Documentary
“I am not so well. I am clear off the hooks,” wrote a soldier who soon would be discharged from the Army as unfit to serve. Back at home in Pennsylvania, he turned increasingly paranoid and violent.
Then he killed himself.
The year was 1864 for this young Civil War veteran.
It would take more than a century, and many more wars, for post-traumatic stress disorder to be recognized as a medical condition and to be acknowledged by the U.S. military as a raging fact of life.
A new HBO documentary, “Wartorn: 1861-2010,” charts this hearttbreaking story, from the U.S. invasion of Iraq all the way back to the Civil War, whose veterans, according to the film, accounted for more than half the patients in mental institutions of that era. The film debuts at 7 p.m. Mountain Time, Thursday, Nov. 11 and is available on HBO On Demand through Dec. 12.
James Gandolfini is an executive producer, returning the former “Sopranos” star to veterans affairs after his 2007 HBO documentary, “Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq.”
ABC-7 spoke with a Fort Bliss soldier who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq and is dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sgt. Billy Fraas is featured prominently in “Wartorn.”
Fraas came in contact with at least a dozen roadside bombs during three tours in Iraq and was eventually diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. The injury has left him dealing with dizziness, vertigo and debilitating headaches.
The 38-year-old Fraas, who has spent 18 years of his life in the service, said he hopes the HBO film reaches others suffering from TBIs and PTSD.
“From me coming forward doing this,” Fraas said. “I’m hoping other soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, anybody that’s having problems comes forward and gets help because there’s a big stigma on this disorder. And the stigma is, ‘Oh, you’re just faking it and get over it.'”
Fraas said at one point the Army started asking his closest buddies whether he was faking the problems he was having. It was Fraas’ wife, Marie, who was finally able to get him help.
A Washington Post review of ?Wartorn? describes the Fraas portion of the documentary as ?an elegant and quiet finish? to the film. Even a trip with his wife and kids to Walmart is more than Fraas can handle.
“It’s getting close,” Fraas says in the film while he’s in the store, expressing his need to flee this big, seemingly threatening store. “We got people staring at us.”
?Pushing (with clenched hands ) a cart down the grocery aisles, in a scene eerily reminiscent of the penultimate moments from last year’s Oscar-winning ?The Hurt Locker,?? Fraas resorts to what he calls the “swivel” — moving his head back and forth in constant vigilance for his demons,? The Washingto Post review states. ?Though this dread has a medical name, that doesn’t mean anyone can tell Fraas what to do now.?
Fort Bliss officials say they’ve come a long way in dealing with TBIs and PTSD. In addition to Fort Bliss’ Restoration and Resilience Center and Warrior Transition Unit for those diagnosed with PTSD or a TBI, the Army is also now screening soldiers before they return from war and making Behaviorial Health Teams available to all Brigades.
“Wartorn” also hears from a group of World War II veterans who for the first time open up about the stigmatizing condition then termed “combat fatigue” that has plagued them ever since.
“I thought I was the only one in the whole world that came out of the war with something wrong with my head,” says Michael Shields, who describes the separate beds he and his new wife occupied because of his disruptive nightmares – nightmares he still has, a half-century later.
Today, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, is working to change attitudes toward PTSD. But he concedes to Gandolfini that resistance from within the military continues even now.
“You’re fighting a culture … that doesn’t believe that injuries you can’t see can be as serious as those injuries you can see,” he tells Gandolfini.
“The military was extremely generous in allowing me access to people that I was shocked that I got access to,” said Gandolfini, reflecting on the film’s preparation. He added that he believes the military is “doing the best they can” to find answers.
Asked how much impact he thinks “Wartorn” might have in awakening the public and further spurring the military, he replied, “Do I think a documentary is going to change the world? No, but I think there will be individuals who will learn things from it, so that’s enough.”
“His heart is in this issue,” said executive producer Sheila Nevins, back with Gandolfini for “Wartorn” after their collaboration on “Alive Day Memories.”
The film initially was never meant to span 150 years, she said. But as research progressed, “we found, in every war, soldiers come home with war wounds that are in many cases irreparable, and not necessarily recognized by the military.”
It was a wrenching discovery process, she added: “People were telling us things we didn’t really know how to hear.”
Related Links:Link:Watch Wartorn: 1861-2010 TrailerLink:Fort Bliss Says It Will Examine How It Treats Brain InjuriesLink:Pentagon Issues New Policy For Diagnosing, Treating Brain InjuriesLink:Photo Made Fort Bliss Soldier Heroic Figure Of Iraq War; PTSD Led To His Death
