The Psychological Trauma of War: First-Hand Account of a Former US Sniper in Iraq

Whenever we watch American action movies, we are told one-sided story of the heroism of the soldiers and how they can never be defeated. This of course motivates the young ones to want to be enlisted into the US army. Those propaganda movies have gained root because they are covertly sponsored by the government for enlistment into the army.

You would never know the true story on the ground until you are enlisted into the army and sent to the frontline. In the US-Iraq war, many soldiers who returned home after the war told so many stories. A personality interview published by Salon.com, told a psychological trauma Garret Reppenhagen suffered during and after the war. He had worked as a sniper during the war.

Garrett was sent to Iraq in 2004 to help in the hunt for Al-Qaeda fighters. His main duty is to assist veterans in any way possible by being on rooftops to shoot any suspected Al-Qaeda jihadists. He had been trained for three years for this particular job.

‘I was training for three years to be in the moment to do that, and I did it. It was really an ecstatic feeling that I had. I remember looking at the other guys, seeing if they saw it, because I wanted somebody else to witness it. I remember looking back and he was down in the middle of the road arching his body, spinning on his back and screaming and pulling on his stomach as if I shot him with an arrow and he was trying to pull it out’, he narrated.

That was the first time Garret took a life in Iraq. But his conscience will never let him go free. He had killed a resistant being who thought it was inappropriate for Americans to occupy his land.

`Who knows why he was out there fighting. A lot of people were fighting us because they did not want to be occupied or because they had family members who were hurt or killed and they wanted to get some sort of vengeance. By the end of my tour, it was really hard to justify killing them. We should not have been there in the first place’, he said.

The psychological trauma that accompanies these killings is unspeakable for him. He continued his story emphasizing on the effect.

‘You feel like there is this debt that you build for every life that you take. You feel like you owe the world something because you left it without this other person that could have done something amazing. I think about all of these soldiers coming out of the U.S. military and helping them get jobs and education and hearing about what they aspire to do and be in the world. And I wonder about all of the Iraqis, Syrians and others that we killed in that country and what they aspired to be’, he said sadly.

In regards to the tremendous guilt that hunted him, an army chaplain told him that a stronger belief in God would help to alleviate the feeling. God was on America’s side and Garrett was fighting for God.

‘My recovery hinged on the fact that I felt guilt and shame over committing atrocities against an occupied country. We went over there and brutalized and oppressed, and that is part of my psychological and moral injuries’.

We all have the right to be told the truth about wars. Let us get educated on the matter. We have to rid ourselves of this glorified portrayal of American soldiers as heroes. This is inaccurate. The real matter is far different from what we see in the movies.