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After Afghanistan, Veterans Face Another Hidden Enemy. Suicide.

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

Chicago native Tom Amenta, who served two tours in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger, understands. Now 40 with a political science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he felt a lot of bitter memories well up while watching coverage of the chaotic withdrawal.

“I had a really, really rough transition from the military,” he told me. Six weeks after he left the combat zone, he was in a classroom at the University of Illinois. He didn’t do himself any favors, he recalled, with that abrupt transition.

“I very seriously thought about killing myself,” he said. But with the help of some good friends, he began to process his conflicting thoughts and learn to trust people, he said.

“I realized it was less about my war experience than this feeling of isolation and alienation,” he said. “That really started to help.”

Now, along with fellow retired Ranger Dan Blakeley, he has turned his experience into “The Twenty-Year War,” a photo book about 71 veterans of the global war on terror and the challenges of reintegrating into civilian life.

As a drafted, Vietnam-era Army veteran, I asked Amenta how he dealt with the nagging question of whether our sacrifices — and those of others that were much greater — were, in the end, worth it.

His answer stuck with me: “As a very good friend of mine, Claire, said to me, ‘Tom, over the past 20 years, I watched my children grow up,’ she said. ‘My father got to see his grandson grow up. We were safe because of the work and dedication of you and other service members and Americans that fought to keep America that way.’ So I say, yeah, that’s my anchor.”

 

Excellent. We all need an anchor of some sort when the world around us seems to be flying apart. The war in Afghanistan, like the one in Vietnam, lasted way too long without a clearly shared sense of goals or purpose.

But, as with Vietnam, we must never devalue the service and sacrifices of those who answered the call so the rest of us might sleep better at night. As corny as it may sound to some, it still means a lot to me when I say to a fellow vet, “Thank you for your service.”

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)

©2021 Clarence Page. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.


(c) 2021 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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