You know, when an 18-year old enrols... Well, when you're 18, whether you're a soldier or not, you're invincible. Whether you're behind a steering wheel or a gun, you're invincible. So, you've got troops that sign up when they're 18, who have grand national values and who want to save the world. Police officers, for example, have similar personality traits: they want to save people. This is quite ingrained in them. Now, when you enlist at 18 and you feel invincible, that it's all a big adventure, that you're not going to die and that if you were to die you'd do so in dignity and glory, you stay in the army. But when you're 41 and you've got two children aged 3 and 5, that's no longer true. Obviously that changes the way troops perceive war.
As a psychologist, I'm against all war. Politically, that's different, but as a psychologist, I'm against all war. On the other hand, if my country decides to go to war, well, we need to support our troops 100%. Either you send them to war-torn countries and support them 100%, or you don't send them at all. What I can tell you as a psychologist is that if you send them based on a political decision, well then you need to support them psychologically 100%. Does that answer your question?
You talked about awareness.
I believe that they are aware of what they're doing, and that they accept the risks. And these aren't the type of people to make big demands about wanting support. We're not talking about those kinds of people. When they enrol, and they end up living for example in Rwanda one year, then in Haiti, or Bosnia the next, they're going to manage just fine. But when they get to Afghanistan, for example, then something happens. A soldier might see his or her fellow soldier step on a mine and get blown up. Troops like that come and see me and they tell me that it's just too much, and they can't take it anymore. They can just no longer bear the memory of having brain splattered all over their hands. They just can't process it. They can't deal with it. So there are the type of people who have already served, for whom things went well, but who snapped over some incident.