Dave Grossman, yes, there you go—great guy. They're hard books to read, but there's a lot of great information.
The first time you see the insides of a person is when you're on the battlefield. There are ways to train for that. I always quote the show Band of Brothers, where they're crawling through pig guts. We never did anything like that in my entire career. As I said, the first time I zipped up a body bag was the first time I was putting one of my buddies in it.
At the time, you're in combat; you can deal with it. Later on, you reflect on it, but there's no buffer. There's nothing to say this is what you're going to feel, it's normal, and you should be sad. You're not a wussy if you cry because your buddy died, but the attitude at the beginning was that way.
Fast forward to when someone becomes a veteran, as cases have shown.... A friend of mine's father-in-law was a Korean War veteran in his eighties, and suddenly he had PTSD from the war. It shows you that it could take a lifetime for it to expose itself. I may one day have symptoms and have to deal with it. My wife was released medically from the forces for PTSD. She was a medic.
I feel the overall approach needs to be teamwork between DND and VAC to come up with a game plan from the day we enlist someone to the day we bring them into the veteran's house. I don't know what the answer is. I think there are a lot treatments that work for seven out of 10, and then there are those three, and then seven out of 10 of those, and seven out of 10 of those. Whether it's dogs, yoga, virtual reality, MDMA, or whatever other treatments we hear about, they all work for about seven out of 10.
The flip side of that is the support system. I can tell you that Alannah was heavily affected by the DND side, where we went in expecting certain supports, very clearly written out, only to have them either be changed or yanked away or modified without our knowledge. Also, we were made almost to feel like we were having to fight for them. I hate when I talk to my brothers and sisters and they say they're fighting back for this and fighting back for that. It should never be a fight. You should not feel like you're in a scrap when you're going to a department.
We're fortunate as Canada's veterans that we have a whole ministry dedicated to our support. A lot of us feel as though we're fighting with this ministry that's supposed to be there to help us through life. I don't know what the answer to that is either, but I know, when it comes to dealing with the system, that causes a ton of mental stress to a lot of my brothers and sisters, to the point where they just won't....
Recently one of the widows, who was also serving and has a daughter the same age as our oldest, disappeared off social media, stopped returning calls. We found out that something had happened with her Veterans Affairs file, and it had completely shut her down socially. She didn't even want to pick up the phone, because just to call her Veterans Affairs office or the 1-800 number was a trigger, frankly. She just didn't want to have to deal with it.
I don't know what the answers are. I just know that we have a ministry for our support, and we have a lot of veterans feeling that they're fighting with it. I really wish we could change the tone on how that happens.
That's it for me.