Military Trauma

Vietnam, 1968. Daniel Cofield is nineteen years old, a helicopter crew chief with the 1st Cavalry Division. He will spend twelve months in the air above a war that will never leave him. Daniel arrives at Bien Hoa with sixty-two pounds of gear and no understanding of what waits for him. He is assigned to a Huey helicopter crew — Chalk One — under a pilot who communicates in three taps on the cyclic and says almost nothing else. His crew chief, Lou, teaches him the only rule that matters: The gun wants to fire. You just let it. Over twelve months, Daniel flies into landing zones where the...

A short story from my Medical School days.

November 1967. Central Highlands, Vietnam. Six men walk into the jungle on a routine patrol. None of them will come back the same. Sergeant Hargrove carries the weight of a brother who came home in a box. Jefferson walks point, running from a secret he's never told anyone. Delacroix reads the jungle like his Louisiana bayou, counting the days until he sees his wife again. Chen carries the radio and the unbearable weight of coordinates that turn men into smoke. Kowalski is nineteen, writing letters to a girl in a yellow dress, terrified of becoming what the war needs him to be. And Tran, the...

Rich, Bret, Ken, and Josh have dedicated their lives to ensuring that people can grow in the aftermath of trauma, and live great lives — filled with Posttraumatic Growth. This remarkable book harnesses the power of all their experience, and the incredible true stories of combat veterans and military and veteran family members who have transformed loss into gain and pain into purpose.

David W. Powell enlisted for a tour of duty in April 1966 with the US Marines after receiving an imminent draft notice. Believing he would be able to leverage his existing skills as a computer programmer, he never thought all they would see on his resume was his Karate expertise. Even less that he would wind up serving as a Rocket man in the jungles of Da Nang and Chu Lai for a 13 month tour in hell. David's journey from naive civilian to battle-hardened combat veteran shows us all how fragile our humanity really is.

A brutal ex-assassin soldier. A gentle monk. Both unprepared for each other. Their forbidden love—raw, cathartic and devastating. Ex-Command weapon Elias was trained to kill, not to feel. After a failed mission leaves him severely wounded, he finds refuge in a forgotten monastery tucked beyond Command’s reach. But mercy isn’t part of his programming. Brother Lorne—gentle, devout and disarmingly human—unravels everything he thought he knew about silence, obedience, and desire. This is not a love story. This is what comes after the fire. Sanctum is a dark M/M dystopian military man ...

From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a brilliant re-examination of post-World War II America that looks beyond the victory parades and into the veterans’—and nation’s—unhealed traumas In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and...

The groundbreaking work on trauma that remains a “classic for our generation” (Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score) Trauma and Recovery is the foundational text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a political frame, psychiatrist...

In this ambitious follow-up to Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, to illuminate the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life. Seamlessly combining important psychological work and brilliant literary...

A brutal mission. A dangerous prisoner. A bond forged in fire. Enemies by duty. Lovers by defiance. In the ashes of a broken war, Lieutenant Tom Sayer is assigned a final task: escort a volatile prisoner across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Mace—codenamed "Monkey"—is a government-forged weapon of war. Controlled by voice, caged by chains, haunted by what he’s done. Tom wears the cloth of faith. Mace wears the scars of command. But when survival becomes shared, lines begin to blur. What begins as obedience becomes obsession. What begins as penance becomes rebellion. And love—raw, ...

In 1978, a VA hospital clerk named Thomas Crane made a discovery that would change everything. While processing the personal effects of James "Rabbit" Morrison—a Vietnam veteran who had died alone in Richmond's VA hospital—Crane found something extraordinary: forty-seven letters that had been written but never sent. These weren't ordinary letters. Hidden in Morrison's footlocker were confessions that five soldiers from Firebase Charlie had carried in secret for a decade. Letters to fiancées explaining why gentle farm boys had become efficient killers. Letters to parents confessing to ...

The young Welshmen selected grew to become the closest of friends as they navigated their way through the difficult sniper cadre. After losing one of their own to the Taliban shortly after the course, Ted and the rest of the lads deployed to Helmand Province and the raging war for the second time. As the tour in Afghanistan came to an end, Ted began to feel the effects of what will later be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, and it quickly took over his life, sending him on a downward spiral.

No matter what you've been through, you don't have to sit in the darkness – discover how you can heal, and not only survive, but thrive. Up to 20% of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan experience symptoms of PTSD each year. The same is true for 12% of Gulf War veterans and 15% of those who served in the Vietnam War.

Tom Murphy is a retired Navy Captain, a combat veteran, an Olmsted Scholar, and served as a U.S. Navy SEAL for 25 years, rising through the ranks to become the Commanding Officer of two different SEAL commands, including the much-publicized SEAL Team Six. This is his story. The Navy SEAL Trident.is one of the proudest military insignia a man can wear. Embark on an extraordinary journey through the life of this U.S. Navy SEAL as he transcends the depths of trauma to explore the essence of spirituality in "Beyond the Trident."

He was built to break worlds. She was born to fix them. Kaelia Rane is a Sump rat, a scavenger, and a pilot flying a ship held together by duct tape and prayer. Her home moon of Veridia is dying, choked by toxic red iron-oxide dust that turns lungs to stone. Desperate for a cure, she breaks into the Obsidian Spire—a derelict luxury station from the fallen d'Evremonde regime. She expects to find ancient tech. Instead, she finds a nightmare. Unit 736 is a Siege-Breaker: a towering, bio-engineered super-soldier designed to crush rebellions with his bare hands. Abandoned in the dark for ten ...

Dr. Richard Miller presents iRest Meditation—an integrative, accessible practice for promoting inner balance, healing, and overall well-being. Based on the most potent yoga practices for relaxation and refined through work with military veterans rehabilitating from PTSD, this program brings...

They created the system to control chaos. Now chaos is coming for them. Emily Jensen has exposed Dominion’s secrets—but the price was high. Betrayed, hunted, and running out of time, she and Jack Carter must strike the heart of the conspiracy before it silences them for good. As the world teeters on the edge of digital collapse, old enemies return and new alliances form in the shadows. Dominion isn’t just code anymore—it’s become a movement, one that twists truth, weaponizes fear, and kills in silence. To dismantle it, Emily will have to risk more than her life. She’ll have to ...

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER First responders run toward things the rest of us run away from. What makes a person want to become a first responder? As in his bestselling book Unbroken Bonds of Battle, retired Marine Johnny Joey Jones didn’t have to look further than his closest family and...

You Just Survive is a combat veteran memoir that pulls no punches. These modern war stories from Iraq and Afghanistan sit beside plain spoken accounts of PTSD and trauma recovery, raw combat moments and the quiet battles that follow when the uniform comes off. This is not a sanitized war book. It is a combat veteran memoir told hour by hour, from turret scans in Ramadi and Marjah to patrols that ended with IEDs, mortars, and decisions you carry forever. If you search for modern war stories from Iraq and Afghanistan, you will find the real, unfiltered scenes that define this book. The book ...

"I don't think I've ever read a book that paints such a complex and accurate landscape of what it is like to live with the legacy of trauma as this book does, while offering a comprehensive approach to healing." --from the foreword by Bessel van der Kolk A pioneering researcher gives us a new...