Silent War-December

When one pictures a battlefield or a war, they envision crater-like holes in the blood-soaked earth from artillery, smoke drifting across dead corpses strewn over barbed wire, the sound of distant gunfire interrupted by the cries of men, bombs and shells raining down from the sky. When one is asked about the dangers, they think of rifles, machine guns, artillery, grenades, knives, and tanks just to name a few. The enemy is perceived as some nationalistic, immoral heathen from a far away land. Yet, one danger occurs off the battlefield; in homes, schools, office buildings, the park, shopping centers. The most powerful weapons here: fear and  terror. The enemy: the mind. In Slaughterhouse-Five, author Kurt Vonnegut narrates the story of Billy Pilgrim; the disturbed veteran and former prisoner of war (POW) from World War II. Pilgrim exhibits tell-tale signs of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exemplified in his visions of the Tralfamadorians and unstable emotional state. He, like many of his combat brethren, are plagued with PTSD as a result of the horrific nature of their duty. Yet, one new and underrepresented group faces a different type of PTSD. Every year, hundreds of women in the United States Armed Forces are victims of an atrocious, silent war: rape.  
This "second battle" is a fight against a corrupt, negligent bureaucratic system that denies victims the medical care and compensation (let alone the acknowledgment) that they deserve and so desperately need. In the winter of 1981 in a cold barracks of Fort Danvers, Massachusetts, Army Private Judy Atwood-Bell was violently thrown onto the cold floor and sexually assaulted by a fellow soldier. It took over twenty years for the Department of Veteran's Affairs to compensate her as she was suffering from panic attacks, insomnia and severe depression. Atwood-Bell, unfortunately, isn't the only one with a recent VA survey finding that one in four women said they experienced sexual harassment or assault. And the problem is becoming more alarming because female veterans represent the military’s fastest-growing population, with an estimated 2.2 million, ten percent, of our country’s veterans. While serving with the United States Navy in the Pacific, Elena Giordano was raped by two other sailors and when she reported it to her superiors, she was discharged for "pre-existing personality disorder." The Pentagon released new data on December 4th that showed that sixty two percent of those who reported being sexually assaulted had experienced retaliation or exclusion afterward, whether from superiors or peers in the service. The military has long been a male-dominated organization since is beginnings, but it is absolutely crucial that not only that these women (and sometimes men) receive the care and treatment they need, but that military officials and legislators become proactive in preventing ease cases rather than shuffling their paperwork along or discharging them in hopes it goes away.
I believe that the men and women who serve in the armed forces deserve the utmost respect and should be held in the highest regard as the protecters of freedom and justice, but they never have the right to violently assault a fellow soldier or anyone for that matter in such an inhumane, cowardly, and dastardly manner.