William Willett served seven and a half years of active duty in the Army Infantry, serving at FOB Paliwoda outside of Balad, Iraq from February 2004 to February 2005.  Since his honorable discharge from the military, William has lived in Germany with his wife, and has begun coping with his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  His wife, a designer, has designed a public-service campaign on PTSD.  Here's their story, and the PTSD-awareness posters his wife designed.

From Stefanie Willett:

When my husband came back physically healthy, he separated honorably from the US-Army. We thought we could start a normal life. But soon my husband was facing and suffering from the psychological side effects of war.  We received no help or advice from the military on how to deal with this new and unknown situation and I, as my husband‘s only person to turn to, was totally overwhelmed with this task.

For these reasons it is important to make people understand and learn about the trauma of combat in order to better deal with affected people and help them to overcome or at least live as best as possible with their illness. Not only the war and the trauma are giving soldiers and veterans hard times but also the „suck it up-mentality" of the US-Army. Many are afraid of consulting a doctor because of their careers and/ or the worries of losing their jobs; others are ashamed; others again don‘t even realize that something is wrong with them.

I wanted to let the pictures appear as if I took them randomly to show that triggers can be anywhere and anytime in situations that healthy people don‘t even recognize or sense as boring, harmless or not even worth thinking about.

I turned the pictures upside down to show, in a very simple but poster-effective way, that the world of PTSD patients is literally upside down, that it is not normal even though they are back in normality.

 
Text: I was looking forward to seeing my family.  Now I'm getting divorced and live isolated.

From William Willett:

I was deployed to Iraq with C co 1-26 Infantry, Get After It, from February 2004 to February 2005. We were attatched to augment an Armor battalion along with another Infantry company, some National Guard guys whom I didn‘t know were there until they had left, and a handful of Engineers. We were at a FOB just outside of Balad, a relatively calm city along the Tigris. We had three main missions: route clearance along a strip of MSR Tampa and convoy escort when needed; QRF [Quick Reaction Force] for our foster battalion‘s AO; Training the ICDC/ING [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps/Iraqi National Guard].

Most of my time in Iraq was spent waiting: waiting for the patrol to be over, waiting for the road to explode, waiting for the natives to get restless, waiting to kill someone, waiting to die. This state of constant readiness or controlled fear takes it‘s toll over the course of a year. There were only a few occaisions during my time that I didn‘t have to wait, and two of those I still have trouble with today.

We were preparing all summer to go into Samarra. We‘d done two feints, testing the waters of resistance, and then we were waiting again. This was gonna be our little piece of history. We‘d get spun up, wait for the word, and then stand down. But each time it had that feeling to it. This was it. No more shaking down farmers on some dirt road that leads to the middle of nowhere. No more chasing the white Nissan truck with a red stripe on it... no wait, black stripe on...no red stripe... no wait...a grey mercedes with.... This was it.

Finally the night came. The enemy element was reported to be between two hundred and nine hundred. Enough that they loaded up the 113 with a platoon plus‘ worth of body bags. BDE was expecting the worst about 20 percent attrition, at least rumor had it - and rumor usually rules. And these guys have known for weeks we were coming. And we had aerial photos of fortified positions and a dozen or so possible VBIED‘s [vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices] and all manner of believed defenses. So there was a bit of unease going into this thing, but hey, this was it, right? We did our final PCI‘s and PCC‘s and we loaded the vehicles and waited. Right out the gate a Bradley shit the bed, so we had to unload and then reload and then crossload all our shit and fi nd people new seats. So this was it? Pulling security outside our FOB not 5 minutes into it. Waiting again. Finally we got it straightened out, losing another vehicle in the process, but whatever, right? Get after it. Now we were waiting again but in moving vehicles at least. We made the movement without incident, and then sat there three hundred meters from the city, waiting again, but at least we could hear why we were waiting, with the tanks and the arty and the whatnots preping our entrance. And I will say that they did a helluva good job and I will always respect, if not like, our Army‘s Armor and Artillery and Whatnot branches. Moving on....

Well after all that waiting the ramp came down and we got after it. We moved in a wedge through a fucking graveyard, literaly a graveyard, and fi nally moved to enter and clear the first building. A SAW gunner blew the lock off it‘s hasp with a seven round burst, not the preferred method, but whatever works and we felt pretty exposed so I think that‘s was justifiable. The place was completely empty, so we trashed...so we searched it and moved on. Next house we smashed the door down with a swat tool over the SAW approach, but again empty. But empty is good don‘t get me wrong. And we moved on like that up and down our assigned city block. Using different tools, and when they failed the shotguns-finally the shotguns, to breach empty houses, search them and move on.

Once our first block foothold was established and we encountered our first residents of the city, a scared shitless family who actually hadn‘t heard we were coming and whom my team dealt with in a very dignified and respectful manner such that the situation allowed, we set up a position on their roof and waited for our adjacent units to get on line with us. The adjacent units had a few more Samarrans in their AO‘s. Waiting again, but now we waiting on a range. I had two SAW gunners with me and a rifleman and I had an unused M203. Not long after getting on the roof and assigning sectors of fi re we had movement. There was small arms fire out of a mosque window, not in our direction but in our cardinal direction so my SAW‘s opened up on it, and I finally fired some 40mm, three to be exact - all fell just short of target, but, hey, I did just clear a city block, ok, I can‘t hit shit with a 203. A few minutes went by and then seven figures in black man dresses and masks came running across an intersection. I couldn‘t identify weapons but my gunners had MGO‘s and could clearly see weapons so I had them engage. Four figures dropped the others ran into a store.

Holy shit. These are the first people I had ever seen killed. And I felt a little rush of adrenaline but mostly nothing at all.

Text: Construction noises automatically make me duck. 

See the complete poster series here .

Our squad leader and LT came up to see what the hell we were doing, and I gave him a distance and direction and the LT cleared and called for fire. I was trying to adjust the rounds for him which were way off, when suddenly the intersection lit up like I couldn‘t fucking believe. We were about four hundred meters or so from it, and it was the most powerful feeling I‘ve ever had in my life. The heavens fell and the earth shook. I was pumped. Just then I noticed movement to our front left. This lone guy was walking back and forth from a mud wall to a truck. Suspicious?

He‘d crouch by the truck then walk back to the wall. About the third time he dusted off his hands as he got up from the truck. So I called it out to my SL as individual arming IED, which it appeared to be, and took the shot. And missed. I misjudged the distance. So I put some arc on it and walked my rounds up to and ,I‘m guessing, because he hit the dirt on his back, into this guy. My waiting was over. I killed. And as soon as I did I thought what if this was just some guy who was stupid enough to stay here and just came out to see what that explosion was over at the Samarra shopn-save? This never occured to me before shooting. Had I just killed an innocent bystander? Was I so pumped up with all the shooting and explosions and running from building to building. Was I so exhausted from waiting for the chance to kill an enemy that I invented one? I was able to push it aside at the time and rejustify my identification. And this was only about forty-five minutes into a sixteen hour non-stop operation. An operation which seriously put a physical hurtin‘ on me. We cleared forward into the city eleven blocks. Set up a company CP. Ate lunch. And then cleared seven more and set up another rooftop defense. And that was the only „action" we saw all day.  A bullet, a stray, pinged off a sign post between my leg and another guys leg. Some people were a little less than cooperative with us and we had to explain ourselves with somewhat escalated physical language. Other than that nothing much happened the rest of the time we were in the city.

We had liberated the city of Samarra. Mission Accomplished.

My Platoon stayed in the city setting up check points and doing more detailed searches which resulted in a massive cache in an Iraqi Policeman‘s house. They were there 14 days. I was there all of three. I got overzealous while searching a house on the third morning. We had a Reporter from the NY Times with us and I was talking, not thinking, and stepped in a box, something broke ,and as I pulled out my foot it got a lot warmer. I managed to sever a vein but miss the artery.

Our medic eager to us his combat toys too, hit me with his fi rst combat administered ampule of morphine. Which was terrible at fi rst, but then fucking great after about ten minutes. They evaced me to the BDE AA where I got some percocets after the morphine wore off, and then I got rushed back to our FOB to see how bad my „wound" was. So this was it. I killed a guy, got high, and got the fuck out. I also got my picture in the NY Times standing in the box that bit me.

After a few more percocet refills and the a couple Tramadol ( a non-narcotic pain killer that had the effect more akin to speed) refi lls. It was back to waiting. Waiting to leave. I still had about four months unless we got extended. Waiting and thinking. Was it really necessary to kill that guy or not. Waiting and doubt.

Two months prior to leaving we exchanged sectors with another Platoon. We had to learn a new sector right in time for the elections. One night we got called off mission to go investigate an explosion at some school that had happened like five hours earlier. It was on a canal road way the hell out in nowhere. But it was a polling sight for some village so we had to see. Polling sights had a way of attracting bombs. We got there and sure enough it was blown to shit. OK. While

EOD was doing what it is that they do to blown up stuff, I was pulling security with my rifleman and a SAW gunner. Some crazy old Iraqi, about sixty fi ve years old, comes out with his Iran-Iraq war AK and started screaming gibberish. We told him to stop and he took a knee. Right there I should have shot him. My PEQ2 was center mass. But I couldn‘t. He tried to chamber a round but I couldn‘t shoot him. The SAW gunner didn‘t miss a beat though and put two neat bursts into him. I saw the mans facial expression go slack. That will always how they say haunt me. I was watching through my NODS. And you know how creepy faces look through NODS that plus watching him die was too fucking much. Plus I froze. I fucking failed my guys out there. A soldier could have died because of me. Then the whole family came out ,like 12 people, all women and children wailing and covering the body, which still has the weapon on it-him, and now I‘m thinking that I‘m gonna have to shoot a woman or a kid because sombody‘s gonna want some revenge.

Luckily small arms fi re broke out on our opposite fl ank, the one with all the vehicles on it, and the noise of the 25mm sent everyone running away. Apparently it was an ambush set for us to arrive at about four hours earlier and they were sick of waiting for us. We only found two bodies both of which were annoyingly still alive and unarmed. I was a registered EMT so I got the luxury of helping with these two guys. Both had severe head trauma as a result of shrapnel or secondary projectiles. Huge chunks of concrete were blown from the house and that probably did the damage.

Whatever it was it fucked em up pretty bad. One guy had his face cut diagonoly across from under his eye through his nose and to his mouth. And when he would breathe or vomit it was like he had two mouths. The other guys skull was cracked open and gray matter was exposed. Both of them lived through the evac process to Anaconda, but died a few days later.

These images don‘t really bother me though. Yeah it sucked to see and smell and feel,but it doesn‘t linger the way that old man‘s face does. What really bothers me is that I might have shot someone I shouldn‘t have, and I didn‘t shoot somone I should have. Everyone in my platoon came back alive that‘s what counts right. Until you‘re back then what. How do I sucessfully brain dump all of that time of intense waiting? How do I resolve the fact that I failed my mission? That I was too eager one minute and to afraid the next? What does that say about me as a person?

My struggle with PTSD picks up where these questions end. I don‘t have an answer yet. I know through trial and error a few things that help and that don‘t. The best thing is support from someone you love. My wife is probably the only reason I‘m not in a hospital, jail or dead. Second to that is finding the right medication to manage the more intrusive symptoms. And at the same time find a professional to talk to. And that‘s pretty much where I am today. Trying to make sense of myself. Get after it.