The Effects War Has on Military Families

War is one of the most powerful threats we have on the Earth today. War can bring about a variety of things in a variation of different ways and it is completely up to the government to decide a country's war position. It is up to individuals that will under no circumstances have to experience what they have created, but what happens to the soldiers they send in to battle for them and their families. For the soldiers they are trapped with an involvement unlike any other known to man, stuck with memoirs and images of what it's like to be hunted by an opposing soldier. Different types of people take different effects away from the warfront and are affected in diverse ways, but big changes after a war are unavoidable. In the stories “The Red Convertible” and “Home Soil”, the authors tell what it’s like for soldiers that come back home and what kind of change they may experience. These stories tell you about the psychosomatic changes that take place in a soldier’s mind and how war affects their personalities and manners.

The book “Home Soil” is a story of a son and fathers, which were both armed forces in two very different wars and it also, tells of the changes that took place in them after both of their war experiences. Before going into the war the son, Bohdan, was an outward-bound young man. He was just like a regular guy that loved to have fun, in high school he started playing the bongos to try to make himself more popular with the girls. He taught himself after getting all of his basics from a record called "Let’s Swing the Bongos". He took both of them both to war when he went, and both of the books returned broken symbolizing the changes in his previous personality. His father pointed out to him that he now walks like a soldi...

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... for war it only disrupts the harmonious environment of the family, causing families to be broken apart at the thought of losing a loved one. Children are not fully understanding of why their parent or parents are leaving them. Once the soldier returns it makes the child even more confused. Even if a soldier does come back home unharmed physically, the mental damage could reign heavy on the family for years to come. Since a good amount of soldiers are effected by PTSD is can cause serious and life threatening problems.

Works Cited

Erdrich, L. (2009). The Red Convertible.

Geurs, K., Geurs, K., Sanchez, R., & Sabaroff, R. (1987). Home Soil. Los Angeles, CA.

Mooney, L. A., Knox, D., & Schacht, C. (1997). Understanding Social Problems.

Minneapolis/St. Paul: West Pub.

Webster, N. (1995). PTSD Definition. In The Merriam-Webster dictionary.

New York, NY: Pocket Books.