It might be hard to argue that after spending a trillion dollars and more on the War on Terror we could have lowered the expenses drastically by spending a little more on R&R but that’s my take on this article. It compares a 4% PSTD rate among British soldiers with the reported 30% rate for US soldiers.
Perhaps we could have matched the Brits by giving our troops some excape from the grind after all I don’t imagine there is all that much difference psychologically between our two societies. The savings from scrimping on R&R will be more than offset by years of repairing broken psyches or worse yet minimizing the problem like our military did for years after Vietnam when our soldiers complained that Agent Orange had made them sick.
Another explanation is the stark difference between how the two governments deploy their troops. U.K. rules prohibit soldiers from spending more than 13 months in combat during a three-year period, and average tours of duty are six months, half the length of American soldiers.
Even more important are programs that send U.K. soldiers for a few days of “third location decompression” on the island of Cyprus before returning them to their home communities. “One to four days of R&R on a Mediterranean island with members of the same fighting unit apparently helps veterans come home with an easier mind,” reports Miller-McCune.
