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Corporals Course tackles combat stress

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Several times during the class, the naval officer was met with nervous silence and subtle fidgeting as the corporals listened to the discussion of mental health issues in combat.

Stress. Death. Fear. Grief. Trauma. Operational fatigue. Combat stress.

“Pretty sobering, eh?” Cmdr. Paul Hammer said.

Still, Hammer gingerly tried to pull his students into the subject, reminding them of the obvious: “You experience, in combat, intense emotional experiences.”

As the chief psychiatrist for 1st Marine Division, Hammer’s appearance at the Corporals Course on Sept. 4 was intended to pry the young enlisted men’s eyes open to war’s impact on them as leaders of Marines.

He wanted to give them perspective on combat stress and some of the warning signs — the habits, traits and characteristics that their Marines or even they themselves might display.

“What makes something traumatic is how big it is,” he told the class, noting that “killing in itself can be traumatic, sometimes.”

And he wanted to dispel whatever preconceived definition they had about combat stress and its role in warfare.

“The goal of combat,” he told the class, “is to inflict [more] combat stress on the enemy than the enemy can inflict on us.”

Compounding that is the intensity of training and combat deployments, which many leathernecks repeat with little downtime in between. Such cycles of stress and adapting to stress take a toll.

“It’s go-hard, put-away-wet, one too many times,” Hammer said.

But all’s not lost, Hammer told the young leaders. One can experience horrific combat and yet still survive, relatively mentally unscathed, he said. As Hammer spoke, he stood in front of a projection of two images of tree limbs: one bent almost gracefully, the other split and shattered, a metaphor for the resilience of the human mind.

“What we want is for you to bend,” he said.

It’s a pitch that Hammer, who has completed three combat deployments to Iraq, continues to refine as he briefs and instructs Marines, from top commanders to small-unit leaders such as the class of 70 corporals attending the Corporals Course.

The 90-minute session on mental health is a relatively new addition to the young leaders since it was added to the syllabus in January, expanding upon classes on post-traumatic stress disorder.

Corporals, as small-unit leaders, “are the guys who are seeing it. They are out there leading,” said Master Sgt. Derek Werner, director of the Corporals Course.

The corporals, now as junior noncommissioned officers, bear more responsibility as leaders.

“As a lance corporal, you just get to think about yourself. As a corporal, now you’ve got to think about other people,” Hammer reminded them. “You have influence on that group — more than you may realize.”