Military Reintegration

The military, mainly focuses on the physical and mental preparation of veterans’ in order for them to witness combat. It is known that veterans’ who serve in the armed forces witness and experience violence, dead and trauma. Despite the effort of the military to prepare soldiers for combat, it is not sufficient for veterans’ to live a normal life after deployment. Many of the veterans’ who deploy are expose to a deeper inner battle within themselves when they return to their homelands. Smith and Gala True, point out that, we should consider how reintegration to civilian society requires soldiers to navigate and interpret new ways of being in the social world. We contend that the struggle to resolve contrasting identities—what we call warring

identities—during the readjustment transition plays a critical role in postwar mental distress of combat veterans. (2014). Smith and Gala’s point of view reflects the impact that the military training has upon a veteran who has been deployed. The fact that a veteran needs to unlearn what it has been deeply imbedded within themselves due to military training makes social reintegration difficult.
A veteran who attempts to reintegrate to modern society undergoes a series of mental transitions. Separation, transition, and incorporation. (Geneep, 1960). The three stages Van’s describes are the pathway a veteran undergoes in the process of social reintegration. Separation involves the removal of an individual from his or her customary social life and the imposition of new customs and taboos. The second stage, transition, is their shift between two social statuses (Turner, 1974). Turner argument suggest that the struggle veterans' experience in their intended reintegration to society are directly correlated to the military’s ways of training. The process of preparation veterans receive from the military goes beyond what they can control.