Combat kills and destroys. Can it also shape some soldiers for the better?

One of the more enduring portraits of the modern military veteran is a soldier afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder. A few different versions exist — there’s the angry, crazed vet (think Robert De Niro’s ex-Marine Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, and Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo), and the outcast, woebegone ex-soldier (like Gary Sinise’s alcoholic Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump). Vietnam-era caricatures, all.

The fact that PTSD is something that plagues many people at some point in their lives — car-crash survivors, victims of violent crime, men and women who abruptly lose a loved one — gets lost amid the power of an entrenched narrative. “Veteran” and PTSD go together in our culture like sunglasses and a hangover, and — much to my eternal chagrin — no amount of Embrace the Suck columns will change that.

This isn’t to dismiss PTSD, or ignore the fact that some of its effects do impact the veterans community at alarming rates. (Vets make up roughly 20 percent of America’s homeless population — one index of war’s psychological aftermath for many.) But it’s a phenomenon that has already been examined from multiple angles and perspectives. Let’s spend this month looking into another side of post-traumatic stress — a beneficial change in psyche that sometimes results from adversity like military combat. Psychologists have a name for this transformation; they call it “post-traumatic growth.”

According to a Military Times op-ed written by retired Army psychologist Bret Moore, the term post-traumatic growth refers to “the theoretical model and science that explores how people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often achieve positive growth afterwards.” Sounds nice, but what does that look like? Elaborating, Moore describes “a greater appreciation of life, increased personal strength, openness to new possibilities, improved relationships, and enhanced spiritual or existential awareness.”

Think post-traumatic growth is just head-shrink nonsense? Guess again. The current Secretary of Defense, retired Marine general and perennial camo cult hero Jim Mattis, has talked extensively about post-traumatic growth in his own life, and about how the crucible of combat can lead to young people emerging from it who “actually feel kinder toward [their] fellow man and fellow woman.”

In a celebrated speech he gave in 2015 at the Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco, Mattis expanded on that idea. “For whatever trauma came with service in tough circumstances,” he said, “we should take what we learned… and like past generations coming home, bring our sharpened strengths to bear, bring our attitude of gratitude to bear. And most important, we should deny cynicism a role in our view of the world.”

It doesn’t have to happen on a big epiphany level, either. I joined the Army as a liberal arts major who couldn’t change a fucking car tire. A few years and a formative combat tour later, I’d become a man who valued competency in a human being above all else. I was handy with weapons. I trusted my decision-making and didn’t let small things (fantasy football aside) rattle me anymore because, hey, Iraqi militants weren’t shooting at me and my friends, so all was well. And a car tire? Hell, I’d changed the treads on an Abrams tank! Is all that post-traumatic growth? I wouldn’t have called it that before I started the research for this article. But in a way, at least some of it? Yeah, I guess so.

How does a Humvee driver dwell on the piece of highway trash that ended up becoming a roadside bomb while the gunner who never saw it only considers the way the sun was glinting when their Humvee got hit? Why is one soldier’s triumph another’s burden?

Some caveats: Just as veterans aren’t a monolithic community, there’s no such thing as a monolithic veterans’ experience, either. An identical experience in combat (or anywhere) could serve as a growth opportunity for one person, while the person standing right next to them struggles with this pivotal moment for decades. Researchers who study combat’s effects on the human brain readily admit they’ve only just begun to understand how factors like upbringing, prior encounters with trauma, and personal coping techniques impact what becomes post-traumatic stress.

How does a firefight get remembered by one infantryman as the central ordeal of his life, while the soldier who was next to him later enjoys regaling his children with stories of it as the great adventure of his youth? How does a Humvee driver dwell on the piece of highway trash that ended up becoming a roadside bomb while the gunner who never saw it only considers the way the sun was glinting when their Humvee got hit? Why is one soldier’s triumph another’s burden?

Such is life, such is war. Still, though: Experience hardens us all, one way or another. It can make us more resilient, more fully realized human beings. Iron sharpens iron, as both the Bible and Game of Thrones advises.

As I was working on this month’s column, I bumped into a neighbor down the block who loves my dog and talks to me as a courtesy to the pooch. This neighbor’s a quintessential Brooklynite — big and gruff, of Italian heritage, a retired NYPD officer. He doesn’t talk a lot about his time on the job, but he’s mentioned Ground Zero and 9/11 a couple times in passing. So I know he was there. I know he worked the Pile after, too.

Obliquely, I asked him what he thought about the idea of post-traumatic growth. I asked if he believed it could be a real thing for some folks. For the readers of Penthouse, I explained with a wry half-smile.

He considered the question. “Sure,” he said. “For those of us lucky to make it through.”

I nodded. He bent down to pet my dog some more. Sometimes growth is just that. Making it through because someone has to. Making it through and keeping on. Because someone has to. Through it all, we endure.