Sociology

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invisible inequality among “wounded warriors” by sidra montgomery

In a booth at a sleepy San Antonio diner, I sit across from Daniel,

a Marine Corps veteran with significant physical injuries from

a helicopter crash. His wounds are hard to miss—he has burn

scars on part of his face, one of his arms is severely scarred, the

other arm wears a prosthetic, and though his legs were furled

underneath the table, there were medical braces hidden

below his pants.

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Between slurps of coffee, Daniel’s talking about the problem of

entitlement in the wounded veteran community—the fact that

people want to help out so much that sometimes it’s too much.

He says “…so, do I deserve my medical treatment? Yes. Do I

deserve continued care? Yes. Do I deserve an occasional free

meal?” Shrugging his shoulders, he says, “Uh… I guess, sure…

whatever, but I don’t want… it’s uncomfortable for me to have

people walk up to me and say ‘Hey, you want us to build you a

house?’ No, I don’t want you—I’m not in this to maximize the

benefit for me. That’s not what I want…”

At that exact moment, a woman swoops up the thin paper

check the waitress had placed at the edge of our table. She

turns toward the register, definitively stating, “I’m getting y’all’s

lunch today.” Daniel chuckles slightly as he says, graciously, “Oh,

thank you. Appreciate it.” He turns back to me, saying, under

his breath, “And see? Stuff like that… so….” He glances to the

side as I respond, “That’s so ironic.”

Of course, it’s not actually ironic: in Daniel’s everyday life,

he’s unable to escape being seen as a “wounded warrior.”

Knowing nothing about him, a woman from across the diner

grabbed our check and paid it. She came and went so fast,

I barely noticed what she looked like. She didn’t ask Daniel

anything or engage in conversation with us—she just assumed

she knew who he was and what had happened to him. As a

nation, we recognize “wounded warriors”

for their service and the personal sacrifices

they have made for this country, but it’s

obvious that we are too quick to favor

visibly injured veterans like Daniel while

forgetting the hundreds of thousands of

invisibly injured “wounded warriors” walk-

ing among us. In fact, it’s part of why I use quotes around the

phrase “wounded warriors”; many veterans are reluctant to

adopt the label, and in my work, I consider the phrase itself an

important object of analysis.

Contrast Daniel’s experience with Antonio’s. Antonio is a

Navy veteran who served as a battlefield medic for Marine Corps

units. His injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),

traumatic brain injury (TBI), and chronic pain, built up over 10

deployments in a 15-year career. Even at designated “wounded

warrior,” events Antonio isn’t recognized as a wounded veteran.

He told me about one incident: “[My friends and I] were at this

event… This lady kept looking at me, and I was like, ‘Can I help

you?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, I just wanna talk to the warriors.’ I

was like, ‘Okay, we’ll talk.’ And [the director] was like, ‘Oh, this

is one of our—these are three of our warriors.’ And she looked

and she’s like, ‘He’s a warrior? Oh, I didn’t think he was a warrior,

because he had all of his arms and legs.’”

Daniel and Antonio are both “wounded warriors” in every

imaginable sense, yet their day-to-day lives are completely dif-

ferent. Antonio must constantly prove his injuries and verify his

status as a “wounded warrior”—not only to other veterans, but

also medical professionals and the general public. If my interview

with Antonio had been in that same diner, he would have gone

unnoticed, his check still sitting at the table’s edge. Daniel, on the

other hand, can’t escape being seen as a “wounded warrior.”

He lives in a world where people constantly engage with him

because of his status as a wounded veteran.

the origin of “wounded warrior” “Wounded warrior” is a new term that rose to prominence

during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It has become the defining

phrase for this generation of wounded veterans, operating as

a socially designated status in the public sphere and an official

medical classification in the military. Wounded Warrior Project, a

non-profit started by Gulf War veterans to provide comfort items

to recovering servicemembers, was the first to use “wounded

warrior” in 2003. Eventually, the military adopted the term and

renamed all of their in-house rehabilitation programs to incorpo-

rate the phrase. Now “wounded warrior” is everywhere—from

the media, to the military, the U.S. government, and even some

Wal-Mart parking lots, where designated parking spots are

held for wounded veterans. Historically, veterans who were

wounded in war were commonly known as disabled veterans,

but “wounded warrior” latches on to the most sacred military

symbol, the warrior, and re-purposes it. Curiously, the term

has only been used to describe those who have served in the

post-9/11 era; it is not used for other generations of wounded

veterans, like Vietnam-era veterans.

Three years ago, I began to research what it means to be

a “wounded warrior” and how the phrase impacts the way

Contexts, Vol. 17, Issue 3, pp. 28-33. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. ©2018 American Sociological Association. http://contexts.sagepub.com. DOI 10.1177/1536504218792523.

< “Retirement,” a soldier’s photo capturing the day he signed out of military service. Mark Bonica, Flickr CC

“Wounded warrior” has become a socially designated status and an official medical classification in the military.

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that wounded veterans think of themselves. Vietnam Veterans

returned home during a time of tension and negativity—some-

thing that has continued to affect the way that they understand

their service to the country. I wanted to know how the era of

“wounded warrior” affects the way that post-9/11 wounded

veterans come to think of their service, sacrifices, and identity. I

interviewed 39 wounded, injured, or ill veterans with a range of

injuries, who served in different service branches and at various

times during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. When I began this

research, I knew that visibility of injuries would matter, but I did

not understand how divergent each path would be.

Every wounded veteran I interviewed meets both the official

and colloquial criteria of a “wounded warrior,” yet their experi-

ences with the military community and the civilian public are

polar opposites. Visibly injured veterans come home to a system

of support, with medical care and resources, and a public eager

to recognize and honor their sacrifices. The path to recovery for

invisibly injured veterans isn’t always immediate or available,

and accessing it requires a constant battle advocating for their

own injuries. The veteran who lost a limb in the IED blast and

the veteran who came home with PTSD from seeing their friend

injured, both “wounded warriors,” navigate very different reali-

ties as they return home.

who’s a “wounded warrior” and when? The overrepresentation of “wounded warriors” with vis-

ible injuries, whether intentional or happenstance, affects the

day-to-day experiences of all wounded veterans. Images of

amputees, veterans in wheelchairs, and those with severe burn

scars dominate media coverage. Eye-catching pictures of an

amputee summiting a mountaintop or a paralyzed veteran finish-

ing a hand-cycling race are dynamic, enticing, and inspirational.

Daniel jokingly describes it as “amputee porn,” saying, “all these

commercials have amputees in it. We’re all the rage. I mean,

everybody wants an amputee in their commercials.”

This popular presentation skews the reality that most

wounded veterans have injuries you can’t see. The amputee

veteran with the robotic-like prosthetics represents less than

.05% of the wounded veteran population. According to a

2015 Congressional Research Report, there were 1,645 service

members who experienced a major limb amputation, but a

2008 RAND study titled “Invisible Wounds of War” shows that

hundreds of thousands of service members have been diagnosed

with TBI (350,000) or PTSD (150,000 to 300,000).

For visibly injured veterans, public attention quickly becomes

part of their social reality. Stares, thank yous, comments, and

questions are routine. When I asked Juan, a Marine Corps

veteran who lost both his legs and his arm, how often people

approach him, he said, “Every day. Every day I go out. If it’s

somebody buying me dinner, if it’s somebody coming up to me

in the mall… they want to come up and ask me questions.”

Michael, a Navy veteran with severe burn injuries to his face

and arms, recalls people running into the ends of grocery aisles

staring at him or approaching to ask if they can pray for him.

Sometimes he forgets about his external appearance, only to

be reminded by the incessant stares of other people. Invisibly

injured veterans with service dogs find their

once-hidden “wounded warrior” status

revealed. Andrew, who has a service dog to

help with his PTSD and TBI, tells me, “There

was one time in Wal-Mart, I was there for

40 minutes, and I got 54 comments—54.

Even if people love it, you got 54 strangers

comments, pointing, staring and looking at you. That’s going

to fuck with you.”

In general, people with physical disabilities experience

stigma; they live in a social world in which it’s impossible to

“blend.” Where “wounded warriors” and civilians with physical

disabilities differ is that “wounded warriors,” especially those

who fit with the visual stereotype, become walking ambassadors

of the Iraq and Afghanistan generation. That is, “wounded war-

rior” becomes a dominant status for visibly injured post-9/11

veterans—an identity that overtakes and obscures all other

aspects of how others see them. Similar to the way the military

uniform erases the person wearing it, visible injuries create an

unshakeable identity for veterans like Daniel, Michael, and Juan.

Todd, an Army veteran with severe burns and other facial

damage, actively tries to make his appearance as normal as pos-

sible, hoping to shed his “wounded warrior” look. He explains,

“I’m very unique in that [my injuries] are very obvious… I tried

to play it down as much as I could. So probably 20 to 30 of

Servicemembers’ injuries aren’t always visible.

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The amputee veteran with the robotic-like prothestics represents less than .05% of the wounded veteran population.

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my facial reconstructive surgeries were trying to get my face to

blend in…. The fact that I wear a [prosthetic] ear does not do

anything for me function wise. The fact that I wear an eyepiece

doesn’t [either], and I wear a hair piece… I have done everything

I can to play it down because… I did not want that to define

the rest of my life.” Juan also describes a sort of exhaustion:

“there’s some days where I wish people didn’t know me for—

sometimes I just don’t want to be a Marine. I don’t want to be

a triple amputee. I just want to be Juan.” In addition to being

a “wounded warrior,” Juan is also a husband, father, musician,

and photographer. He wants people to see him for who he is

rather than what happened to him several years ago.

Visibly injured veterans are disproportionately saddled with

negotiating public interactions, absorbing the sea of goodwill

and support for military veterans. While these acts of gratitude

and signs of support come from a well-intentioned public, vet-

erans can tire of these interactions. Luis carefully describes the

strain: “When people say, ‘Thank you for your service,’ it’s kind of

lost its shock value or something. I’ve heard it so much that I’m

embarrassed that I can’t give them… like, that first time when

someone said ‘Thank you for your service,’ …I feel like I don’t

give them enough sincerity, I feel bad… I feel embarrassed for

myself because I can’t do that, you know? I just hear it so much.”

David Wood, a journalist and then-senior military correspon-

dent for The Huffington Post, argues in his article, “When Giving

Up ‘Wounded Warrior’ Status Helps Vets Heal,” that wounded

veterans want to shed this label, yet society clings to it. The

deep entrenchment of this phrase across multiple domains of

society—medical, government, and pop culture—keeps visibly

injured veterans hostage in a way that the invisibly injured are not.

invisible warriors Veterans with invisible injuries are shielded from the public

pressures of being easily identified as a “wounded warrior,” but

their social reality means they must fight for the recognition of

their injuries as legitimate combat injuries. Despite a greater

awareness of these “signature wounds of war,” veterans with

invisible injuries still find themselves advocating to be seen as

a “wounded warrior.” Their path to recovery is often wind-

ing—they may find themselves struggling to work and live their

normal lives for months and years without themselves realizing

or identifying the medical problems they carried home from war.

With invisible injuries, there is no visible representation of

damage, which leads others to assume they’re “fine” or nothing

is wrong. Veterans experience the pervasive stigma attached to

mental health problems and other invisible disabilities; not only

are they invisible to others, their invisibility means society may

not recognize these wounds’ legitimacy.

Toward the end of our interview, Annette’s frustration

with the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is

palpable. Annette is an Army veteran who served for 13 years,

deploying to Iraq twice early in the conflict. She struggles with

PTSD, depression, anxiety, and insomnia—conditions that have

varied in intensity over the years, but continue to impact her

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day-to-day life. With a quiet fire in her voice, she says, “It’s like…

what do I need to do? What do I need to do to get some help?

For you just to treat me like a person. Like, I have some issues. I

mean, it’s not like I’m making this stuff up—I’ve got all the medi-

cal records, I’ve got all of the proof that I deployed and where

I was at. I’ve got sworn statements on all of the big things that

happened to us. I’ve got buddy statements. I’ve got statements

from the first sergeants, the commanders, people that were in

charge of our unit while we were over there, and I still have to

fight for things? I mean… it makes no sense. It makes no sense

for somebody to think that, ‘Oh okay, well… it’s not that bad.’”

Annette has felt as invisible as her injuries as she tries to prove

the legitimacy of her combat wounds to

access healthcare.

Antonio had similar experiences with

medical doctors in the military, as his claims

to injury benefits were dismissed or ques-

tioned. “I mean, even when I went to [this

base] for help. First doctor I saw didn’t even wanna—‘It can’t

be that bad.’ Second doctor I saw was like, ‘Maybe you caused

your own symptoms with alcohol. Maybe you need to go to

[rehab].’ It’s like providers don’t even care.” Nathan and his wife

fought for years to get acknowledgement of his injuries from

the military, including a TBI, PTSD, and hypertension from his

four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not all invisibly injured veterans have experiences like

Annette, Antonio, and Nathan; many receive streamlined treat-

ment from the military and VA medical facilities. The assessment,

diagnosis, and treatment of invisible injuries has improved over

the last 15 years. Military medicine has been forced to keep up

with the complex, intertwined injuries service members bring

back from sustained combat operations. Still, invisibly injured

veterans live under a weight, wondering, “Will they believe

me?” as they enter every new interaction or encounter with

medical doctors, non-profit organizations, and civilians. Those

with invisible injuries carry an additional burden of proof.

Jason, a Marine Corps veteran with PTSD, reflects on the

challenges of his contested injury. He says it’s hard for others to

determine “whether or not the story you tell is even credible,

because anybody can say they have PTSD, anybody. It doesn’t

mean it’s true. So yeah, there are times when you think about

it and you go… ‘I kind of wish I had come back with a visible

injury so that people would actually see it.’ It’s weird, because

would I really want to go through an amputation? Hell no.”

As visibly injured veterans are trapped in the role of “wounded

warrior,” constantly coping with outside validation and affirma-

tion, the invisibly injured are repeatedly asked to prove their

membership in a community few wish to join but to which they

rightfully belong.

moving forward The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have forever changed our

nation. They have also changed the veterans who have dutifully

served over nearly two decades. The rise of the term “wounded

warrior” has created a new awareness about the challenges and

consequences of war for those who come back alive.

As far as we’ve come from the hostility directed toward many

returning Vietnam vets, the social context of today’s homecoming

isn’t problem-free. The parade of visibly injured veterans in the

media creates a stereotype of “wounded warrior” that profoundly

shapes the experiences of every wounded veteran. Visibly injured

veterans can’t escape being seen as a “wounded warrior,” while

invisibly injured veterans fight to be seen at all. With PTSD and

TBI acknowledged as legitimate combat injuries, the military

and VA systems of care need to build a culture that validates all

wounded veterans. The hardest part of coming home shouldn’t be

proving that an injury exists. For visibly injured veterans, we need

to recognize and honor their sacrifice, but also resist the urge to

pigeonhole them as “wounded warriors.” The story should move

beyond “amputee porn” to see the whole person—what they’re

doing now, and not just where they’ve been. For those who serve,

the consequences of war are complicated, dynamic, and lifelong.

Our understanding of wounded veterans need not be reduced to

a stereotype, especially one that creates inequality and exclusion.

recommended readings Beth Linker. 2011. War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Examines World War I as a turning point for America’s approach to post- combat rehabilitation.

David A. Gerber, ed. 2012. Disabled Veterans in History. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Presents a broad history of com- bat injuries over time, including American and European contexts.

Erin P. Finley. 2011. Fields of Combat: Understanding PTSD among Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. An in-depth look at the lives of combat veterans reentering soci- ety, highlighting PTSD.

George W. Bush. 2017. Portraits of Courage. New York: Crown Publishers. A diverse set of portraits and stories of America’s wounded veterans from a president who sent many to fight.

Craig F. Walker. 2011. “Welcome Home: The Story of Scott Ostrom,” The Denver Post, December 29. A 2012 Pulitzer Prize winning photo essay that takes an intimate look into one vet- eran’s struggle with PTSD. pulitzer.org/winners/craig-f-walker-0.

Sidra Montgomery is a researcher at Insight Policy Research who recently finished

her PhD in sociology at the University of Maryland–College Park. Her work focuses on

the military and veteran community with an emphasis on issues of identity.

For those who serve, the consequences of war are complicated, dynamic, and lifelong.