Marine Corps University is responsible for shaping leaders with expertise in warfighting and military operations, teaching the art and science of war. But after more than a decade of continuous warfare, institutions that deal with active duty service members also have a secondary responsibility.

This is why, in addition to presentations about teaching and about responding to student writing, MCU’s 2013 faculty development conference, held July 18 at the Gray Research Center, included a talk about post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We devote some time each year to this because, quite honestly, we need to,” said Dr. Jerre Wilson, the university’s vice president for academic affairs, as he introduced Dr. Heidi Kraft, a former Navy pilot and clinical psychologist. “We work with a group of folks who have been through some fairly traumatic experiences.”

Kraft, who also authored a book based on her experiences in a combat hospital and now works as a consultant to the Navy and Marine Corp’s combat stress control programs, reminded the faculty in attendance that many of the service members are arriving at the school at a vulnerable time, fresh from combat operations and getting their first opportunity to let their guard down. Even so, many who would benefit from counseling won’t seek it because of the stigma around needing and seeking help.

“I know each of you knows you have an important role in the protection of these people,” she said. “The bottom line here is permission. Your students need your permission to be injured.”

Kraft said she’d learned that lesson from a master sergeant who came to her for counseling after having to identify two of his junior marines by their dog tags. At first, out of embarrassment, he always arrived in civilian clothes so he couldn’t be identified. One day, he was drinking beer at a barbecue with a staff sergeant who told him he was having anger problems with his two children and had realized his son was afraid of him.

The master sergeant told his “big secret” for the first time: that he himself was going to see “the wizard” — “I know that’s what you all call us,” Kraft said — that he, too, was hurt and that it was alright to be hurt.

The next time he came to her office, Kraft said, he seemed much improved. “And that day, he wore his uniform when he came to see me.” When she asked who had finally given him permission to be hurt, he cited the commandant’s decree that Marines take care of their own.

She said attitudes about seeking help have changed at the top levels of leadership and are slowly shifting in the mid-level ranks, “like turning an aircraft carrier around.”

One illustration of the way attitudes about taking care of each other are changing has caused controversy during many of her talks, she said.

At Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., in 2006, she talked to a group of young officers, and a captain told her a story of a checkpoint his men had manned. A vehicle approached and didn’t stop when ordered to.

“It was a good shoot, the Marines did it right, and there were kids in the car,” the captain told her. Two of the three children died of their wounds that day. The next day, the corporal who had pulled the trigger asked how the children were. The captain wanted to know what he should have said.

Not having an answer, she asked the officers in the room, she said. “They said, no question, you have to tell him the truth. No question. Because if he finds out you lied, you’re done.”

When she retells the story, though, the audience is more and more split every year. “There seems to be this change in the way leaders are thinking about this,” Kraft said, noting that many of the university’s students probably have increasing anxiety about protecting their Marines after seeing so many fall apart, become addicts or take their own lives. “Our young leaders want to find a way to keep their people from suffering.”

So, not only their own combat experiences, but also those of their Marines are adding to officers’ stress, and Kraft said MCU faculty can play a key role in encouraging those who need stress-management help to get it.

“I’m not talking about mental illness here, I’m talking about injuries,” she said, noting that, with counseling, people can emerge from trauma strong and confident in a matter of months.

As leaders, teachers and comrades, she said, “It’s about giving each other permission to be cared for, maybe even to be saved.”

Wilson said Kraft is a favorite speaker at the university because she brings two points of view to her presentations. “The advantage she brings is, she has a clinical perspective, but she also brings a practical perspective, having served, and with Marines in particular.”

— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com