Veteran Friendships across Lifetimes: Brothers and Sisters in Arms

(Hardback)

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Description

Veteran Friendships across Lifetimes: Brothers and Sisters in Arms seeks to add to the larger conversation about the band of brothers phenomenon by focusing on stories of survival after service members return home. Based on five years of research, including in-depth interviews with fifty servicemen and women, this book explores the interrelationship between camaraderie and contentment. Ward specifically looks at how military friendships translate from the battlefield into civilian life and how these friendships assist soldiers in gaining peace with the past, happiness in the present, and hope for the future. This text uses the themes of strength, kinship, and resilience to discuss the bonds and friendships that are created and maintained despite the savagery of the wartime experience.

Reviews

American veterans of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century describe the special bonds that hold them together, often for decades. In this engaging book, Jamie Ward describes how story-telling and PTSD sustain friendships created in the context of military training and battle. -- Tony Waters, California State University, Chico, and Payap University
Ward presents a comprehensive examination of the importance of military friendships and presents much more than the interpersonal characteristics of those relationships, but posits a fascinating social scientific dissection of how those friendships form and what purpose they serve. Post-traumatic stress disorder is such an important topic and not discussed nearly enough when one considers the number of military personnel it affects. Ward's study furthers the research in that area and helps to fill a gap that exists in area of mental health and the military. -- Jennifer L. Walton, Ohio Northern University

Author Bio

Jamie Ward is assistant professor of public relations at Eastern Michigan University.