Background

The United States' involvement in recent military conflicts, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, has involved thousands of men and women in the armed forces of this nation. These men and women are not only regular service people, but also reserves whose necessary service disrupts their lives in a variety of ways.

A soldier's return from combat status to civilian status can happen in as little as 48 hours with contemporary transportation capabilities. That return brings with it a host of issues related to reunion with one’s family, friends, and colleagues. There may be physical issues related to injury and rehabilitation. There may be psychological dimensions of that return that are difficult to navigate. And there may be spiritual and religious dimensions to that return that must be addressed by the individual soldier.

In addition to the issues that an individual soldier might face upon a return from combat, there are the family and friends who may experience a range of emotions upon the return of their family member or friend.

About the Returning Soldiers Project

The Returning Soldiers Project is a collaborative effort among Villanova faculty and staff members to address an important series of questions:

• What obligation does society have to assist the returning soldier, his or her family, and his or her friends, in the transition from war to peace?
• How ought society respond to the soldier’s need for healing, physical, psychological, and/or spiritual?
• Indeed, how ought society help to facilitate any forgiveness that a soldier needs, both from him- or herself, his family and friends, and the society that sent him or her to war?

The Returning Soldiers Project plans to host a series of academic events aimed at examining these questions. The project seeks, first, to put a face on the transition from battle to peace time. It will look at what the U.S. military is doing now to assist in this transition and to hear how military chaplains understand this transition and its demands on the soldier and his/her family.

Next, the Returning Soldiers Project will look at history, both U.S. history and comparative history, to learn from our shared past and the example of others. The project will take a look at the psychological dimensions of the transition, as well as the spiritual dimensions. Finally, will identify, create, and investigate ways in which communities, both large and small, can incarnate the social obligation to assist returning soldiers and their families.

War is always a soul-wrenching experience, calling men and women to do things that, under normal circumstances, they would never do and to experience things that, under normal circumstances, they would never experience. That reality needs to be somehow recognized and in the event that the reality has harmed the spirit, the soul, of the soldier and his/her family, we, as a society, ought to assist in the process of healing and, indeed, forgiveness. Such is the price of the peace that is sought by all.

For more information on the Returning Soldiers Project, please contact Mark Wilson, chair of the project committee, if you would like to learn more.