Publicity:

Major Marc Dauphin was a super-confident, can-do medico fixing shattered bodies and trying to save lives as he ploughed through relentless shifts at one of the busiest military hospitals in the world – the Role Three, at Kandahar Air Base, Afghanistan.

He knew his job like the back of his hand. After all that’s where he kept an ever-changing, written list of his day’s patients, their diagnosis and treatment.

When reporter Sally Sara met Marc Dauphin in 2009 she found a wise-cracking ebullient and tireless pro doing the best he could under trying circumstances to deal with the endless parade of war victims being stretchered into the hospital, or brought into his operating theatre: soldiers, Taliban insurgents, women, children.

Sally had arrived to film a 2 minute news story. What she saw over the next 24 hours has stayed with her ever since. Amid a maelstrom of woe and suffering, the deaths of two boys continue to haunt. One who died despite hours of life-saving work by medical staff who thought he’d turned the corner. Another, 10, blown apart by a mine.

‘He was so small that the body bag was folded in half like a suit pack and that’s how his life was carried out from this hospital’. SALLY SARA

When Sally asked Doctor Dauphin how he dealt with such carnage, emotion welled and candour emerged.

‘It’s a war. Women and children always pay. That’s what’s worse. That’s all’ MAJOR MARC DAUPHIN, Trauma doctor

Looking back at that exchange now, Marc Dauphin may see some early signs that led to the state that so bedevilled him when he returned home. The doctor who’d mended so many was broken himself – stricken with debilitating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

We learn how he descended into PTSD, grappled with it and began to rebuild his life.

 ‘I could see the stare in his eyes and I now understood this 10,000 miles stare that you see in books from the soldier from World War I or German soldiers on the Russian front. I said, oh road to recovery won’t be as easy as I thought it would.’ CHRISTINE DAUPHIN, Marc's wife

“It makes you humble. You say, I can crack too, I’m not that big old tough rock that I thought I was.” Marc Dauphin

With the right professional help and support from his wife and family, Dr Dauphin is on the road to recovery. Christine says her husband is almost back to normal – although a part of him will always remain on the tarmac at Kandahar airfield, where his military hospital was based.
“Marc is back. I think this experience showed him that you can recover from war.” Christine Dauphin

But as the troops pull out of Afghanistan, how many others will return home bearing the invisible wounds of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder? And of them, how many will overcome the stigma to seek the help they need?

PTSD can hit anyone.

Lt. General Romeo Dallaire is one of Canada’s best known soldiers. As commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, he witnessed mass trauma and tells Sally Sara it took ten hard years of therapy for him to want to live again.

Now a senator in the Canadian parliament, he believes one of the best ways to deal with PTSD is to bring it out into the open and change the culture that suppresses and stigmatises it.
"Unless they recognise that this injury is equivalent to any other physical injury, you’ll never get rid of that stigma and you’re going to be walking around with a bunch of soldiers that are nothing more than time bombs." General Romeo Dallaire, retired

Professor Frank Ochberg, who helped to get PTSD on the books as a diagnosable condition, agrees, telling Sally:
“We can learn from the women who have defeated the stigma of breast cancer. You realise, we never used to talk about it. That’s a dead disease - it has changed. We should do the same across the world for PTSD.” Professor Frank Ochberg, PTSD expert.

Driving to Coatihook

00:00

SARA: The gentle green countryside of Quebec not far from the US border is soothing and peaceful, dramatically different to the war zone of Afghanistan.

00:09

Sara in car driving

I’m on my way to catch up with a man I met there in extraordinary circumstances that neither of us will ever forget.

00:20

Sara to camera in car

[in car driving] “It’s four years to the day since I first met Marc in Afghanistan. I’ll be really interested to see how life is for him now and it’s such a contrast meeting him in a place like this in Canada – it seems such a long way away from Afghanistan”.

00:29

Car pulls into driveway

Music

00:45

[walking up to house]

SARA:  This will be the first time we’ve seen each other since we both tried to leave the conflict behind.

00:57

Marc opens front door and greets Sara

01:03

It’s hard to recognise each other, cleaned up and dressed up in peace time.

01:13

Christine greet Sara

With his wife Christine, Marc Dauphin is doing his best to fit back in to domestic life.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “I don’t think I needed to go to war but if the war’s there, then I want to go.

01:22

Marc

I really wanted to go and help because I knew I could be of help”.

01:39

Archive. Hospital footage

SARA: As a trauma doctor, Marc Dauphin seemed unbreakable and self assured. Little did he know that the place he went to do good would bring him so much harm.

01:43

Marc

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “It did collide together. You have to be completely resilient over there and you have to put your vulnerability for later”.

01:59

Christine

SARA: “For the man that you married, did he come home?”

02:07

Super:
Christine Dauphin

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “No. No, I think a part of his... I think his soul... left on the tarmac in Afghanistan, in Kandahar. Now I’m pretty sure of that”.

02:10

Archive. Dauphin at Afghanistan field hospital footage

Music

02:23

SARA: In 2009 Marc was in charge of one of the busiest combat hospitals in the world – the Role 3 at Kandahar air field. The Canadian Major and his multi-national team broke the records for the number of soldiers, Taliban and civilians they treated.

02:32

Marc at Field Hospital

DR MARC DAUPHIN:   “We’re good. We are good. We’re really good.”)

05:52

SARA:  “And what kind of personalities get attracted to that kind of medicine?”

02:57

Marc. Super:
Dr Marc Dauphin

DR MARC DAUPHIN: [laughs] “There’s a flowchart for residents to choose their speciality and the first question is, ‘Are you crazy... yes or no?’ and so if you answer ‘Yes’ there’s only two specialties and the way to divide those two is, ‘Do you have a long attention span?’, and if you say ‘Yes’ then you go into psychiatry and if you have no attention span then you go into emergency medicine”.

03:00

SARA: “And what’s where you ended up?”

03:22

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “That’s probably why I ended up there”.

03:24

Archive. Dauphin at Afghanistan field hospital footage. Looking at writing on his arm

DR MARC DAUPHIN:   “Lost his eyes, lost a leg, lost a hand. This one shot in the foot. This one shot in the head”.

SARA: “Do you normally

03:27

keep a track on your hand?”

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Well they don’t issue us with pads you know. It’s the Canadian Government… [laughing]

03:33

Marc interview

I’m extremely proud of what we did. This ninety seven per cent survival rate is the best in all wars and it has Canada stamped all over it, so we’re extremely proud of that and to know that I was responsible for forty per cent of that ninety seven per cent, well what can I ask more?”

03:42

Archive. Dauphin at Afghanistan field hospital footage.

Music

04:01

SARA: Four years ago I came to the Role 3 Hospital with some other Australian journalists to film what I thought would be a quick news story.

04:06

Archive. Field Hospital. Super: August 2009

The Role 3 hospital in Kandahar looks nondescript from the outside, but inside, it contains state of the art medical facilities.

04:15

The staff are bracing themselves for another busy night. 14 patients are scheduled to arrive, including US soldiers hit by a suicide bomb and children with shrapnel wounds from another blast. We were expecting to make a brief tour of the hospital and then get out of there, but it didn’t quite work out like that. Instead, it turned out to be a harrowing 24 hours.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “And I remember it vividly,

04:25

Marc interview

probably because you got me to almost break up in front of the camera, so that sort of marked me.

04:52

Field Hospital footage on laptop

I remember one reporter was

04:59

Mark and Sara in front of laptop

making an article and saying ‘the screams of the wounded’. I said, the wounded don’t scream, and she said, “Come on Marc, you can’t hear them?’ ‘No’. And so she replayed, you know, some stuff that she had taped and, oh yeah, it’s true, they are. But we just block it out”.

05:04

Archive. Field Hospital. Patient screaming

SARA: It was the most confronting day I’ve experienced in 20 years as a journalist. I stood by filming while the medics tried to save the lives of several children. I remember feeling a sense of utter shock and helplessness. When one of the children died with three limbs missing, I put down my camera and tried to put it into words instead.

05:22

Sara archive piece to camera]

Mortuary workers have just taken out the body of a ten year old boy who was killed in a mine explosion this morning. He was so small that the body bag was folded in half like a suit pack and that’s how his life was carried out from this hospital.

05:55

Archive. Field Hospital. Team operating

Seeing all of this I wondered how the medical team could block out the emotion of it all, day after day. When I asked Marc how he dealt with the relentless suffering, I was taken aback by the rawness of his response.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “It’s a war. Women and children

06:10

Archive. Marc

always pay. That’s what’s worse. That’s all’.

06:31

Marc interview

[back in the US] “It was a hard day. It was a hard day. It was physically difficult and it was emotionally difficult and it was a tough day and that’s why I called it ‘The Day the Australians Came’.”

06:39

Archive. Field Hospital. Marc with operating team

SARA: It’s the name of a chapter in a book Marc’s written about his experiences in Afghanistan. It describes how that night, and that question, marked a turning point for him.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: [reading from his book] “I was expecting some technical question but she caught me

06:50

Marc reading from manuscript

completely off guard. ‘Major Dauphin, what affect does it have on you as a man, to see all these wounded children?’ I was about to give her the pat answer,

07:09

but suddenly I was overwhelmed by it all.

07:21

Archive. Men in hospital with wounded child/Operating

I couldn’t help seeing that poor father who had lost three sons, with his fourth one maimed and fighting for his life. And all those mangled children’s bodies - the lacerations, the torn off limbs, the shrapnel-pocked faces, the burnt skin. All those visions of blood, all the screams, all the misery, all the stress, all those soldiers fighting for their life and I was suddenly

07:24

Marc reading from manuscript

speechless. I looked up and she was crying behind the camera, not even bothering to hide her tears. That’s when I lost it”.

07:53

Sara

SARA: “Were you angry that I asked that question?”

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “No, not really. It was....

08:05

Marc

it was a fair question. It was good journalistic work and I recognised it as such. I opened myself up to that and having unpleasant situations, if you open yourself up to that you’re going to get it. And you got me, that’s all right, that’s your job. Your job is to go and get the story. Your job is to go and get inside the people and that’s all”.

08:09

Excerpt from “Combat Hospital”

08:30

SARA: Marc and his team were also the inspiration for a joint US-Canadian television drama series. Audiences tuned in, even though some of the storylines were confronting.

08:35

Super: Combat Hospital courtesy Shaw Media and Sienna Films

08:51

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “We were one of the highest rated shows ever in the history of Canadian television,

09:09

Jinder

so people really believed.... really wanted to watch this material. I was pretty shocked”.

09:13

Role 3 Hospital in Kandahar.

SARA: Jinder Oujla-Chalmers spent six weeks researching the series at the Role 3 Hospital in Kandahar.

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “The day that the Kevlar vest and the ballistic

09:18

Jinder. Super:
Jinder Oujla-Chalmers
TV producer

eyewear and the gloves and your helmet arrive at your door, that was my first, I was like, oh my God this is for real. I’m actually going to the war and I was like, I must be nuts!”

09:33

TV researchers visit hospital

SARA: She was given open access to film and interview the staff.

09:47

SARA: It was a chance to turn real life into fictional storylines.

10:07

Excerpt from “Combat Hospital”

10:13

Jinder based her lead character, Colonel Xavier Marks, on the real life doctor Marc Dauphin.

10:17

Excerpt continues. Doctor pulls gun and shoots snake on floor

10:24

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “This is a true story, it literally happened, that one of the doctors had to pull out his revolver in the operating room and shoot a snake. So literally almost every story that you see there, the major stories, are all true, every single one of them”.

10:42

Clip continues

11:02

Research tape. Marc in hospital

SARA: Jinder spent most of her time shadowing Marc Dauphin as he treated patients and ran the hospital.

11:08

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “Marc is a pretty amazing man, so when they assigned me to Marc,

11:24

Jinder

right away there was a connection between him and I because he’s pretty friendly, he’s open, he’s honest”.

11:28

Research tape. Field Hospital

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Jinder Chalmers just showed up one day and my boss told me give her open house, you know, tell her everything you can. They’re going to make a TV series about you guys, so give her as much material as you can. Of course nothing

11:34

Marc interview

operational or secret, but other than that just tell her what she wants to hear’.”

11:50

SARA: “Did you forget she was there almost?”

11:56

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Sometimes I did forget that she was there and sometimes we’d tell some pretty rough stories which she kept on recording”.

11:58

Research tape. Field Hospital

SARA: Neither knew it at the time but the stories Jinder collected would later come back to haunt Marc.

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “We developed a friendship and I think it’s because Marc is a writer and I’m a writer so we connected at that level as well, but Marc is pretty full on because Marc’s responsibility at that hospital is immense.

12:07

Jinder

I have never met a man like Marc and I don’t think there’s too many people who could do that job”.

SARA: “Jinder,

12:30

can you give us a bit of an insight as to what it was like trying to be Marc’s shadow, to keep up with him?”

12:36

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “Exhausting. I think Marc… I honestly believe Marc only slept about two, three hours a night if that and some nights he probably didn’t even get any sleep because he’s on call 24 hours a day, so if anything happens he’s got to be at that hospital”.

12:41

Marc

SARA: “When you’re in that situation, it’s normal, it’s your every day”.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Yes”.

SARA: “What do

12:57

you think of it now when you look back, that level of pressure?

13:01

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “I think that was crazy. I think that was crazy. I think we exhausted ourselves, those of us who were in... in single positions like that that nobody else could replace. It was thoroughly exhausting and that’s the beginning of trouble”.

13:04

Excerpt. Combat Hospital

13:19

SARA: It may have been TV drama, but for Christine it was the closest she came to understanding what the war was really like for her husband.

13:25

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “For me watching that, I could not see the actor doing his... you know, I saw Marc, my Marc doing it

13:37

Christine

and I said that’s what he went through, that’s what he did. For me it was like a... not a revelation, but I could understand a lot better what he did over there. All the situation, all the stress,

13:44

Excerpt. Combat Hospital

it was like a therapy for me, yep”.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Watching the first episode... and within the first few minutes I burst out laughing because they some... they had some guys in towers, guards in the towers supposed to guard the Kandahar airfield and their helmets were on backwards; I got a laugh out of that,

14:00

Marc interview

but other than that I was going, oh that’s cool, oh that’s cool, oh they got that in, hey that’s pretty good… they thought about this and they thought about that so that’s, that was good. That was good”.

14:20

Sara and Marc look at footage on laptop

SARA: But no fictional drama, no matter how gritty, could possibly convey the grim reality of life and death at the Role 3 Hospital.

14:29

Child patients in hospital

Music

14:41

SARA: Children make up half of Afghanistan’s population and it’s hard beyond belief to watch their suffering.

14:44

Archive. Doctors operate on boy

As I filmed one sickening scene, my body was so tense, I felt as if my skin was shrinking. Staff were fighting to save the life of an 11 year old boy whose brother had died stepping on a mine.

14:51

Super: August 2009

DR PHILIPPE PARENT: “Half of his jaw was taken off.

15:08

Archive. Dr Parent

I didn’t see his ear. It didn’t seem to touch his brain but you never know with IED blasts. They get frags [fragments] everywhere”.

15:14

Archive. Doctors perform scan

SARA: [August 2009] Doctors scan Abdul’s head looking for shrapnel and bleeding. The explosion was so powerful it killed his brother instantly, but doctors are hoping that Abdul’s jaw and not his brain has taken the force of the blast.

DR PHILIPPE PARENT: “If his brain is not affected, his prospects are quite good.

15:21

Archive. Dr Parent

The rest of his body seemed to be all right”.

15:42

Archive. Abdul on operating table

SARA: “Although Abdul’s face is still covered in the dirt from the explosion, his outlook is promising. It’s some much needed good news on a grim night”.

15:45

Marc and Sara look at footage on laptop

“Given all the other stuff that happened that day, I mean I shouldn’t have, but I really pinned my hopes on that boy”.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Yeah”.

SARA: “And Philippe was saying it’s all going to be okay.... well, as far as they could tell”.

15:58

Archive. Abdul in hospital

The next day, Abdul is doing well and breathing on his own. The doctors say he’s stable but less than an hour after we filmed these pictures, he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. Abdul died the following morning. Hospital staff found his father just in time so he could hold his son’s hand.

KRISTINE DESJARDINE: “He was explaining to me that he had four children

16:13

Archive. Kristine

– two daughters and two sons - and he said, ‘Can you please try everything to do, to save my son. This is my last son. This is my only hope’. So he was quite sad”.

16:37

Archive. Empty hospital bed

SARA: Abdul’s father lost his second son in two days.

16:47

Archive. Marc/Hospital shots

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “We cannot feel the pain that these people have. We can try to imagine it, but we can’t feel it”.

16:52

Music

16:58

SARA: Marc doesn’t remember much of his deployment after that night. The deaths of the children sent him into overload – his mind was unable to take in any more.

17:09

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “I stopped registering stuff so I don’t remember the last month and a half that I was over there. I don’t remember much about what happened there.

17:26

Marc interview

And that scared me, it really scared me to have lost that, you know, sort of like blacking out”.

17:35

Marc at home cutting lawn

Music

17:41

SARA: Marc returned to Canada but not back to normal. He tried to talk himself out of his feelings of restlessness and anxiety.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “I’m a soldier, I’m an ER physician,

17:46

Marc interview. Super:
Dr Marc Dauphin

I should, you know I should be all right, you know. I’m not”.

17:59

SARA: “How powerful can denial be?

18:05

DR MARK DAUPHIN: “Oh pretty powerful, pretty powerful and pretty long... for many months, yeah”.

18:07

Christine. Super:
Christine Dauphin

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: I could see the stare in his eyes and I now I understood this 10,000 mile stare you know that you see in books from the soldier from the World War I or German soldiers on the Russian front. I said oh, road to recovery won’t be easy as I thought it would”.

18:14

SARA: Did he look older?”

18:36

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “Oh my God it.... something in... he had... it was not the same guy”.

18:38

Archive. Marc in field hospital

Music

18:44

SARA: Her husband was starting to experience some of the classic symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Anxiety, numbness and haunting dreams from the trauma he saw in Afghanistan.

18:48

Christine

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “Many times he kicked me, kicked me hard you know? He was fighting Taliban but the Taliban in the bed was me, you know?”

19:11

Marc and Christine wedding photo

SARA: He was so distant and disconnected, he almost lost his 37 year marriage.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “It was tough. It was tough because I would… I would push people away, including Christine. You know I would…

19:18

Marc

‘Let me be alone’. And it led to some friction. It led to some disappointment I guess and even desperation on her part saying, well maybe this isn’t going to work out. My reaction was one of almost indifference, ‘Oh yeah, maybe it’s not going to work out, okay so that’s the way it goes’ you know so?”

19:30

Christine

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “I received that like a slap in the face, you know? I was there for months waiting for you and hoping you’re back and that’s what you... that’s what you feel? …that the story would end there?”

19:53

SARA: “Were you angry?”

20:11

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “I was sad, I was sad”.

20:13

Christine feeds dog

SARA: Christine couldn’t understand what was happening. She initially thought that Marc wouldn’t be vulnerable to PTSD because he’d coped with trauma for decades.

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “Marc had been working in emergency room for

20:18

Christine

30 years. He had seen car crashes, you know... people, you know, dying in front of him, so I thought that he was very prepared for that”.

20:34

Archive. Field hospital

Music

20:49

SARA: But the scale and the intensity of Kandahar was beyond anything in his previous experience.

“Were you surprised that Marc was affected by PTSD given all that he experienced?”

20:58

Jinder. Super:
Jinder Oujla-Chalmers
TV producer

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “No. No.... because he’s seen so much. I mean Marc has, I mean I’ve just seen just this much of the war, Marc has seen this much of the war.

21:12

Still. Marc and Jinder

And I always wonder too.... I mean him and I would talk about this actually when I was there, like where do you put all that, like even for me, where do you put it? There’s things that I’m never going to forget as long as I live”.

21:23

SARA: Back at home, the PTSD was starting to distort Marc’s sense of perspective. He was failing to react to some situations and over reacting to others. In the end, it was Jinder Oujla-Chalmers seemingly harmless radio program that almost pushed him over the edge.

21:34

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “When I came back I did a documentary, a little short radio documentary for

21:59

Jinder

the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and it was called “War Doc” right? So it was a day in the life of a war doctor”.

22:03

Excerpt from radio documentary

DR MARC DAUPHIN:  [from radio broadcast] “Because wars continually upset everything you plan for. So, impulsive, aggressive, brash, brazen assholes like myself do very well”.

22:12

SARA: Marc stopped cold when he heard himself on the radio. Even though the interview had been recorded in the chaos of war, he feared that his rough and ready comments would bring himself and his team into disrepute.

22:24

Jinder

JINDER OUJLA-CHALMERS: “He was really pissed off at me. Like when he heard this he thought how could you do this to me? And I’m like how could they do what? These are clips you literally....... these are interviews you and I had!”

22:40

GFX

DR MARC DAUPHIN:  [from radio broadcast] The level of medicine in this country is just – I don’t know, it’s just really fucked up. 30 years of war will do that to you.

22:51

Jinder

JINDER OUJLA-CHAMBERS: “He said he was really unaware of what he sounded like there. Like for me, of course you’re going to swear. You’re up 24 hours a day. You have sleep deprivation and his swearing isn’t, isn’t abuse. It’s like frustration because I don’t have enough blood here for my soldiers, I can’t get the equipment I need here”.

22:59

GFX

DR MARC DAUPHIN:  [from radio broadcast] ‘Shit this woman’s alive. You can’t bury her.’ And he said ‘Yeah, yeah she’s dead, we’re going to bury her.’ The other half of the story is the medic who was telling me this thought this was the funniest thing he had ever heard and he was laughing his head off! That’s what Afghanistan does to you. This place is really messing up with people’s heads”.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “I had just listened to the interview and just remember it was

23:18

Marc interview

so horrible the feeling inside, ‘I’ve screwed up everything. I’ve messed up everything. Now it’s going to be so bad”.

23:40

SARA: “When did you realise that you were in a bit of trouble?”

23:47

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “When I thought about killing myself. So it was a panic attack. I had never had a panic attack in my life

23:50

and I felt so bad that I wanted it to stop and it just wouldn’t stop and it went on for hours and so after a while I said, I can’t hack this any more. And so it was the middle of winter and there was a river right across the street and I said well just wear... make sure to wear your heavy army boots, that’ll make you sink and it’s going to be cold as heck but it won’t last long”.

23:58

SARA: How far into that plan did you get?”

24:18

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Well, I started getting dressed. It was like about two in the morning and I started getting dressed. That’s how far I had gotten into the plan”.

24:21

SARA: “And what were you then going to do?”

24:30

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Jump in the river. It was a solution. It was.... in my head it was very logical that it was the solution to stop feeling this bad”.

24:32

River. Night.

Music

24:43

SARA: To an outsider, it may seem hard to understand but it’s often how PTSD works. It can strike when you least expect it.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “After a while you just sort of bunch up in a foetal position and you sort of...

24:45

Marc interview

you beat your head... please go away, stop, stop. I must be dreaming. You know this is so horrible and so.... yeah, it was pretty bad”.

25:02

SARA: “How far beyond your previous experience was that?”

25:11

DR MARC DAUPHIN: “Oh a million per cent. I’d never had that. I’d been scared before but I had never been anxious. I had never had a panic attack before in my life”.

24:14

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: “I knew that things were not good, but I didn’t know they were that bad. That was.... I was completely devastated. I didn’t know what to do. It was like, in my head it was impossible that he can do something like this. He’s so strong and he’s…  he’s too strong for that. But at the same time I said if he’s ready to do that it means that something very bad is going on in his head. I didn’t want to believe it. I said he’s not going to do that... please, please”.

25:25

Quebec City

Music

26:07

SARA: Marc Dauphin grew up in Quebec City and this is where he touched down after he got back from Afghanistan.

26:12

Marc and Sara visit school

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "It's sort of like Hogwarts to me. It's got all these old musty places and old dark stairs. It's 350 years old this year. It was founded in 1663".

SARA: Now that Marc is home, he relishes all that's comforting and familiar.

26:20

He brings me here, to his old school in Quebec City, a place full of memories.

26:38

His ongoing recovery from post-traumatic stress has taught him lessons too.

26:54

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "You're allowed to fall down. You just have to get back up, that's all.

27:00

Marc interview

I think it's the same old me. I think it's… of course there's a part that will always be over there, will always be left over there - but other than that, I came out okay".

27:08

Quebec City

SARA: Underneath the buoyant exterior, Marc Dauphin is intensely private and proud to a fault. It was excruciatingly difficult for him to admit he was struggling and needed help.

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "For a physician

27:18

Marc interview

and for a soldier, it's humiliating. It makes you humble".

27:33

SARA: "In what way?"

27:39

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "Well you say, well me too, I can crack too, so I'm not that big old tough rock that I thought I was. And that's why I don't want to go back to that again".

27:40

Army platoon/Marc watches

27:49

SARA: Marc has left the army and emergency medicine. He's no longer prepared to put himself through the trauma.

27:56

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "Of course when you're in the emergency room you have to be perfect all the time although you're not".

28:05

SARA: Some of Marc Dauphin's comrades are still in uniform.

28:11

Mantha with platoon

Flight medic, Eric Mantha, is using his experience from Afghanistan to teach a new generation of Canadian soldiers. He was in Kandahar at the same time as Marc.

DR ERIC MANTHA: "I've done a lot of letting go. It doesn't belong to me any more.

28:17

Mantha

I did what I had to do and I've done it. It's changed me and my life that I have today, but I'm letting go of everything that I can't change".

28:35

Mantha with platoon

SARA: He's one of the few who knows what Marc really went through.

28:47

Marc meeting up with Eric

DR MARC DAUPHIN:  "Look at me - I'm a civilian".

DR ERIC MANTHA: "You're looking good. What's with the hair?"

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "I know I've got hair now. They let you grow your hair when you're a civilian".

DR ERIC MANTHA: "I know" [laughs]

SARA: Marc was stationed at this base in Quebec when he returned from Afghanistan.

28:56

It was here that he and his friends started confiding in each other.

29:16

Platoon training

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "You can't really know, you can't really understand unless you've been there. I remember early on when I was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan and people would ask me, is your wife going with you? You know, so that was the level of not understanding what we were going into".

29:26

Sara with Marc, Mantha and Desrosiers at café

29:43

SARA: Marc's comrades, Pierre Desrosiers and Eric Mantha understand better than anyone.

29:48

Still. Marc, Mantha and Desrosiers in uniform

They served as helicopter medics when Marc was in charge of the combat hospital.

29:55

Aerials/Choppers/Medics

It's one of the most traumatic and dangerous jobs in military medicine. Those who do it fly into fire fights several times a day and deal with often catastrophic injuries. It takes a toll.

DR ERIC MANTHA: "What am I going to tell my family?

30:01

Sara with Marc, Mantha and Desrosiers at café

How am I going to put in words what I've seen and what I've done?"

30:26

Music

30:30

SARA: It may look like a casual gathering, but this is the first time that Eric and Pierre have spoken publicly about their own struggles.

30:36

MASTER CORPORAL PIERRE DESROSIERS: "You know we were raised in the old days where I'm sorry but men weren't able to cry. Men weren't able to show fear, to show that they're scared of something".

30:46

SARA: This kind of mateship and honesty is vital to the healing process, but the bond shared between comrades can cause friction at home.

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: "I was jealous. I was jealous you know?

30:57

Christine. Super:
Christine Dauphin

Yes, I felt that I was not part of the game. I was not part of the team. I was his wife.

31:15

Sara with Marc, Mantha and Desrosiers at café

So even though he talks to me about it, I never went through those experiences. Yes it happens very often, that military wives are jealous of the relationship that the husband has with the army".

31:23

SARA: When Pierre first got back from Afghanistan, he would pass out trying to do simple tasks like inserting an intravenous drip into the arm of a patient.

31:38

MASTER CORPORAL PIERRE DESROSIERS: "I went to work and when I tried my first IV that's where everything went black and, you know, I lost it. And then afterwards I started drinking".

31:48

SARA: It was so debilitating, some nights, Pierre would drink 12 beers and a bottle of rum just to get to sleep.

MASTER CORPORAL PIERRE DESROSIERS: "Coming back and having that feeling of

31:58

being weak, being like physically and mentally drained and not being able to do your job, it wasn't something that we were ready to face. I wasn't ready to face that kind of challenge".

32:08

US Army Training Film – Combat Exhaustion

32:25

SARA: It's been an inner struggle for soldiers since wars began.

32:33

In the First World War it was known as shell shock.

32:37

And as this training film shows, by World War II the US Army was calling it 'combat exhaustion' and taking it very seriously.

32:44

[Training film audio]

32:53

Archive. Vietnam War footage

Music

33:10

SARA:  But the term "post-traumatic stress" wasn't coined until after the Vietnam War. Soldiers were coming home unable to cope with civilian life.

33:16

Ochberg

DR FRANK OCHBERG: "It was largely the Vietnam War that just forced itself on our attention".

33:33

Archive. Vietnam War footage

SARA: Dr Frank Ochberg was one of the original team of psychiatrists to develop the diagnosis of PTSD. He's been treating sufferers for decades.

DR FRANK OCHBERG: "A friend of mine asked

33:39

Ochberg

his patient, 'When were you last in Vietnam?' And he took a while and he said, 'Last night'. It's 45 years ago. So it lingers. It has a grip. It's the point of understanding PTSD, the past feels like the present. There's a different physiology. The brain lights up as though it is dealing with smells that are still there.

33:53

Archive. Vietnam War footage

A lot of us of my generation opposed the war and then we realised we shouldn't be opposing the war hero, that's the person who bore the battle for the rest of us and he comes home with these symptoms

34:19

Ochberg

of nightmares and flashbacks and anxiety and he's numb".

34:33

Archive. Vietnam War footage

SARA: They are the classic symptoms of PTSD - emotional numbing, anxiety and memories that come crashing through as if they were real.

34:40

DR FRANK OCHBERG: "The brain dials it up and my point about all of this is it's medical, it's physical - this is not simply an extreme of being nervous

34:50

and there was nothing wrong with you in the first place to cause you to experience this. But we really have to make it clear that if you come back from battle with classic, diagnosable PTSD, it's an injury just like having shrapnel in your abdomen".

35:02

Ochberg and Sara

SARA: But Dr Ochberg has a simple message for those who are suffering".

35:26

Ochberg. Super:
Dr Frank Ochberg
Michigan State University

DR FRANK OCHBERG: "I would start with the optimism that I genuinely feel. This condition has been around since trauma and tragedy has been around. And most people eventually recover and they find others in their lives who respect them for who they are. It hurts for a while and you feel like you're not yourself. It does take learning on the part of those who care".

35:31

Stills. Nash in Iraq

SARA: Bill Nash was a psychiatrist in the US Marine corps during the battle against insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.

35:58

Archive. Fallujah battle footage

36:10

DR BILL NASH: "There were many, many US casualties because they'd go door to door and these

36:16

Nash

guys would be hiding behind mattresses or in the roof shooting through holes in the ceiling and so it was very bloody".

36:21

Archive. Fallujah battle footage

36:29

SARA: His job was to take care of the minds of the marines so they could keep fighting. He was surprised by what he found.

DR BILL NASH: "Before I went to Iraq, I believed, like a lot of other people believe, that it's, you know, danger to one's own life that causes trauma.

36:31

But that's not what I heard from these guys and they.... their lives were in danger every minute of every day.

37:08

Nash. Super:
Dr Bill Nash
Psychiatrist

But that wasn't what traumatised them, it wasn't what bothered them day and night. It was when they failed to do something that they counted on themselves to do and they failed to protect their buddy, failed to keep someone alive and the medical people were hugely vulnerable to this".

37:15

Nash at home playing guitar

SARA: Bill Nash has retired from the military and is living a gentler life in rural Virginia. He remains one of the leading researchers on the effects of trauma on medics in the military.

DR BILL NASH: "I found that the medics were more likely to be treated for PTSD than the marines who were the trigger pullers, and I realised in treating some of them,

37:34

Nash’s medals in case

their trauma is failing to save lives. Failing to do what they trusted us to do".

38:05

Marc interview

SARA: "What is that feeling? What's it like".

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "It's a

38:14

Super: Dr Marc Dauphin

feeling of being afraid to mess up, afraid to have the wrong diagnosis, the wrong treatment, of giving the wrong drug, or something like that. It's... I don't know... it's ingrained in there now".

38:17

Dallaire

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "The only way to handle this potentially terminal injury and convalesce, is one, you go get professional help. You go and get professional help. There is no way around that".

38:28

Archive. Dallaire in Rwanda

SARA: General Romeo Dallaire was one of the first to speak out about PTSD in the Canadian military. He's regarded as a hero who deserves to be heard.

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "This is a potentially terminal injury. People die of this injury.

38:45

Dallaire. Super:
Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire (ret.)
Senator. Canadian Parliament

It might not be next week but it can be at any time. When we have this injury we don't know whether it's next week, two months, two years, some noise... some argument... some scenario could trigger us into a response that is uncontrollable and terminal".

39:05

Archive. Rwanda UN footage

Music

39:26

SARA: Dallaire was the commander of United Nations peacekeepers during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Almost a million people were killed, but General Dallaire wasn't given the resources or the mandate to stop it -- all the while, the world watched on.

39:30

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): [archive footage] "I need food, medicine

39:50

Archive. Dallaire

and material for two million people and I've got to stockpile it now - because ladies and gentlemen, if I may say in conclusion, we're all late. We're already weeks and weeks late".

39:52

Music

40:06

Military funeral

SARA: He returned home with chronic PTSD.

40:09

Dallaire interview

"General, can I ask you, from your personal experience, I know that for you, you've walked down this path

40:14

yourself well and truly".

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "You crawl down it, we don't walk it".

SARA: "You crawled it. How close did things come for you to taking a very different direction in terms of your

40:20

life continuing?"

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "I have publicly written and expressed the fact that I have attempted suicide four times and the only reason I didn't succeed is the peer support was so tight that I wasn't able to finish it off. Tried, but it didn't work".

40:30

Archive. Dallaire in Rwanda

SARA: Despite his courage in horrific circumstances, General Dallaire was eventually forced out of the Canadian military.

40:49

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "I think the hardest part of it all was the day I signed my medical document that was describing my release from the forces because I was medically released six years after.

40:58

Stills. Dallaire in uniform

The medical release had one line - "This officer cannot command troops in operations any more."

41:14

Dallaire interview

That was the culminating part of my realisation that I was damaged goods, I was injured and I had to refocus. And for those who have spent their life in command.... you've lost it. That was the hardest thing".

41:24

Archive. Fallujah battle footage

41:46

DR BILL NASH: "It's a deep wound in not only the mind, but the brain, the parts of the brain that are essential for controlling your own thinking, controlling your emotions, controlling your physiology. They're not working like they're supposed to any more. And that is.... that is crippling for warriors, soldiers, marines -- because one of the things that makes them who they are, why they went into that business in the first place is that's what they're the best at.

41:55

Nash. Super:
Dr Bill Nash
Psychiatrist

These are guys who run into a fight, calm, steady, focused -- that's what makes them good at protecting us. They have this ability. But when they get post-traumatic stress they lose that ability and then they become deeply ashamed of themselves, shame is a huge part of this because these are unacceptable things in a warrior".

42:33

Dallaire interview

SARA: Romeo Dallaire is now a senator in the Canadian Parliament and is using his high profile to fight for veterans who are battling PTSD.

42:55

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "There is no doubt in my military mind that unless they recognise that this injury is equivalent to any other physical injury and that the medical support that's provided for the individual and for their family is requiring the equal treatment for those PTSD, you will never get ahead of the curve, and worse than that you will never change the culture of your institution. You'll never get rid of that stigma and you're going to be walking around with a bunch of soldiers that are nothing more than time bombs".

43:04

Platoon training with Mantha

43:40

SARA: The military is now trying to get in step with the experts. Research has found the most effective treatments for PTSD include professional counselling, peer support and medication.

43:49

Dallaire interview

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "I take nine pills a day and this is now 20 years after. So this medication has got to be looked at as an essential requirement of continuing to be able to live with this injury. It's your prosthesis".

44:09

Platoon training

SARA: The battle for recognition is also being won. Thanks to lobbying from General Dallaire, Canadian soldiers with PTSD are now eligible to receive an award called The Sacrifice Medal. Previously, it was only open to those who'd been physically wounded. Frank Ochberg wants America to do the same.

44:25

Ochberg. Super:
Dr Frank Ochberg
Michigan State University

DR FRANK OCHBERG: "We want honour for our veterans with PTSD. We want... we want the Purple Heart, which is a very important medal that says I have fought for my country, I've been wounded... I sacrificed.

44:51

Choppers/Afghanistan

Music

45:12

DR FRANK OCHBERG:  I happen to think that the more we do to create honour and acceptance for the person who serves and who suffers when coming home is the biggest and the best thing we can do. We can learn from the women who have defeated the stigma of breast cancer. You know you realise, we never used to talk about it. That's a deadly disease, it has changed. We should do the same across the world for PTSD".

45:17

Music

45:47

Archive. Field hospital operating room

DR BILL NASH: "In Ancient Greece they had this concept of miasma which was a moral pollution, a defilement,

45:51

Nash

and it was the job of a whole society to help cleanse this pollution when they came back. That was the word catharsis, that's what it originally meant, it was this symbolic cleansing.

46:02

Archive. Medic tends child at field hospital

I think we need as a society to help them, you know, not just say get away from me, you know, I don't want to hear these stories.... And it is hard to hear these stories and they protect us from these stories".

46:15

Music

46:30

Christine Dauphin serves lunch to Sara and Marc

46:35

SARA: That's why Marc Dauphin tells his story with such honesty and detail. He doesn't want to be portrayed as a victim..

46:47

He wants to reassure others that there is hope, even if PTSD takes you right to the edge

47:00

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "Well it's not permanent and you're not in your normal state. You're not supposed to feel that way - so if you're feeling that way, go get help.

47:08

Marc interview

Go see your... go see your doc.... go see a medic.... go see a nurse.... go see a padre, and they'll point you in the right direction and you can get professional help."

47:18

Ochberg

DR FRANK OCHBERG: "I find myself saying different things to my own patients who have it. One of the last things I said to a person who has a feeling of dread - that the future is dark - I said that's a sensation, not a prophecy".

47:30

Dallaire interview

SARA: "What do you love about life now, General?"

47:47

LT.GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE (ret.): "Oh I've got so much to do. I am pissed off because I only have maybe about 20 years left. You know I need another 20 years at least. That took nearly 10 years of hard therapy.

47:50

There's lots of things to do once you've realised that the aim is not to get rid of the pain by killing it - which includes killing you - the aim is to look at something that will move you away from that and give you an objective no matter how difficult it is to try to reach, and that way eases the pain. So when people ask me well how do you... how do you live with this? And I say I work hard and that eases the pain. So work hard, play hard, live hard. Live to live and you will attenuate and control the pain".

48:12

Christine and Marc walk dog in park

Music

49:00

SARA: It's been four years of hard work for Marc and Christine but now it's all about appreciating the simple things. Their children have grown up, so they've brought in a new addition to the family.

49:11

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: "We wanted to have a puppy. She's so sweet that we have a family now - the two of us with the dog".

49:26

Music

49:34

Christine interview

SARA: "What kind of man do you have now?"

49:41

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: (LAUGHS) "Well... Marc is back. Yes I'm, yeah I think this experience, you know, showed him that..... you can recover from war I suppose.

49:43

SARA: "Are you proud of what Marc did... ".

50:00

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN: "Oh my God, yes I am... I am... I am.

50:02

Marc and Christine walk by river

Music

50:05

CHRISTINE DAUPHIN:  And I'm proud that he's back now, that he can have a certain distance and see what he did with different eyes".

50:09

DR MARC DAUPHIN: "Most importantly I brought everybody back home. I did not lose anybody. I did not lose a nurse or a med tech although I almost did.

50:21

Marc interview

No I'm very, very happy. So overall I have a very positive ah... the pluses are more than the minuses. I was in the big parade and I'm part of history. You can't take that away from me now".

50:29

Marc and Christine walk by river

Music

50:44

Credits:

Reporter: Sally Sara
Camera: David Martin, Sally Sara, Ian Cartwright, Robert Hill
Editor: Stuart Miller, Nicholas Brenner
Producer: Marianne Leitch

Combat Hospital courtesy Shaw Media and Sienna Films

50:53