Battlemind

July 29, 2008 1:28 PM

Battlemind: Armor for Your Mindis a U.S. Army website designed to help, in part, families deal with deployment, including a series of cartoons and videos intended for children whose parents may be sent to or be returning from warzones. Part of the Army's Behavioral Health program, these give intriguing insight into military culture.

Cartoons featuring Mr. Poe & Sgt. Drew are oddly juxtaposed with the harrowing account of a Golden Gate suicide survivor:

Thus, I ended up leaping off that bridge and at the moment of free fall, I said God, please save me, I don’t want to die.

And I always used to say to me, Kevin you are in two feet of water and you are drowning, stand up.

If you are in two feet of water right now stand up, walk forward, it’s okay to ask for help.

posted by Rumple (6 comments total)

The site certificate is expired or invalid. Go Army!
posted by Burhanistan at 1:53 PM on July 29, 2008

And if it is using SSL, it might not be meant for public consumption.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:55 PM on July 29, 2008

People have been giving the Pentagon a hard time for sending soldiers into purposeless quagmires, then denying medical care if they make it home and lying to Congress about the number of them committing suicide. This website should go some way to alleviating those concerns.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:55 PM on July 29, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

It comes up with that site certificate error because most people's browsers don't have the US DoD Root Certificates loaded into their browsers and marked as trusted. I suspect if you viewed the site from a USG computer, it would probably seem fine.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:05 PM on July 29, 2008

Sesame Street has also done something similar. And they're on tour.
posted by lullaby at 5:00 PM on July 29, 2008

It's actually nice to see these. Military brats used to be an afterthought. I remember being terrified that my dad wouldn't come home when he had to leave to go into work for a few weeks at a time, sleeping there, and that was just for a DoD civilian dad. Kids just don't know enough to understand otherwise. They know their parents work with dangerous weapons and that's enough. I remember being totally stoked when the Berlin Wall came down. I honestly figured my parents wouldn't have to go into work for a few days! I was older by the Russian Coup but when that ended still had that little hope I'd get more time with them, some how.

On the flipside, on 9/11, I got a short one sentence email from my Mom about 3 days afterwords that she was ok. She had to work for about two weeks on a few hours of sleep a night. It was painful seeing everyone else connecting with their families and being supportive of each other while all I had was my friends, and then later a one sentence email. But at least then I was old enough to understand and get by. Kids aren't, from the children through the teens and probably even a bit beyond that... not being to go on base anymore just sucks. I get the feeling half the tours are full of us brats just being reminiscent!
posted by jwells at 6:41 AM on July 30, 2008