(Bloomberg) – James Gandolfini, who cracked plenty of skulls as Tony Soprano, visits the haunted minds of soldiers in “Wartorn: 1861-2010,” a powerful documentary airing on HBO Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. New York time. There’s a special place for Gandolfini in the hearts of many military families. Despite their small numbers he has focused on issues that can make their lives hellish. In his earlier “Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq” Gandolfini interviewed hideously wounded veterans, reminding Americans -- and with any luck their representatives -- of the terrible cost of combat. In this Veteran’s Day broadcast he traces the phenomenon now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which has long raged behind a cloak of silence that has yet to be fully stripped away. The film opens with the case of Angelo Crapsey, a Civil War infantryman from Pennsylvania, who chronicled his own descent into madness – known then as “hysteria” of “melancholia” -- in a series of letters. He went to war at 18 a hard charger, dismissing a sergeant who committed suicide and deserters as “cowards,” yet by the fall of 1863 he wrote that “I am clear off the hooks” and was discharged. His sister noted he “looked wild” after his return home and had to be tied down to his bed. He committed suicide in August 1864. According to the film, after the war more than half the patients in mental wards were veterans. Gandolfini, sporting a beard and a powerful girth, enjoyed good access for this project, including a sit-down in Baghdad with Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who believes “we’re much more aware” of stress-related problems in large part due to Vietnam. “I think society changes over the years,” he says before correcting Gandolfini’s suggestion that 15 percent of veterans may suffer from PTSD. He says the number is closer to 30 percent. Most of the time, however, Gandolfini stays out of the picture, preferring to let the horrors of war speak for themselves. He digs up searing combat footage I’ve never seen and offers several case studies of the PTSD’s devastating effects. One of the saddest stories is that of Noah Pierce, who did two tours in Iraq, came home and committed suicide by holding his dog tags to a temple and shooting himself through the tags. His mother reads part of the 23-year-old’s suicide note: “Mom, I am so sorry…I have done bad things. I have taken lives. Now it is time to take mine.” Gandolfini revisits the 1943 incident in which General George S. Patton slapped a soldier suffering from “combat fatigue,” as PTSD was known then, called him a “yellow son of a bitch” and ordered him back to combat. His views were standard issue, as reflected in a wartime film in which a clearly disturbed soldier is coolly berated for admitting “I can’t stand seeing people killed.” Several World War II Veterans tell of personal and family dissolution they blame on PTSD. Al Maher, a former Army Air Corps lieutenant, became an abusive drunk and hasn’t spoken to his sons in 25 years. Watching these old men cry is heart-rending. While progress is being made, the old viewpoint has not evaporated, the film indicates. Gandolfini interviews Army vice chief of staff Peter Chiarelli, who is attempting to “change attitudes towards PTSD and suicide in the army.” Gandolfini asks is he is “meeting resistance.” “You’re fighting a culture that really doesn’t believe in these things,” Chiarelli responds before arguing that you’re not a “weaker person because you see something that no human being should ever have to see” and develop problems. The film says PTSD affects not only its immediate victims but has a wider societal impact. Nearly 40 percent of incarcerated veterans have screened positive for PTSD. Gandolfini does good work here; perhaps he could someday turn his attention to the numbskulls who start wars.
