From the moment my father’s brother, my uncle, was taken into a psychiatric hospital in the 1970’s because of ‘the Indies Syndrome’, a syndrome many Dutch military men were suffering of after they had been sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in the 1940’s. The Dutch East Indies had been a Dutch colony for hundreds of years but were now fighting for their independence. My father, born in 1925, barely escaping death by a bombing during the winter of 1944-1945 while he was in captivity by the Germans, had to go there in November 1946 and stayed there for three years, his younger brother following later.
My father was lucky, he was working for the staff. My uncle was less lucky, he was a soldier and regularly on patrol in the jungle where the enemy could be everywhere so they had to be as silent as possible when on patrol.
One day in the jungle something happened to my uncle, a huge snake came silently down from a tree, head down next to my uncles head. My uncle froze. A brother soldier cut the head of the snake of with a klewang, shooting was not allowed, and on they went.
And then the other things soldiers were expected to do during a war, an accumulation of trauma and after the war nobody ever spoke about what they had experienced during whatever war, they just kept going.
This was also the case in my mother’s family. My mother told me horrible things, 75 years after World War II, but only because she was terribly stressed because of some WWII planes in the air during the remembrance of 75 years of freedom. She was born in 1934.

After the war everything seemed normal, my uncle worked, married and had a family of five children, three boys and two girls.
In the 70’s things went wrong, he had nightmares and went to the doctor, first medication but things went more wrong. The nightmares were so terrible that he started fighting in his sleep and no one could wake him up. In the end his children had to hold him in a grip so my aunt could give her husband an injection to calm him.

In later years it was clear that some of his children were also affected by the trauma of their father. One son always wanted to be the best of his class, if that wasn’t the case he studied more, longer and in such a degree that it was not normal, psychiatric help was needed. Another son was in his 40’s when he woke up one day and started screaming, his wife couldn’t handle him and was on the phone, speaking to a doctor, when he passed her screaming, went to the kitchen and stabbed himself to death. Later we heard that he had had problems before but he never told anyone, not even his mother or siblings. And he was the most funniest and happiest of them all my mother always said.
And even my uncles grandchildren are afflicted, some of them have anxiety attacks.
And my father? There was never any sign of the ‘Indies Syndrome’, he was always his very friendly, helpful and funny self.

From the 90’s on, after the Gulf war, there is much more interest in what is now called PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Lots of research is going on and information about everything related to this is to be found in books and on the internet. The latest fact is that PTSD changes DNA and these changes are causing psychiatric problems by future children and even grandchildren of people having PTSD, as we already still experience in our family. That’s why it is very important that people are treated for this disturbance as I call it. Why I call it a disturbance you can read on the next page where I will explain what ignites PTSD.