With the increase in Europe’s military responsibilities each year, the danger that soldiers not used to combat situations will suffer in the new situations, grows.

That is especially the case in Germany, where combat situation deployments are a recent phenomenon.

Since 1992, German soldiers have been taking part in international operations from Bosnia, to Somalia and now Afghanistan. There are currently 9,368 German soldiers in missions on foreign soil, the most in postwar history, according to the Bundeswehr.

As the nature of each assignment has changed - from medical support for US forces fighting in Iraq in 1991 to the current combat deployment of special forces in eastern Afghanistan – psychological treatment for the troops has had to evolve as well.

The point was brought home especially hard this week by the news that four US soldiers, three of them recently returned from Afghanistan, allegedly killed their wives at a army base in North Carolina.

“We can’t completely rule out that something like that wouldn’t happen here,” said Wolfgang Roth, a Bundeswehr psychologist. “But we’re on the right path,” to preventing it.

Recognizing a need

It was when the Luftwaffe first began flying humanitarian missions to war-ravaged Sarajevo in 1992 that Bundeswehr officials realized they had to do something for the pilots coming back from missions in which they often came under heavy fire. Up until then, the only options soldiers had to relieve their often traumatic experiences was to talk with psychologists at Bundeswehr Hospitals upon returning home.

“The need arose from the Bundeswehr transformation from a training army to a deployment-ready army,” Roth said in an interview with DW-WORLD.

A committee of pilots, psychologists and doctors came up with a plan that offered psychological preparation to soldiers before, during and after their military campaigns.

In seminars before deployment, psychologists talked with them about the situations they were likely to encounter, including kidnapping and hostile local populations.

“The ground rule is to let them know that certain stress reactions are completely normal,” Roth said.

Depending on camraderie

During the deployment, field psychologists keep a close eye on the troops and rely on soldiers to point out problems they or their colleagues might be having. The in-the-field evaluation helps to decide if soldiers can handle the stress.

Bundeswehr psychologists figure that about 2 percent of those assigned to military missions might have to be sent back. The mark has yet to be exceeded for the 1,178 German soldiers in the UN peackeeping mission in Afghanistan, Roth said.

Within a week of their return, servicemen have to enrol for a seminar with their commanders to talk through what they encountered during the mission. Most complain about changes in their relationships since they've come home or that had already existed before.

Psychologists are on hand for soldiers who have been in heavy combat situations.

The plan is by no means set in stone. Psychologists found that each deployment presented different challenges.

New assignment, new difficulties

”Kosovo was very hard, it was new for the soldiers,” said Roth, of the Bundeswehr's involvement in the 1999 NATO-led bombing campaign.

It was the first time German servicemen had taken part in active combat since WWII and it placed a special burden on both the soldiers and the people taking care of them, according to Roth.

Afghanistan, with its completely foreign culture and religion, has presented a new challenge.

But Roth, who keeps in contact with the field psychologists, said that there is relatively little stress among the German soldiers in Kabul. The exception being perhaps the death of two servicemen in March as they tried to remove a Soviet rocket which subsequently exploded.

“We all suffer from the effects of September 11 in that we know that terror can strike anywhere,” said Roth. “In the back of their minds, the soldiers knew this going in as well as not knowing what they were going to encounter.”