A few years ago, I was interviewed on a provincial radio program about PTSD, on Remembrance Day (here in Canada, this is November 11, and akin to Veteran's Day in the U.S.) The program host asked me towards the end of the interview if it was a good thing to commemorate, to bring up memories of war, for those who endure PTSD as veterans of conflicts and military service. Looking back to that interview, now, I am not happy about my answer then. I don't think I really answered the question at all, really, just emphasizing instead that younger individuals, having little to no experience of a nation at war, really needed much more education about the realities of past warfare, and the impact of warfare on entire societies. This wasn't any kind of answer to the question! Since then, though,I've thought about this particular question a LOT. This is particularly since, in my own research on PTSD, on survival, trauma, and memory, I've encountered extensive discussions among researchers about memory, and history. Memory studies and trauma studies have emerged as significant areas of research and publication. I didn't intend - at the start - to delve into memory studies, but as I read more of the medical/ psychiatric/ diagnostic and neurological material concerning trauma, survival, and PTSD, it became very clear that memory plays perhaps the most significant part of all in what we call PTSD. My past from a few days ago has my description of how (or when) trauma occurs, and at what point PTSD is thought to develop. Memory functions in the emergence of PTSD, and its function initiates immediately, unconsciously. An event happens - in this case an event that is unexpected, and unexpectedly dire/ portentous, shocking, perhaps brutal or threatening brutality - and memory is formed. My perspective is that the memory is formed within nanoseconds, of the event. As the brain/ mind attempts repeatedly to insert awareness of 'what's coming' into the moments in the past which preceded the actual event (time-traveling, in a sense), it replays the memory. In effect, the brain/mind plays and replays a loop. The point to the replaying is the chance (and it is only a perception of a chance) that at some point in the replaying, the person/ mind/ brain WILL be successful in going back to the moments preceding the event, and prepare the person/ mind/ brain for what is coming next. The flashbacks experienced by sufferers of PTSD are the replaying of memory. The trigger for the flashbacks? Many can recall seeing in movies, or hearing from popularized stories about - say Vietnam vets - that sounds, circumstances, smells, tastes, and certain emotions serve as triggers for the flashback. True, though in my own experience the trigger has never been something terrifically obvious or evident. I can't recall at this point ever experiencing a sound/ smell/ taste and thinking "uh, oh, this is going to trigger a flashback!". For me, at least, the triggers have been circumstances, and the emotions spinning off them, and they have been subtle. For others????