From able-bodied soldier to disabled veteran: moral striving among Danish wounded veterans

In this article, we investigate the role of military identity in Danish
wounded veterans’ efforts to re-establish identity after trauma and
come to terms with a disabled body. Drawing on qualitative interviews
with physically wounded male veterans, we explore the two
simultaneous transitions of moving from able-bodied to disabled,
and from military to civilian life. Focusing on wounded veterans’
existential bodily experiences and moral striving, we elucidate how
the veterans position themselves in relation to the disability label,
and how military ideals of hegemonic masculinity and gender roles
frame their efforts to cope with disability. Our interviews uncover
that the Danish veterans strongly refuse to accept the status of
‘disabled’. In a persistent striving for normality, they invest immense
efforts into their self-representation in an attempt to dissociate
themselves from being victimized. Maintaining masculine military
values and refusing to be vulnerable, the veterans adhere to
a dichotomous notion of being either a man or a victim, thus
establishing a very limited space for creating a new identity as
disabled. We argue that, paradoxically, the veterans’ efforts to
come to terms with and inhabit their disabled bodies aim at establishing
continuity with their former soldier identity through masculine
behaviour and disability sports, thus overcoming disability
rather than accepting it.