In Tongue of War, Tony Barnstone writes about the emotional traumas of soldiers and military nurses during World War II. The negative experiences are likely to cause mental illness. PTSD, stands for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (also called “shell shock”), is a commonly seen anxiety disorder from veterans, stemming from experiencing extreme emotional traumas that relate to life threats. In the book, Barnstone does not investigate PTSD but writes about the civilians, slaves and the soldiers’ struggles during the war, reflecting the causes and testimony for PTSD. In PTSD in the World War II Veteran Combat, Charles Kaiman and his team discuss about the symptoms of PTSD which are equivalent to Barnstone’s interpretations of PTSD of people in wartime. This paper is going to discuss the psychological causes and the symptoms of PTSD, and finally shows Tony Barnstone’s accurate depiction of PTSD in Tongue of War, and how PTSD affect the victims and their family’s life. What is PTSD? What are the causes of PTSD?  PTSD is debilitating mental disorder that follows experiencing or witnessing an extremely traumatic, tragic, or terrifying event (Mowery). People with PTSD usually have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of their ordeal and feel emotionally numb, especially with people they were once close to (Mowery). For example, when a person experiences traumas like witnessing a person die, being stuck in a scary situation, or being forced to do brutal acts may cause PTSD, and these are mostly experiences of soldiers. However, soldiers are not the only patients of PTSD, but women and children may have PTSD after experiencing some traumatic circumstances too. In the article Who Develops Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Emily J. Ozer writes, “Clinical condition known as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Interest in and knowledge about PTSD increased dramatically after its diagnosis was formalized in 1980, but study of the effects of extreme stress has a long history, primarily focused on the effects of war (e.g., shell shock in World War I) and of sexual assault against women”(Ozer 169). Ozer writes that people have PTSD is due to the effects of extreme stress, Events like rape and participation in war could cause extreme stress. This relates to Barnstone depiction of the soldiers and slaves who are involved to the war that shows that they have a chance of getting PTSD easily. Ozer also writes about the biological research of PTSD, “Research on the biology of PTSD initially focused on studying psychophysiological arousal in the presence of reminders (sounds, images, or scripts) of the traumatic event. Results indicated that individuals with PTSD demonstrated heightened arousal and prolonged duration of arousal compared with control subjects (e.g., Keane et al., 1998)” (170). This shows that reminders of the trauma like sounds, images, or pictures may cause the PTSD. The repetition of the reminders may cause the illness because they are psychologically disturbing to the patient. For example, a rape victim seeing a big strong man would remind her traumatic event and freak out. Coping also causes PTSD too. The article Impact of Coping Style and PTSD on Family Functioning After Deployment of Operation Desert Shield/Storm Returnees, Suzannah K. Creech explains the definition of coping, “Coping refers to the process through which individuals adapt to a stressful event. One common differentiation between types of coping is approach and avoidant (Suls & Fletcher, 1985)” (507). . After the traumatic event, the victims usually have some psychological problems, like depression or anxiety, because what had happened to them was unfortunate. When they do not get the treatment of PTSD as soon as possible, they would have PTSD in a severe way and eventually refuse any treatment. One of the types of coping is approach. The victim would adjust their emotions to different circumstance to show people that he or she is fine. By adjusting their emotions is harder than not showing it, which it may become a more serious psychological sickness. The other type is avoidance. Victims will try to avoid anything that would remind them the trauma, so she would not feel bad again. By avoiding the reminders may cause them a more severe PTSD, because avoiding is a way of keeping themselves alert with the reminders, which make them remember more of the traumatic event. Creech also illus