"My value system was turned completely upside down"

André Hassan Khan is an Oberstabsfeldwebel (OR-9) in his 30th year of service. As a trained sensor operator on the Heron 1, he was a highly sought-after specialist, completing 27 overseas deployments. Working as part of a team with the pilot who remotely controlled the unmanned aerial vehicle, he was tasked with operating the cameras and providing an initial assessment of the captured images. He has written about his experiences and his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a book (see below), from which we have reproduced short passages in this interview. At the time of our conversation, he had completed outpatient therapy in Kiel, and was undergoing reintegration at a Bundeswehr office. André Hassan Khan is also politically active with the “Liberal Soldiers and Veterans Association” (Liberale Soldaten und Veteranen e.V.), which is affiliated with the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Mr. Hassan Khan, how and when did you join the German armed forces?
In 1995, I did my basic training in the army as a conscript. Once I’d completed my compulsory service, I switched to logistics and supplies, and later to the Aeronautical Information Service (Flugberatungsdienst) with Air Transport Wing 63 in Rendsburg. In 2009, I read an e-mail saying that people could apply for training on an unmanned reconnaissance system. In terms of its size and capabilities, the Heron 1 was something completely new at the time. I was interested, applied, and was accepted.

And then you went on missions?
I had already been to Afghanistan twice as an Aeronautical Information Service Officer (Flugberater). The missions with Heron 1 began in 2010. Initially three times a year, usually for six weeks – sometimes shorter, sometimes longer – kind of hopping in and hopping out. As specialists, we were often needed.

What do you see through the camera?
Actually, there were several cameras on board. There is a normal zoom camera and one that lets you zoom in extremely close, for example, if you want to know what’s that just to the right of that wall? There’s also an infrared camera that detects heat signatures. This can tell you if a person is still alive. If you set black for warm and white for cold, for example, the brighter an object appears, the less life it has in it.

Did you find your service and images like this burdening?
Not at all, at first. I had no problem passing on the coordinates of enemy shooters, so that these targets could be “neutralized”, as it is so unpleasantly called. In Mali, we once investigated an attack on a camp in Gao, in which around 100 people had been killed. That wasn’t so burdening either, because it had already happened.

But then there was a mission that was different …
Yes, that was in Afghanistan in early 2017. The Taliban had disguised themselves as Afghan soldiers and gained access to an Afghan army base with an ambulance which supposedly had injured personnel in it, only to then simply massacre the defenseless people inside the base during Friday prayers. At that point, I had already completed at least fifteen missions, but never experienced anything like this. For one thing, everything was so confused: Who was innocent, and who wasn’t? There were small explosions going off everywhere in the fire, probably because of flammable materials that were stored in various places.

And why else?
Afghan forces, when they finally arrived, tried to kill the attackers whom we had managed to identify after two hours of carnage. Once again, we could only watch helplessly as they fired into the fenced-off compound from their Humvees, with no regard for friend or foe. That turned my value system completely upside down.

I could have felt relieved, but the way they [the Taliban] were stopped was shocking to me. The Afghan army’s counterattack was like an execution. […] It affected me in a way that even now, years later, I can hardly put into words. […] For a while it seemed as if every ounce of human dignity, empathy and humanity had gone out the window down there in the barracks.

Did you notice any immediate change after this experience?
Of course, it was extremely stressful, but I didn’t realize it at the time. Although we are sitting in the ground control station, mentally we are always right there in the action. That’s difficult for outsiders to understand.

Post-traumatic stress disorder or moral injury is a bit like dementia: It creeps up on you, and once it’s there, it’s too late

As usual, we got on with things more or less as if nothing had happened. After the landing, we did the paperwork and dismissed the whole episode, just thinking “well, that was pretty intense”. But even coming back home didn’t feel the same as it usually did; then I developed asthma and other physical complaints. At some point, it became unbearable – not to mention that my marriage was also suffering. It was as if my body was trying to tell me: Hey, there’s something wrong with you, you should start paying attention.

So those affected by PTSD actually feel the physical symptoms first?
For me, it was like that. Only afterwards did the mood swings and other symptoms appear, until my mental state eventually deteriorated significantly. Post-traumatic stress disorder or moral injury – which is what we’re talking about in my case – is a bit like dementia: It creeps up on you, and once it’s there, it’s too late.

But you still went on missions after this experience?
Yes, I enjoyed being on missions. There was this sense of camaraderie, and we could only fly the Heron for real on missions – at home, we only had the simulator. I didn’t usually have any trouble sleeping while I was there, either. But suddenly, nothing worked anymore. All I did was brood. You don’t even know exactly what about, but it won’t let you go. Only four hours of sleep, that’s just self-destructive.

When and how did you come to the decision of doing something about it?
My wife had been saying to me for some time: Something isn’t right with you, you should go and get checked out. To begin with, I didn’t believe her, and even told her that maybe it was her who should get herself checked out… we had a lot of tensions at home.

I was so afraid of losing my job and, especially, my reputation within the armed forces, that I preferred to put a burden on my wife and our relationship rather than take steps to solve my problems. Above all, I would never have admitted that I might have lost control of my life. […] There’s a joke about a wrong-way driver who hears on the radio: “Look out, there’s a wrong-way driver coming toward you on the A1.” To which he exclaims indignantly: “One? There’s hundreds of them!” That’s exactly what PTSD does to the mind of patients. It makes you think that the whole world around you is getting stranger and stranger, but you yourself are not.

At some point, I totally lost it in my office at home, and when my wife said something to me about it, I lashed out at her verbally, too. That was the moment when I said, I’m taking my things and going to the doctor right now.

And what happened next?
I had taken my folder with the Troops in Contact forms with me. These are used in the Operational Command headquarters (Einsatzführungskommando) to document stressful events like rocket attacks and so on. The military physician looked at it, closed the folder and said: Let’s get started then. Very soon after that, I had my first appointment at the Bundeswehr hospital in Hamburg.

You have three foster children. Did they suffer because of your illness?
My wife and I did everything we could to shield them from it. The two youngest were too young to notice in any case. No, the children were more like lifesavers. If the family isn’t there anymore, which isn’t uncommon, then you lose your structure – get up in the morning, shower, go to work, do the shopping – and then everything can go down the pan. Because our children have special needs, we had to take extra care. That made it all the more challenging, but I can only be grateful for the fact that they were there and still are.

What kind of therapy did you do?
I opted for outpatient therapy in Kiel because I didn’t want to be away all the time again. I also got my assistance dog from an independent organization near Rostock. A very good friend made this possible by collecting donations during his deployment in Gao. Psychotherapy was important, of course, but when Byrdie arrived, even after the first training session, you could immediately see a big change.

Then writing the book together with my co‑author was like a second therapy. Because I not only had to reflect on my life story, but also come to terms with the PTSD, the day everything happened, the time afterwards, and so on.

How did (or does) PTSD affect your everyday life? What did you find most difficult?
It was almost impossible to go shopping, for example, because I couldn’t keep track of all the people around me. Constantly scanning my surroundings was incredibly restrictive. I also experienced very strong intrusive thoughts and fear in the dark. It makes your neck and shoulders get tense and completely stiffen up. I had physiotherapy as well. When I talk about these things, even today, I still get tense… that’s interesting, Byrdie just showed up…

… So she senses that? 
Exactly, she’s trained to sense me.

And how did your therapist work with you?
We went to the mall, for example. I heard steps behind me, in front of me, beside me, in my mind’s eye I saw the bakery explode, it was terrible … But facing up to it was helpful, to realize that the cash register beeping is just a cash register beeping, the bakery is not going to burst into flames, and the man at the post-office counter carefully wrapping his parcel isn’t about to blow something up. It takes a while to get your head round that.

Did this completely rid you of PTSD and its symptoms?
No, it’s all still there. But you can learn to deal with it – some people better than others. My therapist says that PTSD is like having a neighbor you don’t like. When they ring your doorbell, you go to the door and say “oh, not today” and shut the door again. But the minaret that kept appearing in the images during the 2017 operation has burned itself deep into my memory. There’s a mosque not far from where I live, and I still avoid driving past it because the minaret brings back memories that I really don’t want to have.

And the fact that your values were thrown into disarray, your brooding – did you deal with that, too?
Absolutely, because that was also a major part of the problem. It was quite difficult to start with, because you can’t get a handle on it. It sounds a bit silly but my therapist would often say: Don’t worry yourself so much, you’re doing great. At first, you don’t believe it, but our talks really helped to gain clarity over the situation. And the EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy was a game-changer. It mimics REM sleep to access locked-away memories. This is supposed to lead to emotional overload and an outburst. I got a fit of laughter.

At the lowest point of my life, I’m sitting with my psychologist and I can’t stop laughing. I can’t even say what I’m laughing about, as there’s no real trigger. […] I hadn’t felt this way for months. But now I was sitting here, talking about my ordeal, and I couldn’t help myself. […] This laughter broke through the armor that my illness had built around my feelings and increasingly around my body over the course of three years.

I found this very disturbing at first because actually it’s a subject that only makes you want to cry. But when you can’t feel yourself anymore, it’s great if you can allow yourself to do that.

Looking back, what lessons have you learned from your story? Do you have any important messages for your fellow soldiers or for society?
On the one hand, it has made us and our relationship very strong, but basically, it’s still a disaster. I don’t want to complain, but sometimes there are relapses, and you just have to get through them. I can cope with it now, but not everyone can.

Self-care and personal responsibility are essential, especially for us soldiers. That’s our resilience

Self-care and personal responsibility are essential, especially for us soldiers. That’s our resilience. As far as society is concerned, we know from surveys that the German armed forces are generally well regarded. Veterans Day has had a big impact, but it would be nice if society sought more contact and if people in general would show more concern for each other and look out for each other again – like we do here in our village.

And I would like to see PTSD taken seriously as an illness. There are still lots of people who make light of it or use the term flippantly: “You’re giving me PTSD with that” or something along those lines. It would be great if it wasn’t like that.

Mr. Hassan Khan, thank you very much for the interview.

Questions by Rüdiger Frank.

The excerpts are taken from André Hassan Khan’s book “Heute fühlt sich alles an wie Krieg: Ein Drohneneinsatz, ein Trauma und seine Folgen”. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2024. (Excerpts translated from German)