Even doctors can’t say for sure exactly why he has flashbacks, why he could be standing in a bookstore when all of a sudden he’s sure he’s in Ramadi, the pictures in his brain disorienting him among the stacks, which could turn from stacks to rows of rooftops that need to be scanned for snipers.

• This section seems to be a causal claim. The consequences of Caleb going to the store is that his brain could be disorienting him. 

Sometimes he starts yelling, and often he doesn’t remember anything about it later. They don’t know exactly why it comes to him in dreams, and why especially that time he picked up the pieces of Baghdad bombing victims and that lady who appeared to have thrown herself on top of her child to save him only to find the child dead underneath torments him when he’s sleeping, and sometimes awake.

• This entire section is a categorical claim because the author describes the PTSD symptoms that he has as a result of his mental condition. 

They don’t know why some other guys in his unit who did and saw the same stuff that Caleb did and saw are fine but Caleb is so sensitive to light, why he can’t just watch the news like a regular person without feeling as if he might catch fire.

• When discussing other soldiers in Caleb’s unit who did and saw the same things as him but did not experience the same effects of PTSD, the author employs comparative claims. 

Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala. Family history, or maybe previous trauma.

• This is a categorical claim because the author speculates a list of what might have caused the PTSD.

Whatever is happening to Caleb, it’s as old as war itself. 

• I believe this to be an analogy claim due to the fact that what is happening to Caleb is similar to as old as war itself. 

Civil War doctors, who couldn’t think of any other thing that might be unpleasant about fighting the Civil War but homesickness, diagnosed thousands with “nostalgia.” Later, it was deemed “irritable heart.” In World War I it was called “shell shock.” In World War II, “battle fatigue.” It wasn’t an official diagnosis until 1980, when Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made its debut in psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, uniting a flood of Vietnam vets suffering persistent psych issues with traumatized civilians—previously assigned labels like “accident neurosis” and “post-rape syndrome”—onto the same page of the DSM-III.

• This entire section is filled with factual claims. Incontrovertible evidence that can be used to substantiate factual statements. 

In 1943, when Lt. General George S. Patton met an American soldier at an Italian hospital recovering from “nerves,” Patton slapped him and called him a coward. 

• This can be an evaluative claim due to the fact that the General judged an American soldier and called him a “coward”.

In 2006, the British Ministry of Defence pardoned some 300 soldiers who had been executed for cowardice and desertion during World War I, having concluded that many were probably just crippled by PTSD.

• This is a factual claim that has a date and evidence that the British Ministry of Defence pardoned 300 soldiers.