Veterans for Common Sense

Military notifiers must tell the family when a loved one dies

Associated Press – ST. PAUL, Minnesota – Army Lieutenant Colonel Ken Leners brings the news every family fears most.

Leners is a “casualty notification officer” with the Army’s 88th Regional Readiness Command based at Fort Snelling. When a soldier dies, whether in combat, an accident, or suicide, Leners is among the people assigned to tell the victim’s relatives.

The job of a notifier is considered among the most difficult in the military, and Leners still has vivid memories of his first time. In 19 years in the Army, he has done five. Check these out cmsmd.

“It gets harder and harder and harder as it goes on,” Leners said.

When notifiers visited Judy Langhorst, she knew with one look out the window why they were there. Must visit at touroftoowoomba to know more details.

“As soon as we saw what kind of vehicle was pulling up the driveway, we knew,” she recalled of the day last April when two Marines and a Navy chaplain came to her home in Moose Lake to tell her that her son, Pfc. Moises Langhorst, 19, had been killed in Iraq.

“I thought it was a thankless job and they did the best they could,” she said. “We had a lot of questions. Who wouldn’t?”

Since late 2001, when American soldiers began fighting in Afghanistan, through today in Iraq, the scene has been repeated 13 times in Minnesota and more than 1,600 times across the country.

“Each one is totally different,” said Marine 1st Sgt. Theodus Williams, a notifier during his time with Marine Wing Support Squadron 471, also based at Fort Snelling. “You have some parents who will take it very hard, some parents who are relaxed with it because they don’t want to believe it, and some parents who are angry,” he said.

During the past 100 years, the military often used telegrams to deliver the news that a loved one had died. During the Vietnam War, those telegrams were sometimes delivered by taxi drivers.

Realizing that those notifications were impersonal and seemed uncaring, the Department of Defense laid out procedures that include who should tell the next of kin and how much information about the death should be revealed to the family on the first visit. You can visit Mitcccny to know more things about family meets. In an effort to be sensitive, notifiers leave out details about burial and monetary matters in that first visit.

Practices vary among the military branches, though. The Navy suggests having a chaplain deliver the news, while the Army specifically exempts chaplains. The Marines assign an officer who will notify the family, and then return to help with the funeral, filing for benefits and other work. But the Army and Air Force split those duties between different people so the next of kin will never see the notifier again.

And there are scripts, although each branch prohibits notifiers from reading them as they deliver the news.

Army and Marine scripts waste few words.

“The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your (relationship) (died/was killed in action) in (country/state) on (date),” reads the Army’s suggested script. “The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.”

Navy officers deliver the news in increments. The notifiers introduce themselves, say they are there because they have some news, say that it is not good news, and that the person’s loved one was seriously injured or wounded and has died as a result.

Sometimes it doesn’t go well.

Cheryl Fey, an Eden Prairie mother whose son, Marine Cpl. Tyler Fey, died in Iraq in April, said she’s still disturbed by what happened in her case.

“I was quite appalled at the way this was handled in that there was no clergy person with them,” she said. “They’re not really prepared. The whole concept is, they need someone there to communicate with family members. They needed a chaplain. I would’ve been content with a Jewish Rabbi. They can bring all the military froufrou into my home, but that’s not really going to help. You need a clergy person because you’re just devastated.”

She said the Marines who came to her home “were very professional and military. They sat there upright and very staunch. In their viewpoint, they were very professional. They were following the book.”

“We’re Roman Catholic and we asked the first sergeant if Tyler had been anointed, and he didn’t know what we were talking about,” she said, referring to the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. “That’s unacceptable from our point of view.”

For 12 Years VA Failed to Contact WWII Veterans Exposed to Chemical Wafare Agents

U.S. seeks out vets in chemical tests

BY DAVID ZEMAN
DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

February 18, 2005

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Thursday that it will begin mailing letters within two weeks to thousands of veterans and military workers exposed to toxic chemicals during World War II and will invite them to seek disability benefits.

VETERANS’ STORY Read the Free Press special report, “Duty, honor, betrayal: How U.S. turned its back on poisoned WWII vets” online at www.freep.com/specials   In addition, VA officials said, the agency will set up a hotline for veterans or their survivors to call if they were exposed to dangerous levels of mustard gas, lewisite or other chemicals.

The VA announcement follows a Free Press series in November that revealed how the agency had not delivered on a 1993 promise to Congress to contact World War II veterans involved in secret chemical testing, warn them of known health risks and invite them to file claims.

The newspaper’s investigation found that the VA did not send a single letter, or place a single phone call, to the veterans — an untold number of whom died or were sickened by various cancers, lung, eye or respiratory illnesses linked to the chemicals. The agency relied instead on public-service ads that most veterans never saw.

“I think it’s a positive thing, and I don’t think it would have happened if it had not been for your work, quite frankly,” U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, said Thursday in reaction to the VA’s plans.

Strickland, a member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, urged the VA to act quickly in a letter last week to new VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. When Nicholson appeared before his committee Wednesday, Strickland pleaded with him to “reach out to find these individuals and to provide them with the assistance that I believe this country wants and should provide to them.”

It remains unclear how many veterans exposed to chemicals are still alive or can be located six decades after the war ended.

Renee Szybala, director of the VA’s compensation and pension service, said Thursday that the agency is culling a U.S. Department of Defense database of about 4,500 veterans who took part in secret chemical tests beginning in 1942. The database also includes the names of 1,800 civilian and contract workers exposed to toxins in the manufacturing or transportation of chemical weapons, a list the VA said it will pass on to the U.S. Department of Labor to handle any benefit claims.

The Defense Department database was first provided to the VA in 1997 and then apparently disappeared, for reasons that nobody at the VA has been able to explain. Szybala, who was not working on the project then, conceded Thursday, “We lost a lot of records.”

In the next week or so, Szybala said, defense records will be matched with those in databases at the VA, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Social Security Administration to obtain updated addresses. For those names that can’t be matched, Szybala said, the VA will pursue leads through private credit-reporting agencies.

Szybala said letters will be mailed as names are matched, and that the VA hoped to process the list by spring. Benefits will range from roughly $400 to $2,200 a month, depending on the degree of disability.

The Free Press series chronicled the travails of the 1st Chemical Casual Company, an Army unit of 100 men who were among more than 4,000 soldiers or sailors deliberately injured in secret gas chamber and field tests designed to help scientists study ways to protect troops from chemical attacks. More than 60,000 troops also were exposed to lower-level testing of chemical agents. The recruits were misled about the health risks and threatened with court-martial if they disclosed the tests to anyone. Many carried the secret to their graves.

Florence Wolfson of Farmington said the VA’s actions might convince her to file a claim on behalf of her husband, Sidney, a veteran who died Nov. 29 after decades of illness.

“I’ve got the papers; maybe I should get on with it,” she said. “If anything happens, OK.”

The Free Press will publish information about the hotline and other details when they become available later this month.

Contact DAVID ZEMAN at 313-222-6593 or zeman@freepress.com

Honor Betrayed: Chemical Veterans from World War II

(2/18/2005) UPDATE- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is now giving specifics about what it will do for World War II veterans used in secret chemical warfare tests.

10 Investigates reported this week that thousands of WWII vets suffered injuries, physical and psychological, from the chemical warfare tests. Most have never been provided medical benefits.

Renee Szybala, director of the VA’s compensation and pension service says up to 60,00 veterans could now get benefits because of their chemical exposure during WWII. Szybala said the first letters will go out by the end of the month and notify  4,500 veterans, the first group identified by the U.S. Department of Defense as being eligible for the chemical exposure benefits. “This is a rolling out reach,” said Szybala. “We will be sending letters to everybody.”

The letters will go to veterans who had full body contact with mustard gas, lewisite and other chemical agents or veterans who had partial body contact with the chemicals. Szybala said a third letter will be sent to surviving spouses of veterans who have died and were exposed to the chemicals during their WWII service years. The basic compensation rates go from $400 to $2,200 a month, depending on the percentage of disability.

Vice Admiral Daniel L. Cooper (Ret.), Under Secretary for Benefits in the Department of Veterans Affairs also said a toll-free phone number will be set up so that veterans or veterans’ families can learn more about applying for the benefits. “We’re giving them a 1-800 number to call,” said Cooper. “We’re having them go into the hospitals and get checked. I think we’re thoroughly marching down a plan and that’s essentially where it is.”

Ohio Congressman Ted Strickland, (D) Lisbon, says the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is finally keeping its promise to help the World War II veterans who were exposed to chemicals by the U.S. military. “It appears that they are taking this seriously and that they are beginning to take the steps necessary to communicate with these individuals who were used as experimental animals, basically,” said Rep. Strickland.

(2/14/2005) World War II (WWII) has been called ”the unfought chemical war.” Both sides produced millions of tons of chemical weapons and made massive preparations for their use, yet the weapons were never used. These preparations included secret research programs in the United States to develop better weapons and better methods of protecting against these weapons. By the time the war ended, 10 Investigates learned over 60,000 U.S. servicemen had been used as human subjects in this chemical defense research program. At least 4,000 of these subjects had participated in tests conducted with high concentrations of mustard agents or Lewisite in gas chambers or in field exercises over contaminated ground areas.

They volunteered to defend America. Instead, in a 10 Investigates review of declassified documents, thousands of World War II veterans became subjects for secret chemical warfare tests. It was one of the U.S. military’s darkest secrets and many Ohio soldiers were among those tested at an Army base in Maryland.

A vacant building at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground is where some of the tests were conducted. It’s a faded reminder of what happened in the fall of 1943 on this portion of the Maryland facility known then as Edgewood Arsenal. “They said they had some experiments,” said 84-year-old Bill Biggs of Athens, Ohio. He was a private in the Army and one of the volunteers who didn’t know the true risks of the experiments until after they had been conducted. Biggs and 99 other members of the 1st Chemical Casual Company thought they were doing their patriotic duty. “We didn’t know exactly what we were getting into,” said Biggs.

That fall, the military herded several soldiers into sealed gas chambers at Edgewood Arsenal to test the effects of chemical warfare. Biggs said some of the chemical warfare experiments went too far. “But they should of stopped short of hurting somebody,” said Biggs. Biggs says he and some of the other volunteers were lucky. They were tested with a classified nerve gas that was meant to blur the enemy’s eyesight. It reduced Biggs pupils to pin-points. “And left them that way. Mine for 10 days,” said Biggs.

Other soldiers were tested with mustard agents (sulfur and nitrogen mustard) and Lewisite (an arsenic-containing agent) to see if the experimental clothes or skin lotions they wore could repel the chemical weapons. Mustard gas burns eyes and skin. It can cause permanent lung damage even cancer. “Those guys really had it tough,” said Biggs who grew concerned as the military kept raising the mustard gas concentrations to the point where they caused severe injuries to many of the volunteers. “When they found that out, it was too late for the guys that were in there last, or next to last,” said Biggs.

In Mansfield, James Earnshaw’s family didn’t know about the tests. Sworn to secrecy, Earnshaw couldn’t tell his family why he received a medal whose true purpose was even cut out of his letter of commendation. Released early from the Army, Earnshaw was denied medical benefits for a nervous breakdown he suffered shortly after the experiments. Earnshaw’s wife Mary Jo read to us the Army’s medical report on her husband. “ ‘Anxiety type manifested by sleeplessness, nervousness and mild depression.’  It was just too much for him,” said Mrs Earnshaw.

Sixty two years later, 10 Investigates learned the secret contents that had been clipped from of Earnshaw’s commendation letter. It commended Earnshaw and other members of the 1st Chemical Casual Company for subjecting themselves to “pain, discomfort and possible permanent injury” from exposure to “chemical agents.” Even so, the government denied Earnshaw’s request years later for medical benefits.

Jim Earnshaw died in 1997 from heart disease never knowing the military had finally admitted to the chemical warfare tests in 1991. Shortly afterwards, the VA promised to track down the victims, to get the word out. It didn’t happen. There were no letters, no phone calls from the VA. The VA only ran limited public service adsdescribing the benefits in veterans magazines that most veterans didn’t read. The medical benefits were finally there, but Earnshaw never knew about them. “I am sure that if he had known about it he would have probably asked,” says Earnshaw’s son Jim Earnshaw, Jr.

Dan Brock, Harvard University Medical Ethics Professor called the secrecy surrounding the tests a classic Catch-22, especially for the veterans who later suffered health consequences. “You’re sworn to secrecy and then when you come back that secrecy is used against you in order to keep you from being able to get compensation and simple benefits,” said Brock.

To further underscore the importance of

contacting the affected veterans the Institute of Medicine in 1993 was asked by the VA to conduct its own study on the WWII Chemical experiments and concluded; “The human subjects had experienced a wide range of exposures to mustard agents or Lewisite, from mild (a drop of agent on the arm in “patch” tests) to quite severe (repeated gas chamber trials, sometimes without protective clothing). All of the men in the chamber and field tests, and some of the men in the patch tests, were told at the time that they should never reveal the nature of the experiments. Almost to a man, they kept this secret for the next 40 or more years…. The lack of follow-up of these subjects particularly dismayed the committee for a number of reasons. For example, the end point of the chamber and field tests was tissue injury, but it was already known by 1933 that certain long-term health problems resulted from sulfur mustard exposure. Further, it was documented that numerous subjects suffered severe injuries that required up to a month of treatment. Finally, the exposure levels were sufficiently high that even the most efficient gas mask would have leaked enough mustard agent or Lewisite to cause inhalation and eye injuries.”

The Institute of Medicine study also noted the psychological effects associated with the chemical tests experienced by Earnshaw and other members of the 1st Chemical Casual Company. “Psychological disorders mood disorders anxiety disorders (including post-traumatic stress disorder) other traumatic stress disorder responses.”

In Washington, we asked the Department of Veteran’s Affairs what happened. Renee Szybala is director of the VA’s compensation and benefits service. “I’m fairly new to the VA,” said Szybala. “And I’m not well versed on what went on there. We’re more looking to the future.” Szybala explained that the VA was creating a new data base of potentially thousands of surviving WWII veterans who were exposed to chemicals or their surviving spouses. Once that task is done, Szybala says the VA will begin immediately contacting people by letter. That’s something Ohiocongressman Ted Strickland says should have happened long ago. “They promised several years ago to do something about this problem,” said Rep. Strickland. “They have done little or nothing to this point.”

The VA says this time it will notify the Veterans or their surviving spouses who are eligible for the benefits. “I’m hoping that it’s thousands that we’ll be able to reach. I’m hoping that it is,” said Szybala. Strickland, a member of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, says until convinced otherwise, he’s doubtful. “To hear them say now that they’re going to correct this and do the right thing I just simply don’t think they’re telling the truth.” Last week, Rep. Strickland sent a letter to the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairsasking him to ” take action and give these veterans the benefits they rightfully deserve.” Szybala says this time it will happen. “I’m content with that. I mean we’ll convince him (Rep. Strickland) because this is going to happen.”

If it happens, Bill Biggs says he’d be convinced the country he volunteered to serve 60 years ago is finally willing to admit it made a mistake. “If you pay these veterans for damages they received for doing this test then you’re admitting that you over did it.” The Department of Veterans Affairs promised to have more details about its efforts to contactWWII veterans exposed to chemicals later this month.

The Detroit Free Press and U.S. Army historian Jeffrey Smart at Aberdeen Proving Ground contributed to this report.

For information about benefits, contact the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs toll free at 800-827-1000. The VA Web site is www.va.gov.

Make your Voice Heard

Ohio Congressman Ted Strickland: 202-225-5705

U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs: 202-225-3527

U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs: 202-224-9126

Post-traumatic stress disorder needs to be taken seriously

Letters to the Editor
Published February 20, 2005

Re: “Over my dead body,” Feb. 13.

Your article about Sgt. Curtis Greene’s suicide as a result of having post-traumatic stress disorder from his experiences in Iraq was an enormous public service. It is disgraceful how little most people know about this deadly disease.

I am a veteran of the Korean War and have had PTSD for 52 years. I waited 50 years to report my condition to the [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)]. PTSD severely diminished the quality of life for me and my family. I should have gone for help sooner, and I hope others won’t make the same mistake.

An important component of military training is to get you angry… very angry. This is true for hand-to-hand combat training and especially true for bayonet training. They know that the angrier they can get you, the better warrior you will be. While in combat, when you see your friends get killed, the anger turns to uncontrollable rage, and that’s the way the military wants you to be.

If we are lucky enough to return home, we discover the military didn’t issue us an “off” switch. We suffer where you can’t see. We are powerless to explain it, and no one seems to care.

If you are a combat veteran who has PTSD, or a family member of one, seek help at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The PTSD radio will always be playing in your head, but they know how to turn the volume down. PTSD is a disease, not a disgrace.

For the rest of you, take those stupid metallic ribbons off the back of your cars. If you want to show your support for our combat veterans of any war, the next time you see one, look him in the eye, give him a firm handshake and just say “Thank you for serving your country.” It’s the best medicine I know for someone who is living with this horrible problem.

— Frank Thoubboron, Belleair

Keep focusing on war’s impact

Re: “Over my dead body.”

I am writing to say that I appreciate Mary Spicuzza’s recent front-page story about the service and loss of Sgt. Curtis Greene. I believe this type of story speaks to the potential impact of war and the service of the American men and women who are making such large sacrifices.

Please keep informing civilians of the gains and losses associated with our nation taking military action against another nation. I believe it is important to hear and see both sides of the current U.S. military action to make educated and informed decisions about what we support.

— William Royall, Tampa

Many Reserve and Guard Face Job Problems After Discharge from Active Duty

Jobs don’t always wait for Guards, reservists: Citizen soldiers find duty in Iraq can dent families’ finances When Steve Pittman Jr. finally returned to California from Iraq late in December, he was thinking about getting back to two things. One was his girlfriend. The other was his truck. Not necessarily in that order.

One thing that didn’t worry him was his job at a lube shop, where he worked until he was activated by his California National Guard unit. But once he was in Oxnard (Ventura County), employment suddenly moved to the top of the list.

“They had already replaced me,” he said. Pittman said his boss explained politely that business had boomed in Pittman’s absence, and while the shop might have an opening in a few weeks, he was keeping Pittman’s replacement on the job.

“That was understandable,” Pittman said. But it still left him without a job as his bank balance — fat from combat pay and months on a base with little to buy — rapidly thinned out.

Pittman’s experience is being repeated across the nation as members of the National Guard and Reserve — mobilized in numbers and for a duration not seen in 60 years, return from tours of duty in Iraq to the civilian workforce.

Older, further along in their careers and often with larger families than their active-duty peers, members of the National Guard and Reserve, experts say, have been especially affected by the demands of lengthy — and in some cases repeated — deployments to Iraq.

And while Pittman experienced an extreme scenario, thousands of soldiers are returning home and finding a range of difficulties — from paperwork hassles to losing their homes and businesses — as they try to fit back into civilian life. And officials are scrambling to solve that problem before tens of thousands more troops come home.

“This just hasn’t happened since World War II, and in World War II, the whole country was mobilized in effect, so this didn’t happen,” said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Monroe Jr., former adjutant general of the California National Guard. “It is something that no one is prepared to deal with in an effective way.”

More than 412,000 Guard and reservists have been called up nationwide since Sept. 11, 2001, and 185,432 remain on active duty. And officials in the military, government and volunteer organizations whose job it is to assist returning troops say that when difficulties occur, the system works pretty well.

While the size of the problem is new, the issues around it are not — Monroe’s own son, a National Guard captain, lost his job while mobilized for Operation Noble Eagle, the call-up of reservists for domestic duty after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Helping his son brought Monroe into close contact with Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, a volunteer organization working to alleviate hardships that military service can cause for employers and employees alike.

An ombudsmen for the support organization contacted Monroe’s son’s employer with a gentle reminder that federal law — the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act — requires that, with few exceptions, military service members are entitled to their civilian jobs after deployment, along with the seniority, status and pay they would have had if they had stayed at home.

With surprising speed, Monroe’s son was back at work, and today the general, who left the Guard Adjutant General’s office last year, is California vice chairman of Employer Support.

Most cases brought to the organization have similarly happy endings, said John Woolley, Northern California vice chairman of the group.

Woolley’s volunteer position has turned into a more or less full-time job in the past year and a half, as complaints from service members have spiked. But more than 80 percent of the complaints are resolved with a friendly phone call and letter to the employer explaining the law, he said.

Cases that can’t be resolved might be sent to the Department of Labor for action and even to the Department of Justice, which can file a lawsuit.

The departments of Defense, Labor and Justice track such cases differently, and some have been revamping their procedures since the Iraq war began, making it tricky to know the scale of the problem. Employer Support reported that since April, it has received 6,462 queries, of which 5,739 have been successfully mediated between reservist and employer.

Department of Labor officials said they opened fewer than 1,500 cases in fiscal year 2004 — an increase over the two previous years, but still less than the number opened after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And the Department of Justice reported it has only 16 open investigations this fiscal year.

Still, Woolley said he was worried about the vast demobilization down the road.

“When the tides go out, that’s not a problem,” he said. “But when the tide comes back in — that’s a problem.”

Woolley and others in the group are working hard to increase awareness of the law not only among employers, through a range of award programs and outreach activities, but also among service members, through pre- and post- deployment briefings.

Even then, the system can’t help some troops — including Pittman, whose California job hunt went poorly, in large part because he didn’t have the right paperwork allowing him to apply the welding skills he learned in Iraq to a job in the state.

“It’s kind of frustrating,” he said, “especially when I can out-weld about half of the damn applicants.”

The Department of Labor is looking at ways to make it easier for returning veterans to get state certifications for the kinds of work they do in the military, as well as to help returning service members translate their military experience into civilian resume material. The department has launched a nationwide campaign encouraging employers to hire veterans, and plans to issue guidelines helping employers understand and obey the law.

“We find that in most cases the problems occur because the employer did not understand what the law requires,” said Frederico Juarbe Jr., assistant secretary of labor for veterans employment and training, speaking in San Jose last week at the first West Coast meeting of the White House’s year-old National Hire Veterans Committee.

But all those services — such as the employment rights law — are useless if the members fail to use them, and officials can’t know how many returning troops don’t know the law or are too proud to try.

Pittman, for one, decided not to file a complaint and instead headed to Indiana to live with his parents.

“Call it my upbringing, but I tend not to bitch,” the 25-year-old said. “Probably the most valuable thing my dad ever gave me was a work ethic. I’ve never been without a job for long.”

Pay differential

Not every employment issue faced by mobilized Guard members and reservists can be addressed. One is the issue of pay differential for civilian and military jobs.

“There is definitely a problem. The problem is particularly significant for people who make a lot of money in civilian life, and then make a lot less when they go on active duty,” said retired Army Reserve Col. Alfred Diaz, past national vice president of the Reserve Officers Association. “Those people are the ones likely to lose all their savings, and maybe even their houses.”

Scott Hellesto, a 35-year-old paramedic and firefighter, was activated as a Navy corpsman, causing his pay to drop from more than $70,000 to less than $50,000. His wife ended up on the state Women, Infants and Children support program and had to move with their three children into a smaller home in Antioch.

“We had a nice rental house, and I had to put my family in a shoe-box apartment,” he said. “This place was a dive. … Our car got broken into twice, our tires got popped on our car.”

Six months after he returned, Hellesto and his wife were able to buy a new home in time for the birth of their fourth child. But while he does not regret military service — “If they call me back today, I’d go,” he said — he also says there should be a way to serve without so much sacrifice.

“When you sign up for the military, you know there’s no such thing as a rich man in the military,” he said. “(But) who’s to say that my time in the military is any less valuable than my time at the firehouse?”

The result isn’t only a strain on the individual, it’s a strain on the military when that individual gets fed up and quits, Diaz said.

“It’s affecting National Guard recruiting in particular,” he said. “Reserve recruiting is going to be affected as well, and retention is going to be affected.”

Diaz went to Washington last week to support a bill introduced by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, which would require federal employers to continue paying activated employees the difference between their civilian and military wages, and would offer tax credits to civilian employers who voluntarily do the same.

Small business owners

Officials haven’t quite figured out how to solve the problems of another category of returnees — the self-employed and small business owners, who make up an estimated 7 percent of Guard members and reservists, according to a 2003 Department of Defense study.

National Guard Staff Sgt. Ken Weichert, 38, of San Francisco operates START Fitness, a boot-camp-style fitness and self-defense course for civilians. For almost seven years, the former Army drill instructor’s one-weekend-a- month, two-weeks-a-year National Guard training schedule caused no problems.

But when his military intelligence battalion was activated in February 2003 with just a few days’ notice, he figured he was out of business. “I gave power of attorney over to my wife, and I said shut it down,” he said.

“They said it was going to be four months. It turned out to be 13. … Any ready reservist who’s activated that owns his own business is not protected by anything,” he said. “If their business goes under, their business goes under.”

As it turned out, Weichert’s wife, Stephanie — they married the day before he deployed — was more resourceful than he’d realized. Weichert returned to discover that she had gotten her own instructor certification, hired some of his black-belt-qualified friends and managed to keep 80 percent of his membership. Weichert feels he dodged a bullet, thanks to the support of his wife.

“There are a lot of business owners — a lot more than I thought there were. Insurance salesmen, real estate brokers,” he said. “If they’re not there, their commissions gravely suffer and they go down to pennies from hundreds.”

“Nobody knows the scale of the problem,” said William Elmore, associate administrator of the Office of Veterans Business Development at the U.S. Small Business Administration, the main source of assistance for people like Weichert. “Our estimate is somewhere in the range of 30,000 small business owners have been activated.”

Elmore said the range of programs available to returning troops like Weichert is significant and growing, with new outreach centers — including one in Sacramento — dedicated to getting those resources to returning troops.

Both Elmore and Woolley, of Employer Support, said the government could do more to directly assist small-business owners.

“They’re not gone forever. They’re gone for a year, maybe less than that, ” he said. “I think the United States of America could keep a small business going for a year.”

Veterans’ job rights

For more information on resources available to returning troops, visit the following Web sites:

Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve: www.esgr.org/

SBA’s Office of Veterans Business Development: www.sba.gov/vets/

President’s National Hire Veterans Committee: www.hirevetsfirst.gov/

U.S. Department of Labor Veterans’ Employment and Training Service: www.dol.gov/vets/

E-mail Matthew B. Stannard at mstannard@sfchronicle.com

G.I. sex predator hunt Pentagon to investigate 10 serial-attack suspects BY CORKY SIEMASZKO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Stung byreports of serial rapists in the ranks, the Pentagon said yesterday it would investigate the soldiers identified by a watchdog group.

One of the 10 suspects is a Marine serving at Camp Pendleton, Calif., whom at least three women have accused of sexual assault, sources said.

“We’re looking and trying to determine who these predators are,” said Lt. Col. Joe Richard, a Pentagon spokesman.

Anita Sanchez of the Miles Foundation, a Connecticut-based nonprofit group that assists soldiers who have been sexually assaulted, said her organization forwarded the names of the suspected servicemen to their respective services.

Each has been accused by two or more soldiers who came to the Miles Foundation for help. Six are in the Army, two are in the Marines and one each is in the Navy and Air Force.

“We report it to the services, as opposed to the Pentagon, because the services have direct authority over those individuals,” Sanchez said. “There are protocols we go through.”

Sanchez said they also have gotten reports about a private security guard who allegedly assaulted several female soldiers. She declined to identify him, or to release the names of the accused servicemen.

The Daily News, however, learned that one of them is a Marine who got immunity last year to testify at the court-martial of one of his alleged victims. The Marine denied the charge.

Under pressure from Congress, the Defense Department recently introduced sweeping policy changes for handling sexual assaults of soldiers.

Sanchez said the foundation has received 307 reports of sexual assault from soldiers – mostly female – serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Bahrain. And many are reluctant to report rapes to their superiors.

In an interview tomorrow on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Lt. Jennifer Dyer of the New Jersey National Guard claims the Army treated her “like a criminal” after she reported being raped and was ordered to return to the base where her alleged attacker was stationed.

Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Pamela Hart said Dyer had the “opportunity to go to any base of her choosing” and that her accused rapist faces a court-martial.

Journalist group calls US to account over Iraq

Dominic Timms
Friday February 18, 2005

The US government was today accused of hiding behind a “culture of denial” over the deaths of at least 12 journalists who are alleged to have perished at the hands of the US military in Iraq.

Re-igniting the debate that US soldiers deliberately “targeted” journalists during the Iraqi occupation, a press freedom body called on the US to take “responsibility” for its actions in the country.

Responding to what it said was the “hounding out” of the CNN news chief, Eason Jordan, the International Federation of Journalists called on the US administration to come clean over its “mistakes” in the region.

Since US, British and other soldiers first began Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, more than 70 journalists have been killed in the country.

The IFJ said that at least 12 journalists had met their deaths at the “hands of US soldiers”, including the killings of Taras Protsyuk of Reuters and Jose Couso of Spain’s Telecinco after US tanks opened fire on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

The US military claimed the tanks had been responding to small arms fire coming from the hotel, which housed journalists who were non-embedded with military forces, but later withdrew the claim saying: soldiers fired at “what was believed to be an enemy firing platform and observation point”.

Almost a year after journalists’ groups first demanded it, a US military investigation into the attack found that “no fault or negligence” could be attributed to US soldiers.

As part of a move to establish a new journalist body in Iraq, to be known as the Iraqi National Journalists Council, the IFJ said it would hold demonstrations across the country on the anniversary of the Palestine Hotel attack.

“On that day journalists around the world will once again protest over impunity [and] secrecy over media deaths and, in particular, at the failure of the United States to take responsibility for its actions in Iraq which have led to the killing of journalists,” said the IFJ general secretary, Aidan White.

He said that the resignation of CNN’s Eason Jordan had been orchestrated by a vitriolic campaign by the US right wing.

Mr Eason was forced to quit after suggesting that that US forces had deliberately targeted journalists in Iraq, though he later clarified his comments, saying that he never meant to imply that “US forces acted with ill intent when US forces accidentally killed journalists.”

Mr White said the CNN news executive had been “hounded out by a toxic mix of hysteria, intolerance and ignorance” and said the IFJ would continue its campaign “until Washington is ready to admit its mistakes”.

Experts see military draft as inevitable

Anti-war activists fear revival of selective service

There may come a day when Uncle Sam wants Wayne Flenniken for the U.S. Army.

In many ways, he’s an ideal candidate for military service. At 15, he already has finished high school and is enrolled at Delaware Technical & Community College studying Spanish and English. There is a problem, however. Wayne doesn’t want any part of Uncle Sam’s Army – or anyone else’s, for that matter.

“I don’t believe in war and I don’t like the military in any way, shape or form,” he said. “I don’t think anyone should be forced to die prematurely.”

That’s why he went to a draft resistance training session Friday in his hometown of Newark. It’s why Wayne has begun building his case as a conscientious objector.

The United States no longer has a military draft and hasn’t since 1973, when it converted to an all-volunteer military.

But some anti-war activists say it’s only a matter of time before the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress bring it back. Meanwhile, conservatives and moderates outside the administration have taken a hard look at America’s military commitments and are urging Congress to beef up the Army and Marines.

Many elected officials say there is no way the draft will be brought back any time soon.

“Our current all-volunteer force is highly effective, well-trained, well-disciplined and capable of handling our global and national security commitments,” said Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del. “[Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have continuously stated their opposition to reviving the draft and the House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected such a proposal last year. I personally oppose it.”

Others aren’t so certain.

“I don’t see the need for a draft, but we need to prepare now in order to avoid having one forced on us in the future,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. “We can reduce the stress we are placing on our armed forces by increasing the number of ground troops in the Army and Marine Corps and bringing the size of our military in line with our expanded responsibilities in a post-9/11 world,” he said.

Looking for help

A few believe, however, that the White House should get other nations to share the burden in Iraq.

“We have 12 [combat] divisions and 10 are locked down in Iraq, either coming or going,” said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. “Our ability to have any flexibility with ground forces anywhere else is diminished. If we had to move into Iran, Syria, North Korea or anywhere else, we’d be in real difficulty.”

In addition, he said, “we have absolutely spent, exhausted, and in some instances misled the National Guard and the reserves. I’ve been in Baghdad and Fallujah and I’ve spoken with them. When they enlisted in the Guard, they never anticipated being sent for two tours of duty in Iraq lasting a year or 18 months. We can’t keep asking citizen soldiers to do that.”

In a highly critical memo on the use of Reservists, Lt. Gen. James Helmly said virtually the same thing late last year. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, said that “overuse” in Iraq and Afghanistan could result in a “broken force.”

Biden co-sponsored legislation with Republican Sen. John McCain and others that allows the Army to increase its active duty strength by 30,000 troops. The Defense Department said earlier this month that it expects to meet that goal by 2007.

Anti-war activists agree with Biden and Helmly that the military needs additional troops.

“We already have our troops stretched to the limit,” said J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War. The Guard and Reserve cannot continue to provide about 40 percent of the nation’s combat troops, Biden said.

As a result, McNeil and other anti-war activists such as Sally Milbury-Steen, executive director of the Wilmington-based peace organization Pacem in Terris, said they think a draft is on the horizon.

“I think there’s a very good chance of a military draft in the next two years. We have soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and now they’re heating up the rhetoric on Iran. Where else will the soldiers come from?” Milbury-Steen asked.

Peace activists aren’t the only ones thinking seriously about compulsory military service. In a well-publicized letter sent to congressional leaders in late January, conservatives and moderates said flatly that “the United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume.”

In that letter, retired military leaders such as Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey joined with defense analysts such as Michele Flournoy and political commentators such as William Kristol in asking Congress “to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. … it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active-duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years.”

They do not call for a draft but anti-war activists say they see no other certain way to boost military strength.

“The most probable way they will start is to do a selected draft of medical people, those with specialized computer skills, and those with Arabic language skills and let it spread further,” Milbury-Steen said.

‘Everything is in place’

If a new draft law is enacted, the government could start sending new recruits to military training very quickly. The reason: Former President Jimmy Carter put the framework of the current Selective Service system in place in 1980. Although Carter never activated it, as part of the framework, young men must register with the government when they turn 18.

That means, Milbury-Steen said, that new recruits could be sent to boot camp within two weeks of the draft law’s passage.

“Everything is in place, ready to go,” she said.

Charles Pena, director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, does not see a military draft in the future. Instead, he said, the federal government is more likely to require compulsory national service.

“We won’t have a draft like we had in the Vietnam era,” Pena said. “There are two important stumbling blocks to bringing that back. First, what do you do about women? They weren’t drafted before but are now an important part of the military. Second, what happens if someone who is drafted says that he or she is a homosexual?”

Discussion reflects support

There is no groundswell for national service legislation now, Pena said, but it is being discussed by lawmakers and at policy seminars throughout the nation’s capital.

“It’s lurking right below the surface. There are enough people willing to get behind it on Capitol Hill that it’s something that could be done. Right now no one’s pushing for it, but just as importantly, no one’s pushing against it,” he said.

Under national compulsory service, no one would be exempt, he said. People could join the military or perform some other form of community service, Pena said.

Newark resident Jane Curschmann isn’t sure there will be a draft. She went to last week’s anti-draft training because she has a 13-year-old son and wanted to be better informed about his rights. Judy Butler also attended the session. She doesn’t know if there will be a draft but is suspicious of the Bush administration’s forceful denials that there are plans to reinstitute one.

“I have a problem with credibility with this particular administration,” she said.

Wayne Flenniken’s father, Eric, a former Army Reservist, went to the draft resistance training with his son because, while he doesn’t have a problem defending the country from enemies, he has a problem sending his son to fight in Iraq.

“I used to be gung-ho when I was younger but this war in Iraq, it all boils down to oil and oil interests. You want to send my son to Iraq to defend Enron? No,” he said, “I don’t think so.”

Contact Mike Billington at 324-2761 or mbillington@delawareonline.com

Spc. Josh Sanders, then a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed, in July 2004.

Behind the walls of Ward 54

They’re overmedicated, forced to talk about their mothers instead of Iraq, and have to fight for disability pay. Traumatized combat vets say the Army is failing them, and after a year following more than a dozen soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, and reporter Mark Benjamin says he believes the soldiers.

Feb. 18, 2005  |  WASHINGTON — Before he hanged himself with his bathrobe sash in the psychiatric ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Spc. Alexis Soto-Ramirez complained to friends about his medical treatment. Soto-Ramirez, 43, had been flown out of Iraq five months before then because of chronic back pain that became excruciating during the war. But doctors were really worried about his mind. They thought he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving with the 544th Military Police Company, a unit of the Puerto Rico National Guard, the kind of unit that saw dirty, face-to-face combat in Iraq.

A copy of Soto-Ramirez’s medical records, reviewed by Salon, show that a doctor who treated him in Puerto Rico upon his return from Iraq believed his mental problems were probably caused by the war and that his future was in the Army’s hands. “Clearly, the psychiatric symptoms are combat related,” a clinical psychologist at Roosevelt Roads Naval Hospital wrote on Nov. 24, 2003. The entry says, “Outcome will depend on adequacy and appropriateness of treatment.” Doctors in Puerto Rico sent Soto-Ramirez to Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., to get the best care the Army had to offer. There, he was put in Ward 54, Walter Reed’s “lockdown,” or inpatient psychiatric ward, where the most troubled patients are supposed to have constant supervision.

But less than a month after leaving Puerto Rico, on Jan. 12, 2004, Soto-Ramirez was found dead, hanging in Ward 54. Army buddies who visited him in the days before his death said Soto-Ramirez was increasingly angry and despondent. “He was real upset with the treatment he was getting,” said René Negron, a former Walter Reed psychiatric patient and a friend of Soto-Ramirez’s. “He said: ‘These people are giving me the runaround … These people think I’m crazy, and I’m not crazy, Negron. I’m getting more crazy being up here.’

“Those people in Ward 54 were responsible for him. Their responsibility was to have a 24-hour watch on him,” Negron said in a telephone interview from his home in Puerto Rico. While Soto-Ramirez’s death was by his own hand, Negron and other soldiers say the hospital shares the blame.

In fact, repeated interviews over the course of one year with 14 soldiers who have been treated in Walter Reed’s inpatient and outpatient psychiatric wards, and a review of medical records and Army documents, suggest that the Army’s top hospital is failing to properly care for many soldiers traumatized by the Iraq war. As the Soto-Ramirez case suggests, inadequate suicide watch is one concern. But the problems run deeper. Psychiatric techniques employed at Walter Reed appear outmoded and ineffective compared with state-of-the-art care as described by civilian doctors. For example, Walter Reed favors group therapy over one-on-one counseling; and the group therapy is mostly administered by a rotating cast of medical students and residents, not full-fledged doctors or veterans. The troops also complain that the Army relies too much on pills; few of the soldiers took all the medication given to them by the hospital.

Perhaps most troubling, the Army seems bent on denying that the stress of war has caused the soldiers’ mental trauma in the first place. (There is an economic reason for doing so: Mental problems from combat stress can require the Army to pay disability for years.) Soto-Ramirez’s medical records reveal the economical mindset of an Army doctor who evaluated him. “Adequate care and treatment may prevent a claim against the government for PTSD,” wrote a psychologist in Puerto Rico before sending him to Walter Reed.

“The Army does not want to get into the mental-health game in a real way to really help people,” said Col. Travis Beeson, who was flown to Walter Reed for psychiatric help during a second tour with one of the Army’s special operations units in Iraq. “They want to Band-Aid it. They want you out of there as fast as possible, and they don’t want to pay for it.” Indeed, some psychiatric patients at Walter Reed are given the option of signing a form releasing them from the hospital as long as they give up any future disability payments from the Army. One soldier from Pennsylvania, who was shot five times in the chest and saved by body armor, told me he would do anything to get out of Walter Reed, even relinquish disability pay. “I’ll sign anything as soon as I can get my hands on it,” he told me several days before being released from the hospital. “I loved the Army. I was obsessed with it. The Army was my life. Fuck them now.”

The conditions for traumatized vets at the Army’s flagship hospital are particularly disturbing because Walter Reed is supposed to be the best. But leading veterans’ advocate and retired Army ranger Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, agrees that when it comes to psychiatric care, Walter Reed doesn’t make the grade. “I think that Walter Reed is doing a great job of taking care of those suffering acute battlefield injuries — the amputees, the burn victims, and those hurt by bullets and bombs,” said Robinson, who has spent many hours visiting psychiatric patients at Walter Reed. “But they are failing the psychological needs of the returning veterans.”

Walter Reed officials declined requests for interviews, although two spoke to me on the condition of anonymity. In written statements to Salon, Walter Reed said the mental and physical health of patients is the hospital’s top priority and described its PTSD treatment regimen as being in line with modern medical standards. The hospital said patients see both “board certified” and “board eligible” psychiatrists, including medical students and residents who “participate in the clinical activities on the ward as part of their training, and as is appropriate for their level of training and needs of the soldiers.”

The hospital also cited a recent survey in which 42 out of 45 psychiatric inpatients surveyed, or 94 percent, felt that their care was either outstanding or good. “We are satisfied that there is a very high level of patient satisfaction with their treatment,” the statement read. The hospital gave few details about the inpatient survey, such as whether it was anonymous, or whether the patients surveyed were even soldiers who recently fought in Iraq. (Inpatients can include military dependents or soldiers who fought in wars decades ago.)

The high level of satisfaction among inpatients as reported by Walter Reed is completely opposite what I saw and heard while tracking soldiers there over the last year. The soldiers I interviewed invited me to their bedsides in the lockdown ward. They handed over their private medical records. They allowed me to call their buddies, their girlfriends, their mothers. All professed to loving the Army, though some said their trust in the institution had been irrevocably shattered. All said their symptoms either stayed the same or worsened while at Walter Reed; two said they made suicide attempts. While it’s true that patients’ self-reports about treatment are not always objectively based, the repeated, bitter complaints I heard over the course of more than a year, in combination with conversations with civilian experts, cast serious doubts on Walter Reed’s approach to treating PTSD sufferers. It all convinced me that something is seriously amiss at the Army’s top hospital.

Politicians and celebrities — like Dale Earnhardt Jr., ZZ Top and President Bush — routinely visit the wounded at Walter Reed; but dignitaries don’t come to Ward 54. When I first visited the lockdown unit in February 2004, it held around 35 patients, who slept as many as six patients to a room. Most patients stay in lockdown for just a few days, then are moved to rooms in hotel-like facilities to get treatment at the Walter Reed outpatient clinic, known as Ward 53. Within the lockdown unit, doors were kept open so that the patients who padded around the linoleum floors in Army-issued slippers, pajamas and robes could be observed at all times. Patients in various states of consciousness, from alert to near catatonic, sat around a television in a communal room. Some wore bandages from what other soldiers said were self-inflicted wounds. Patients were not allowed near the twin electric doors to Ward 54; these open by a buzzer from the nurses’ station, staffed 24 hours a day.

Soldiers who have stayed in the lockdown unit say they were heavily medicated the entire time. Some remember hearing screaming, or patients being subdued on stretchers after shock therapy. “Inpatient can be a traumatic experience for anyone,” said Lt. Julian P. Goodrum, 34, who was in Ward 54 last February after serving in Iraq. Records show Goodrum was held in the ward 13 days longer than needed while the Army decided whether to charge him as absent without leave when, after getting back from Iraq, he was earlier hospitalized by a civilian psychiatrist. He is fighting those charges.

The soldiers told me about their textbook symptoms of PTSD: sudden, ferocious bouts of rage, utter detachment, anxiety attacks accompanied by shortness of breath, and increased perspiration and rapid eye movement. They complained of relentless insomnia, racing thoughts, self-loathing, blackouts, hallucinations and the constant reliving of war through flashbacks by day and nightmares at night. Some described vivid fantasies of violence toward the Army brass in charge of patients there — slicing their throats, throwing them out windows or shooting them. One psychiatric outpatient, who watched as his best friend was blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq, said: “It does not matter how hardcore you are. Once you go to that war and you start to see dead bodies — you see an arm over here, you see guts over there. There is no way you are ever going to erase that.”

When it is done right, PTSD treatment is a delicate task. Trust is crucial, and medications are carefully administered and monitored. Most critical is getting patients to control the powerful and destructive emotions that can follow a traumatic event like fighting a war. What bewildered the soldiers at Walter Reed, though, was that the Army seemed determined to downplay their war trauma and search for other causes for their mental health problems. In group therapy, sessions often focused more on family relationships and childhood experiences than war, the soldiers said. One outpatient soldier was so angered about this avoidance of the topic of war, he threw a chair during group therapy. Doctors promptly sent him to lockdown.

“When you get [to Walter Reed], they analyze you, break you down, and try to find anything wrong with you before you got in” the Army, said Spc. Josh Sanders, in a telephone conversation from his home in Lovington, Ill. “They started asking me questions about my mom and my dad getting divorced. That was the last thing on my mind when I’m thinking about people getting fragged and burned bodies being pulled out of vehicles,” said Sanders. “They asked me if I missed my wife. Well, shit yeah, I missed my wife. That is not the fucking problem here. Did you ever put your foot through a 5-year-old’s skull?”

Sanders, 25, served in Iraq with the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, from May until December 2003. I met him in the summer of 2004 while he was getting treatment at Walter Reed in the outpatient clinic. Sanders had been evacuated from Baghdad because of the toll the war had taken on his mind. His complaints about Walter Reed were sadly typical. “Nobody hears about this. Nobody hears about what really happens when you are there getting the ‘premier’ medical treatment,” Sanders said.

Dr. Herbert Hendin, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention spent many years studying and treating veterans with PTSD after the Vietnam War. In discussing their treatment, Hendin said, “What veterans need is not simply to be able to talk about their combat experiences but to be able to talk about them with someone who understands the context.” Hendin said a combat veteran “needs to feel an empathic connection with the treating professional.” But to the soldiers, the atmosphere in the Walter Reed psychiatric units wasn’t conducive to feeling understood, or getting better.

In Ward 54, recent combat veterans are mixed with other soldiers and even civilians suffering a wide range of mental problems. For them, coming back from Iraq and being treated alongside soldiers with schizophrenia, for example, or maybe even soldiers’ dependents with schizophrenia, makes them feel “crazy,” as opposed to having a natural reaction to combat stress. “If you are a hard-charging person, or somebody who tries to do things right, you are already taking a huge hit to your ego by being put in there,” Beeson, the Army colonel, told me. One of the two Walter Reed officials who spoke on condition of anonymity agreed that recent combat vets shouldn’t be lumped in with other psychiatric patients. Those soldiers “need to have a specialized unit,” the official said. “They are labeled goofy and crazy, and they are not crazy.”

Beeson served in Iraq with the Army’s Civil Affairs Command, part of the Army’s special-operations units. He is a 47-year-old reservist with 26 years of service under his belt, a wiry man grizzled by war. Beeson says his PTSD manifested during his second tour in Iraq. He was flown to Walter Reed. When I first met him in August 2004, heavy medication made him speak in slow, halting sentences like a drunk with a stutter. “A lot of the therapy was counterproductive to me,” Beeson said in a telephone interview from his home in Arkansas, after getting out of Walter Reed. “It was a very paranoia-inducing place. If I was not paranoid when I got there, I was paranoid when I left … To me, they need to figure out if they are going to treat people for war or be a regular hospital.”

Josh Sanders, like the other soldiers I spent time with, also believes he is worse off because of his treatment at Walter Reed. “I don’t trust anybody now … I wish people could understand,” he said. Sanders made two suicide attempts while under outpatient care at Ward 53. Hospital officials would not answer questions about the prevalence of suicide attempts at Walter Reed, but said two incidents that occurred there in January, one apparent fatal overdose and another suicide attempt, are under investigation. Two years ago, the case of Army Master Sgt. James Curtis Coons, also an outpatient, raised serious questions about how Walter Reed handles suicidal patients — questions that persist today.

Coons was evacuated to Walter Reed from Kuwait on June 29, 2003, after swallowing sleeping pills in an apparent suicide attempt several days earlier. When he arrived at Walter Reed, he wasn’t sent to the lockdown unit but to a room in one of the hotel-like facilities on campus. Coons, 36, promptly hanged himself. And although he had a doctor’s appointment the next day, Walter Reed officials failed to look for Coons until July 4, so his body hung and decomposed until then. “A soldier coming in from a war zone does not show up for a doctor’s appointment and they did not even check on him?” his mother, Carol Coons, said in a telephone interview from her home in Texas. “Until this is taken seriously, this is going to continue on. A psychiatric problem among those coming home from these war zones is just as deadly as a bullet.” In a statement, the hospital said it has recently “enacted more stringent policies and procedures to strengthen outpatient soldier accountability”; for example, a Walter Reed staff member is now sent to check on patients who don’t show up for appointments, the hospital said.

It’s unclear how many combat vets are in need of PTSD treatment. But data from the Department of Veterans Affairs and a published Army study show at least one out of every six soldiers coming back from Iraq may have PTSD. (Many Army bases have psychiatric clinics, but some of the most serious cases go to Walter Reed.) Congress is responding with a flurry of bills that might help keep track of and treat the mental toll Operation Iraqi Freedom is taking on U.S. troops. Illinois Democrat Rep. Lane Evans’ bill calls on the military to use state-of-the-art methods to treat psychological injuries. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., would require the Pentagon to send reports to Congress on PTSD among troops because there is so little information on psychological injury rates.

Normally, soldiers discharged from the Army seek medical treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is widely understood to do a superior job at treating soldiers with PTSD. Because of the V.A.’s good track record, Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center is asking Congress to put the V.A. in charge of treating soldiers with PTSD even before they leave the Army. Four of the soldiers I interviewed who left Walter Reed and later got treatment at the V.A. all praised the care they received there. They finally got a chance to talk one-on-one with other veterans about war, they said. Their medications were pared down, and their disability pay has been increased.

Indeed, the Army’s system for allocating disability pay to traumatized vets is another source of their frustration and anger. An Army panel at Walter Reed, called the Physical Evaluation Board, decides what percentage of income each soldier should get from the military to compensate him if he is too ill to serve any longer. The doctors decide whether wounds are combat related, and then the board decides how much disability the Army will pay. The board’s decision is critical for soldiers trying to make a living after leaving the Army with what can be a debilitating mental condition. Fighting with the hospital about disability pay is a source of considerable stress just as these soldiers are trying to heal their minds.

Some of the soldiers are fighting decisions by the board at Walter Reed. Out of the 14 soldiers interviewed, five have left Walter Reed. Three ended up getting zero percent of their income as disability pay, despite what they said was serious mental stress that made it more difficult or impossible to work. Even those who got a third of their pay still had trouble making ends meet. (In every case I followed, the Department of Veterans Affairs made a later determination that the soldiers deserved more. The soldiers can choose to take the higher percentage of pay from the V.A., but in some cases if they do so, they must pay back what they have received so far from the Army.)