Army Officials Admit Wounded Mistreated at Fort Bliss

Army official admits Bliss Warrior soldiers were mistreated 
KVIA News ABC
Darren Hunt
Feb 11, 2015

EL PASO, Texas -

Hundreds of Wounded Warriors, including at Fort Bliss, were reportedly harassed and abused by staff between 2009 and 2013.

It has top military officials talking. There were allegations of "disrespect, harassment and belittlement of soldiers" at a place where they should have been getting help -- the Warrior Transition Unit at Fort Bliss.

"Was there in fact cause for concern at the WTU at Fort Bliss?" El Paso Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-El Paso) asked Col. Chris Toner, the head of the Army's Transitional Command, last week at a congressional hearing in Washington.

Toner replied: "There were challenges at Fort Bliss, beyond a shadow of a doubt."

According to reports, some warrior transition unit soldiers were called "slackers" and told to "man-up and move on."

"Was it leadership, was it processes, was it procedures, a lack there of?" O'Rourke inquired.

"All of the above," Toner responded. "We're talking about a period of time from 2009 to 2013. We had multiple issues over that time, everything from cadre members that did not have the right approach to the soldiers and the family members to failure to implement procedures and policies that created some issues in the program down there."
read more here

It is a lot different than what Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho claimed.

"I thought the investigation was very thorough," said Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, regarding the investigation at the Colorado fort. "I believe it gave the facts and verified there wasn't a systemic problem, but it did show we had two clinicians who treated one Soldier with a lack of dignity and respect."

Speaking with the Pentagon press in a roundtable, Feb. 6, Horoho said a doctor and social worker had been disciplined. The doctor was removed from his leadership position and the civilian received disciplinary action at the local level, she said.

Horoho said the incidents between the Soldier and the two health care providers occurred between February and May 2014. She also said there had been complaints by other Soldiers stretching back to 2011, but after review they were determined "not to contain problematic behavior by the providers."

OMG! WTU Soldiers Told "Sleep is like a bullet for your brain"

This is what Horoho said in the original interview with Army Times about Warrior Transition Units treating PTSD soldiers,,,,or should I say, abusing them. Now you can read the different version on the Army Military site.

"I thought the investigation was very thorough," said Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, regarding the investigation at the Colorado fort. "I believe it gave the facts and verified there wasn't a systemic problem, but it did show we had two clinicians who treated one Soldier with a lack of dignity and respect."

Speaking with the Pentagon press in a roundtable, Feb. 6, Horoho said a doctor and social worker had been disciplined. The doctor was removed from his leadership position and the civilian received disciplinary action at the local level, she said.

Horoho said the incidents between the Soldier and the two health care providers occurred between February and May 2014. She also said there had been complaints by other Soldiers stretching back to 2011, but after review they were determined "not to contain problematic behavior by the providers."

One soldier? Seriously? Ok, read down below and then go to the Dallas Morning News link on exactly how this one soldier she was talking about was many more.

What the hell is this supposed to mean? Is Lt. General Patricia Horoho saying that they knew what was going on before the Dallas Morning News and NBC interviewed the abused veterans but didn't do anything to fix it? Is she saying that?

"They weren't concerns that an outside source came to us and said do you realize you have these problems," Horoho said at a round-table update on her command for members of the media at the Pentagon on Friday. "We have eight different avenues (for) our warriors and their family members to have their voices heard. When those concerns come up, each of them is looked at and then we take appropriate action."

As bad as that was, this was down toward the end of the article.

"Now we've got leaders, one of the generals told his soldiers, sleep is like bullets for your brain. You never go to battle with an empty magazine," she said. "If you get six hours of sleep or less six days in a row, or go 24 hours without sleep, you have 20 percent cognitive impairment, and you are operating as if you had a .08 BAC [blood alcohol content]. We would never let a soldier in our formation intoxicated."

OMG! Bullets to the brain is how most of them commit suicide! Poor choice of words doesn't come close to explaining that BOHICA nonsense.

OK, so if you happened to have been living off reality TV and not paying attention the Dallas Morning News and NBC out of Texas filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Warrior Transition Units after learning of PTSD soldiers being treated like crap. Considering the Army had been telling the citizens they addressing the stigma instead of fueling it, and helping soldiers recover from combat, instead of finding excuses for them committing suicide, turns out, it wasn't what they claimed.

They waited for the request and then did a six month investigation. Maybe that is what Horoho was talking about since it gave them plenty of time to do their own investigation to find out what the reporters were discovering. Who knows?

Here is the link to the rest of the article as she twists and turns to talk about, oh well, there won't be that many needing the Warrior Transition Units anyway, after this part,

News outlets in Dallas reported in November that hundreds of soldiers had suffered a pattern of "disrespect, harassment and belittlement of soldiers" at WTUs at Fort Bliss, Fort Hood, and Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Another incident led to discipline against a physician and a social worker at Fort Carson, Colorado, for actions dating to early 2014.

Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army surgeon general, affirmed that while even one case of abuse isn't tolerable, most of the complaints turned out to be medical care-related and about 24 cases of harassment have been dealt with. And she said the reports documented issues that the Army already uncovered itself.

If that was the truth then why did this happen after the investigation?

The Army has ordered new training to address complaints from wounded soldiers describing harassment and intimidation inside the nation’s Warrior Transition Units, which are supposed to help these soldiers heal.

The order comes as two prominent Texas congressional leaders are demanding that the Army address the issues first raised in a joint investigation by The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV (NBC5) about three of the units in Texas.

Sen. John Cornyn, in a strongly worded letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh, said he found “highly disturbing” complaints about verbal abuse, disrespect and unfair treatment within the Army’s Warrior Transition Units, or WTUs.

You can read the rest of the investigation here
About this series

“Injured Heroes, Broken Promises,” a joint investigative project between The Dallas Morning News and NBC5 (KXAS-TV), examines allegations of harassment and mistreatment in the U.S.’ Warrior Transition Units, which were created to serve soldiers with physical and psychological wounds. Reporters David Tarrant, Scott Friedman and Eva Parks based their findings on dozens of interviews with soldiers, Army officials and medical experts, and hundreds of pages of military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Go to the link and be sure to check out everything they discovered.

Fort Carson Policy Targeted Troubled, Wounded Soldiers, Still

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 8, 2015

Warrior Transition Units have been in the news for a long time now because some reporters actually bothered to tell their stories. Thanks to the Dallas Morning News and NBC out of Texas, some of their stories were told. Because of their reporting Army orders new training for Warrior Transition Units

The Army has ordered new training to address complaints from wounded soldiers describing harassment and intimidation inside the nation’s Warrior Transition Units, which are supposed to help these soldiers heal.

The problem is, not much has changed since 2011 for those who served, risked their lives only to find those lives were still being jepordized by the military claiming to to take their suffering seriously.

Critics: Fort Carson policy targeted troubled, wounded soldiers
Stars and Stripes
By Bill Murphy Jr.
Published: November 15, 2011

FORT CARSON, Colo. — Army Cpl. Joshua Smith saw the orange glow against the South Carolina night sky long before he reached his sister’s apartment complex. The fire in the back buildings was intense. People stood in shock, watching the blaze.

Smith leapt from his rental car and vaulted a five-foot brick wall, yelling at onlookers to call for help. He grabbed an exercise weight someone had left in the yard, threw it through a sliding glass door and burst into the burning building. He shepherded a mother and her 16-month-old daughter to safety, then turned his attention to the other apartments, kicking down doors, running room to room, making sure no one else was trapped. By the time he emerged, firefighters had arrived. The local TV news hailed the 22-year-old infantryman — home on leave after a tour in Iraq before transferring to Fort Carson, Colo. — whose quick action saved lives.

“It was easy,” Smith said later. “Nobody was shooting at me.”

Sixteen months later, in November 2010, the acting commander at Fort Carson, Brig. Gen. James H. Doty, pinned the Soldier’s Medal, the Army’s highest award for noncombat heroism, to Smith’s chest. It was the young soldier’s second valor medal in three years in the military, after an Army Commendation Medal with valor device that he’d been awarded for his combat service.

For all his heroics, however, Smith’s life was falling apart.

‘This pattern ... is so clear'

With soldiers coming home broken in record numbers, the Army has pledged to take care of their physical and mental wounds. The quick-separation policy at Fort Carson stands in direct conflict with that pledge.

The Army touts a zero-tolerance policy for drug use, but commanders have considerable discretion regarding how much punishment soldiers receive and whether they ultimately are retained or discharged.

Moreover, defense lawyers and veterans advocates point to many cases in which soldiers who tested positive for use of drugs once, or occasionally even twice or more — but who were not facing a possible medical discharge — have been retained on active duty.

Just last month, the vice chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, talked about the link between PTSD and traumatic brain injury on the one hand, and substance abuse and suicide on the other.
read more here

That "pattern" was clear way back in 2011 when that report came out. At least, to some. What wasn't clear was who would be the "one too many" the military keeps talking about when they have to answer questions about military suicide reports? When will that actually happen? When will there be one too many before things change for the men and women risking their lives and paying the price, far too often, with their lives because their suffering has been responded to with abuse?

Fort Carson Wounded Warrior Abused by Doctor and Social Worker
Military.com
by Richard Sisk
Feb 07, 2015

The abuse was "largely associated with disrespect, harassment, belittlement within the three WTUs in Texas" - Fort Hood, Fort Bliss and Brooke Army Medical Center, Toner told the military personnel subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

Editor's Note: The following article updates the previous one to include Army corrections to misstatements made by Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho on the mistreatment of a soldier at the Warrior Transition Unit at Fort Carson, Colo.

A soldier at the Fort Carson, Colo., Warrior Transition Unit (WTU) suffered mistreatment by a doctor and a social worker for several months last year, an Army investigation concluded.

The fact-finding investigation under Article 15-6 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice found that the two heath care providers engaged in "problematic encounters" with the soldier between February and May of 2014, the Army said.

At a roundtable session with Pentagon reporters Friday, Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho said that the doctor and the social worker "showed a lack of dignity and respect to one soldier" and had been disciplined.

Horoho said the mistreatment at Fort Carson's WTU was limited to the two heath care providers and "we did not find that there was a systemic issue."

The Army said that the complaints of several other soldiers dating back to 2011 were also reviewed but were determined "not to contain problematic behavior by the providers.

Horoho initially suggested that the abuse by the doctor and the social worker occurred in the 2009-2013 time frame but the Army later put out a correction to several of her statements to reflect that the Fort Carson incidents occurred last year and were the subject an Article 15-6 investigation.

It was not the first time the WTU at Fort Carson had come under scrutiny. In 2010, the Army disputed a New York Times report on the Fort Carson WTUs that detailed shortcomings in therapy, and patients becoming addicted to medications and suffering abuse from non-commissioned officers.
read more here

Congress Passed Another Bill Along With Gas

The solution in this case didn't amount to a hill of beans.

"something of trifling value; virtually nothing at all"

Why? Because Congress just kept repeating the same steps to appear to be doing "something" to address military suicides but much like beans being good for you, they come with a nasty thing that proves hard to digest as the odor just lingers in the air.

It is almost as if they just figured "hey we got a problem so we'll just renuzit" and call it something else and then no one will notice what we left behind.

Not the first time they did this.

Congress heard about "Wounded Warriors Treated as 'Slackers' at Hood, Bliss and Brooke"

"Col. Chris Toner, head of the Army Transition Command, acknowledged that there had been a pattern of "disrespect, harassment and belittlement of soldiers" at Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) at Fort Bliss, Fort Hood and the Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas from 2009-2013."

But why remember all that? Why bother to think about how long it had been going on when we all had the nice little feel good diversion like the non-existent battle to get the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention Bill passed by Congress? It all starts somewhere before it comes home.

Original diversion, take your eye off the fact that they had pre-deployment psychological screenings. In other words, they were not suicidal before they were sent into combat. After that it is anyone's guess considering the Vice Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted they were not doing post-deployment screenings like they were supposed to.

Not so afraid to go into combat but afraid to admit they had problems because of it, yet hey, why not let Congress pass yet another bill on removing the stigma only to be followed up by reports like what was happening in Warrior Transition Units.

“Injured Heroes, Broken Promises,” a joint investigative project between The Dallas Morning News and NBC5 (KXAS-TV), examines allegations of harassment and mistreatment in the U.S.’ Warrior Transition Units, which were created to serve soldiers with physical and psychological wounds. Reporters David Tarrant, Scott Friedman and Eva Parks based their findings on dozens of interviews with soldiers, Army officials and medical experts, and hundreds of pages of military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Why bother to actually listen to Generals saying stupid things proving all the talk we heard about doing all they could to remove the stigma and then jamming down their throats statements like this.

"Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations."

That quote came from General Raymond Odierno in 2013.

Here's another one.

"Wednesday, we lost a Fort Bliss Soldier to an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. I heard the tragic news as I walked out of a memorial service for another one of our Soldiers who decided to kill himself at home on Christmas Day so that his family would find him. Christmas will never be the same for his two young daughters he left behind," Pittard wrote at the time.

He continued, "I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act. Soldiers who commit suicide leave their families, their buddies and their units to literally clean up their mess. There is nothing noble about suicide."

Later in the post Pittard wrote "I am personally fed up with Soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess. Be an adult, act like an adult, and deal with your real-life problems like the rest of us."

That quote came from Major General Dana Pittard of Fort Bliss

Maybe President Obama liked that message since later that same year in August, this happened.

"Major General Dana Pittard expects the President will discuss the health of the military and Fort Bliss' low suicide rate, as well as government budget cuts, also known as sequestration."

2012 was the highest suicide rate for members of the military but looks like no one is counting or remembering other than families and friends.

But hey, why not just do another bill and call it something else? After all, no one will notice what they already did and then blamed on someone else pretending they didn't just feed the hill of beans.

Reducing Military Suicides Impossible Dream with These Folks in Charge

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 28, 2014

When the subject of suicides tied to military service comes up it feels more like the impossible dream of changing the outcome. Most of what is going on with military suicides has been going on for so long it is hard to hold onto hope they will finally understand what is behind it, especially when veteran suicides are factored in. The numbers are staggering leaving far too many questions leaders never get asked to account for.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

They derived their powers because men and women in this country stepped up for decades putting their lives on the line to obtain freedom and retain it. Congress failed all of them for decades. The wounds are not new. PTSD has been reported under different titles but the lingering effects of war have been carried to the grave. Instead of learning from the past, taking what was proven to provide healing so they can live better lives, failed research projects were passed off as the best thing going no matter what came next.

For starters, Congress should have been demanding answers as to why billions of dollars and a long list of hearings produced such deplorable results. After more was being done, people made money, got promoted, members of Congress got their name attached to bills but never noticed they will forever be connected to massive failures.

There has been a massive deception pulled off by the majority of the members of the press and they didn't even know it. How could they know when they simply reported what they were told, when they were told it to make the news cycle? They didn't think investigating was worth the time to report the truth?

It is a great PR piece but nothing more. Even the author didn't catch what was obviously part of the problem. When you read this part make sure you haven't just taken a sip of coffee. I squirted mine out and have to clean my keyboard.

"So Chiarelli set out to learn everything he could about PTSD and TBI. The task took on even greater urgency a month later, when the Army tallied that 115 soldiers had committed suicide in 2007. That was the most since the Army began counting in 1980 and nearly twice the national suicide rate. Chiarelli’s boss, General George Casey Jr., asked him to figure out why so many soldiers were taking their own lives."

Exactly what happened before and after that is very telling on what Chiarelli learned.

That chart is from The Guardian US military struggling to stop suicide epidemic among war veterans

This is from Senator Joe Donnelly's site on military suicides.

Using an updated method of tracking suicides, DoD also announced in the new military suicide report that 475 servicemembers took their lives in 2013.

This total is slightly lower than the 479 total DoD had previously reported.

While the total number of servicemembers who took their lives declined from 522 in 2012 to 475 in 2013, there was an increase in the number of National Guard and Reserve Members who committed suicide last year. The 134 National Guard Members who took their own lives is a record high, up from 130 in 2012. Last year, 86 Reserve Members committed suicide compared to 72 in 2012.

Like most, Chiarelli had good intentions however he failed to figure out what was going on with the "task" he was given. The number of enlisted went down due to sequestration along with the number of deployed with troops pulled out of Iraq. The flip side was more suicides than combat fatalities. In the Veterans' Community, the numbers went up as well.

General Chiarelli’s Brain Crusade
How one Army officer raised the nation’s consciousness about head injuries
Politico
By HOWARD SCHULTZ and RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN
December 27, 2014

Soon after Peter Chiarelli became vice chief of staff of the Army in 2008, a subordinate showed him a bar graph depicting the number of soldiers determined by the Department of Veterans Affairs to be at least 30 percent disabled. The tallest column was on the far left.

Those are amputations, Chiarelli thought. Or burns.

Then he examined the graph more carefully. Burns were off to the right, accounting for just 2 percent of disabled soldiers. Amputations were in the middle, at 10 percent. The big column, which represented 36 percent of seriously injured soldiers, was labeled “PTSD or TBI.”

Chiarelli was dumbfounded. PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, is the catchall term to explain the anxiety, anger, and disorientation people can experience after exposure to physical harm or the threat of it. An insurgent attack would qualify, as would the threat of one, which most troops in Iraq faced every day. TBI, or traumatic brain injury, can happen when a soldier suffers a concussion from the blast of a roadside bomb. While some soldiers appeared to recover from concussions quickly, for others the effects lingered for months, or even indefinitely.

What stunned Chiarelli was not just the high percentage but the long-term persistence of PTSD and the aftereffects of concussions. He had been the operational commander of all American ground forces in Iraq. Before that, he’d led an Army division that was responsible for Baghdad. And yet the prevalence of debilitating post-traumatic stress and serious brain injuries was news to him. He had assumed that the stress of a near-miss would dissipate. So, too, would the effects of a concussion. He figured they were no big deal.

“If I had a platoon that lost folks, I had combat-stress teams, and I made sure they were flown to whatever base they needed to go to,” he said. “I knew what my football coach told me about traumatic brain injury: ‘Shake it off and get back in the game.’”

The graph sobered him. As vice-chief, his job wasn’t to focus on war strategy. He was responsible for “the force”—for training and equipping soldiers, modernizing weapons and overseeing the budget, and ensuring the well-being of the half-million men and women in the Army, the second-largest U.S. employer after Walmart. But it also was personal: he had put many of these soldiers in harm’s way in Iraq, and he believed he had a duty to those who returned harmed.
read more here

It will all continue to be a bad dream until the leaders stop being asleep on the job and open their eyes. Otherwise nothing will ever change. Had the reporters dared to delve into the decades of data, they would have not just been asking the right questions but demanding the right answers.

The reports of soldiers coming out of Warrior Transition Units have been around for years but it took a six month investigation, a real investigation, by reporters from the Dallas Morning News and NBC out of Texas to show the entire country how wrong the leaders continued to be.

Once you read this whole article on General Chiarelli, I suggest you read what the attitude was in the Army along with how the PTSD soldiers were actually treated. INJURED HEROES, BROKEN PROMISES

After the news broke this was the result.

Army orders new training for Warrior Transition Units

Texas Congressman Frustrated by WTU Complaints Highlighted in NBC 5 Investigation
This is what reporters should have been asking about.

Picking Political Sides Left Military Crushed in the Middle

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 19, 2014

There are many things we should argue about politically because that is how things change. There are somethings that we should never argue about. One of them serves this country everyday and the other served her yesterday.

It seems as if everyone has a strong opinion about how things got so bad for our troops and veterans. The truth is, both sides did it. Both sides continue to feed the myth of everyone in this country picking their side but the truth is most of us are just average folks. I am a full time American.

Republicans think I am a Democrat and Democrats think I am Republican. No one wants to claim me and that is a good thing.

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."
Groucho Marx

The issues facing the troops range from not getting enough pay to provide for their families, unsure future for their careers, to being mistreated for claiming benefits they were promised if they needed them. The veterans face the same things they have faced for decades. Sorry but not much has changed.

Both sides of politicians got us to believe it was the other side's fault but again, truth is stranger than their fiction. Everyone complain about how sequestration hurt the military when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate and both sides refused to work together. Strange thing is, no one was paying attention to the troops risking their lives in other parts of the world, working together as a team, putting their lives on the line ready to die for each other and those folks couldn't manage to even talk to each other to at least support them.

When I was young, I wanted to change to world. I had an opinion on every topic. I lost every argument and never managed to change a single mind on any of them. My Mom, a very wise woman told me it was time for me to pick just one battle, learn everything I could about it and give it all I had. It was not until I received an email from a Marine serving in Iraq that I finally, really understood what she meant. Back then I was politically twisted. I was so involved in supporting my own political views, I settled for what I was being told. The Marine asked me if I was doing what I did for them or myself. The answer made me cry. I wasn't serving them no matter how hard I tried to convince myself I was. That's when Wounded Times started 7 years ago.

The truth is all of this falls back on Congress and both sides put a pox on both sides of the House. Troubles in the military started long ago and kept going just as they did for veterans. Media and online posers like me had the ability to research and understand basic history but they must have not thought it was all that important or they would have known the truth in our history. The truth is we always sucked at taking care of the most unselfish among us.

"Odd how that seems to work all the time. They give all they have and ask for little in return, so that is exactly what Congress gives them."

Kathie Costos

"Congress meets tomorrow morning. Let us all pray: Oh Lord, give us strength to bear that which is about to be inflicted upon us. Be merciful with them, oh Lord, for they know not what they're doing. Amen."
Will Rogers

While there are thousands of postings right now on Bradley Stone and the people he killed, other stories far more pressing have fallen into the abyss. Bradley Stone cleared by Veterans Affairs doctor one week before murders, suicide was the headline on the Washington Times. "A Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist cleared former Marine Bradley Stone of suicidal or homicidal tendencies just a week before he went on a killing spree, slaying six others and then taking his own life."

The headline we needed to pay attention to was on the Dallas Morning News because it involved a lot more lost lives but no one seemed to care. INJURED HEROES, BROKEN PROMISES about PTSD wounded soldiers in the Warrior Transition Units being treated, well, like crap. They were told to get over it and suck it up for 7 years. This after hearing from the DOD they got it. Understood it and were addressing the problems apparently with the wrong address and stamping them with return to sender families.

"As far back as 2008, the House committee received similar complaints from soldiers, Thornberry said. At that time, the committee required improvements from the Army." Rep. Mac Thornberry, the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee

Things were so bad that the Army actually had to issue orders to stop abusing them.

The training order required all WTU leaders to attend a day of training. The order highlighted the need to treat all soldiers and family members “with dignity and respect.” It includes the warning: “There is zero tolerance for hazing, abuse, or discrimination in our Army.” Col. Chris Toner, head of the Warrior Transition Command

Who is to blame? Congress obviously for starters but suggest you pick up a mirror because no matter which letter you voted for, if you didn't pay attention to what was going on, you may as well have picked up a shovel to dig their graves and made yourself useful.

Abuse of PTSD Civil War Soldiers Repeated in the Army Now

If you think things haven't changed much since then, you're right. Considering what was reported about Warrior Transition Units telling PTSD soldiers to "suck it up" and "man up" the attitude is still the same after all these years.

Did Civil War Soldiers Have PTSD? 
One hundred and fifty years later, historians are discovering some of the earliest known cases of post-traumatic stress disorder
Smithsonian Magazine
By Tony Horwitz
January 2015

The wounded soldiers above were photographed at a hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia, between 1861 and 1865. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs division)

This veil is now lifting, in dramatic fashion, amid growing awareness of conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. A year ago, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine mounted its first exhibit on mental health, including displays on PTSD and suicide in the 1860s. Historians and clinicians are sifting through diaries, letters, hospital and pension files and putting Billy Yank and Johnny Reb on the couch as never before. Genealogists have joined in, rediscovering forgotten ancestors and visiting their graves in asylum cemeteries.

In the summer of 1862, John Hildt lost a limb. Then he lost his mind.

The 25-year-old corporal from Michigan saw combat for the first time at the Seven Days Battle in Virginia, where he was shot in the right arm. Doctors amputated his shattered limb close to the shoulder, causing a severe hemorrhage. Hildt survived his physical wound but was transferred to the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington D.C., suffering from “acute mania.”

Hildt, a laborer who’d risen quickly in the ranks, had no prior history of mental illness, and his siblings wrote to the asylum expressing surprise that “his mind could not be restored to its original state.” But months and then years passed, without improvement. Hildt remained withdrawn, apathetic, and at times so “excited and disturbed” that he hit other patients at the asylum. He finally died there in 1911—casualty of a war he’d volunteered to fight a half-century before.

The Civil War killed and injured over a million Americans, roughly a third of all those who served. This grim tally, however, doesn’t include the conflict’s psychic wounds. Military and medical officials in the 1860s had little grasp of how war can scar minds as well as bodies. Mental ills were also a source of shame, especially for soldiers bred on Victorian notions of manliness and courage.

For the most part, the stories of veterans like Hildt have languished in archives and asylum files for over a century, neglected by both historians and descendants.

“We’ve tended to see soldiers in the 1860s as stoic and heroic—monuments to duty, honor and sacrifice,” says Lesley Gordon, editor of Civil War History, a leading academic journal that recently devoted a special issue to wartime trauma. “It’s taken a long time to recognize all the soldiers who came home broken by war, just as men and women do today.”

Counting these casualties and diagnosing their afflictions, however, present considerable challenges. The Civil War occurred in an era when modern psychiatric terms and understanding didn’t yet exist. Men who exhibited what today would be termed war-related anxieties were thought to have character flaws or underlying physical problems. For instance, constricted breath and palpitations—a condition called “soldier’s heart” or “irritable heart”—was blamed on exertion or knapsack straps drawn too tightly across soldiers’ chests. In asylum records, one frequently listed “cause” of mental breakdown is “masturbation.” read more here

Warrior Transition Unit Leaders Had to Be Ordered to Treat Wounded Better?

UPDATE FROM DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Army orders new training for Warrior Transition Units

Sen. John Cornyn, in a strongly worded letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh, said he found “highly disturbing” complaints about verbal abuse, disrespect and unfair treatment within the Army’s Warrior Transition Units, or WTUs.

The complaints were gathered from interviews with current and former soldiers, as well as hundreds of military records obtained by The News and NBC5 through the Freedom of Information Act.

“These news reports indicate a need for increased congressional oversight. Moreover, they raise a number of serious policy questions,” Cornyn wrote in the letter dated Monday.

“The purpose of these WTUs is to help soldiers heal and recover from physical and psychological wounds of war and then either return to their units or transition to civilian life,” he wrote. “Yet, the environment described in the recent news reports ... falls far short of that standard.”

Cornyn’s points

In his letter, Cornyn raised several questions:

Has there been a hostile climate within the WTUs?

Within the WTUs, do key personnel understand post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and recognize it as a legitimate medical condition?

Does the organizational structure of the WTUs result in friction between military requirements and medical needs of soldiers?

Has the Army implemented recommendations from the Department of Defense Inspector General to improve training of the WTU leaders?

Are pharmaceuticals being overused as a treatment for wounded soldiers with PTSD or other psychological ailments?

The answer is yes. We've known about it, screamed about it, cried about it and members of Congress didn't listen.

Army had to issue orders at every Warrior Transition Unit to treat wounded with "dignity and respect." Top that off with they think that a day of training leaders will make enough of a difference to stop the widespread abuse of our wounded. Do they really think a day is enough to undo all this?

It was created 7 years ago. Think about that. For the last 7 years when we were told a totally different story about the care the wounded were getting and how serious the leaders were on addressing PTSD, this was happening. It took NBC news and the Dallas Morning News 6 months to uncover what we've all been talking about and now, finally, something may be done. If you want to know why there are so many suicides, this is a huge part of the reason.

I am very thankful for NBC and Dallas Morning News for uncovering this wide spread abuse of our wounded soldiers.

The best part is now members of Congress are paying attention to this too. Gee do you think they should have done some investigating on their own if they really cared about saving soldiers and veterans? Do you think they should have been paying attention to what all of us knew instead of passing bills to prevent suicides when the answer was already known to most of us?

It all starts with the bullshit of what the DOD has been doing to the soldiers instead of what they claimed they were doing for them!

Army officials order new training to address complaints made by injured soldiers highlighted in an NBC 5 Investigates report. NBC 5 Dallas By Scott Friedman Dec 17, 2014

Army Takes Action on Warrior Transition Units
Injured Heroes, Broken Promises: Army Orders New Training at Warrior Transition Units
NBC 5 report prompts Congressional action on harassment in the Army
By Scott Friedman
December 17, 2014

The training was to be specifically focused on how to treat soldiers with dignity and respect.

“So harassment and abuse is unacceptable in our force.” said Army Warrior Transition Commander, Col. Chris Toner, in an interview last month.

“The message is you can't mistreat these soldiers. The message is you will treat them with dignity and respect,” said Toner.

The investigation showed soldiers with post-traumatic stress describe WTU army leaders cursing at them and telling to get over it.

Spc. Michael Howard said he was told to “man up” while in recovery at a WTU. Other soldiers complained of being ordered to drive to early-morning military formations while being prescribed sedating medications during their treatment.

“On one occasion, I fell asleep at a stoplight with my vehicle in drive,” said Sgt. Zach Filip.

Now Thornberry and Cornyn are calling on the Army to do more to address the allegations uncovered.

"I think it's very concerning,” said Thornberry, the new Chairman-Elect of the House Armed Services Committee.

He said as far back as 2008 the committee saw similar concerns from soldiers and demanded improvement from the Army.

Changes can’t come soon enough for Robin Howard, whose husband Michael Howard was at the WTU at Fort Hood until he retired earlier this year. Michael said commanders left him feeling verbally abused and threatened while receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress and a degenerative brain condition.

“These are real humans they've mistreated,” said Robin Howard.

The Howard’s hope Army leaders will take the new training that’s been ordered to heart.

“I'm hoping that it's more than lip service. I'm hoping they are going to make these changes. The soldiers need this,” said Robin Howard.

The new Army training orders specifically tells commanders care plans for the injured should be, “tailored to the soldier and family.” read more here

They've been getting complaints going back to 2008, yet when suicides went up, they didn't bother to figure out why.

IAVA and VFW Call for Action After Warrior Transition Unit Reports

Veterans organizations call for action on wounded soldiers’ complaints
Dallas Morning News
By DAVID TARRANT, SCOTT FRIEDMAN and EVA PARKS
Published: 10 December 2014

Two of the nation’s largest veterans organizations are calling for Congress and the Pentagon to address the mistreatment of wounded soldiers in the Army’s Warrior Transition Units — a problem that came to light in a joint investigation by The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV (NBC5).

Congress and the Pentagon need to do more to protect those assigned to special units to treat injured service members, said spokesmen for both the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“These are guys and gals who put their lives on the line to defend their country, so they need to be treated with respect, and they need to be treated with a certain amount of compassion,” said Brendon Gehrke, senior legislative associate with the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington, D.C.

Hundreds of current or former soldiers have complained of harassment and intimidation by leadership at three Texas-based Warrior Transition Units, or WTUs, according to hundreds of documents and interviews with soldiers and medical experts.

The complaints were reported in “Injured Heroes, Broken Promises,” a two-part series published and broadcast last month by NBC5 and The News.
read more here

Related
Part 1: Wounded soldiers allege mistreatment in the units
Part 2: Transition leaders disrespectful, say soldiers; unit defends selection, training
Complaints about wounded warriors’ treatment pile up
He sought to help, but PTSD hindered him

From NBC

PR Campaign Starts to Counter WTU Reports

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 28, 2014

NBC5 and Dallas Morning News did a six month long report on the investigation of how PTSD soldiers were treated in Warrior Transition Units across military bases.

Injured Heroes, Broken Promises: Hundreds of Soldiers Allege Mistreatment at Army Warrior Transition Units Wounded soldiers found harassment and verbal abuse from commanders assigned to care for the injured.

Wounded Times has covered the truth for 7 years and it is far from what the national news will spend time on. Most of the great reporting is done by local news outlets across the country. That is where the reports on No excuse for Fort Hood mistreatment of Soldiers with PTSD came from.

The rest of the media can ignore it all they want but the truth is, while we do have the best military in the world, when it comes to the men and women serving, the leaders are PTSD imbeciles.

To discover how long all of this has been going on, we need to begin with the research the Army did on redeployments in 2006. The Washington Post reported their study showed this.

Repeat Iraq Tours Raise Risk of PTSD, Army Finds
Washington Post
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health.

More than 650,000 soldiers have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 -- including more than 170,000 now in the Army who have served multiple tours -- so the survey's finding of increased risk from repeated exposure to combat has potentially widespread implications for the all-volunteer force. Earlier Army studies have shown that up to 30 percent of troops deployed to Iraq suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the latter accounting for about 10 percent.

The findings reflect the fact that some soldiers -- many of whom are now spending only about a year at home between deployments -- are returning to battle while still suffering from the psychological scars of earlier combat tours, the report said.

"When we look at combat, we look at some very horrific events," said Col. Ed Crandell, head of the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team, which polled 1,461 soldiers in Iraq in late 2005. "They come back, they know they're going to deploy again," and as a result they don't ever return to normal levels of stress, Crandell said.
read more here

What did the Generals do? Did they make sure no one was sent back? No. As a matter of fact, they ignored their own research. This is an educated assumption simply because as they refused to adapt, they also refused to make sure these redeployed troops were properly cared for in response to what they knew would follow.

They pulled the wool over the public eye with Battlemind.

If BattleMind worked, there would not be more suicides and more attempted suicides than before BattleMind, but do you think they would be able to figure this one out yet? It came out in 2007 and yet again today I hear word of another soldier, a young, newly married soldier, who came back from Iraq and blew his brains out in front of his new bride. Is it because they do not show it to all the troops? Is it because they only show a lousy 11 1/2 minutes to the troops in Afghanistan as the BBC reported? Is it the trainers? Or, is the answer as simple as it does not work?

I don't know but you would think that since some of the finest minds in this country have been put to work on PTSD, they would have reduced suicides and attempted suicides instead of increasing them while they stick their fingers in their ears and hope the problem goes away! If they cannot cope with any of this after all this time, what's it going to be like two or three years from now when most of them have PTSD and they are still doing what does not work? Unit cohesion? Trust? How can they have any when they cannot trust what they are coming back to? How can they when some of them are National Guards and Reservists expected to go back to their civilian lives and jobs?

This was followed by Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

In a speech before the international affairs organization the Atlantic Council on Thursday, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey laid out the virtues of the newly formed initiative, which he called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.

"We have been looking very hard at ways to develop coping skills and resilience in soldiers, and we will be coming out in July with a new program called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness," said Casey. "And what we will attempt to do is raise mental fitness to the same level that we now give to physical fitness. Because it is scientifically proven, you can build resilience."

"The whole idea here is to give soldiers the skills they need to increase their resilience and enhance their performance," he went on. "A lot of people think that everybody who goes to combat gets post-traumatic stress. That's not true. Everybody that goes to combat gets stressed. There is no doubt about it. But the vast majority of people who go to combat have a growth experience because they are exposed to something very, very difficult and they prevail. So the issue for us is how do we give more people the skills so that more people have a growth experience... We thought it was important to get started on this because everything else involves you treating the problem. We need to be more proactive."

Yet by 2009 it was already followed by a warning that this "program" would increase suicides simply by feeding the stigma.
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness will make it worse

If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

This training was designed as a research project to help school aged kids feel better about themselves but these yahoos decided to treat soldiers like kids on the playground and tell them they could train their brains to be mentally tough. As we've seen from the reports on Warrior Transition Unit leaders telling PTSD soldiers to "man up" they got the wrong message.

This training told the soldiers if you train right you'll be resilient and they heard if they ended up with PTSD, they were mentally weak. Would you want to admit you needed help after that? Would you want to tell you buddy you are falling apart or need to talk with this idea your brain?

Every single OEF-OIF veteran I talked to pointed to this training as part of the problem but the leaders have not been willing to listen to them.

Generals have been delivering the wrong message at the same time they ignore the right ones. When other generals talked about having PTSD, when MOH heroes talked about their own battles, the DOD failed to get their message.

Ok so now you know more of what has been happening. Just as the PR campaign started to blame soldiers for committing suicide making sure the country knew most of them had not been deployed, they failed to address the simple fact that CSF wasn't even good enough to keep them alive but they thought it would work for those redeployed over and over again?

They play another game of selling how great they are with a "success story" on Warrior Transition Units.

VA soldier interns share transition success stories with WTU soldiers
By Gloria Montgomery
Warrior Transition Unit Public Affairs
November 26, 2014

TEMPLE — It gave her goose bumps, she said as she listened to her former Fort Hood Warrior Transition Unit soldiers share stories of their transitioning successes with other WTU soldiers who will soon enter the civilian workforce.

The goose bumps, said Maj. Thelma Nicholls, a WTU nurse case manager, were from witnessing the transformation of her former “broken and worn-down” soldiers into confident and beaming professionals, thanks to the Temple Veterans Affairs’ “intern to hire” philosophy and the Operation Warfighter federal internship program.

“To see how they have transitioned into productive citizens and are now paying it forward is remarkable,” she said, adding how special it was that the WTU interns and VA veteran hires were sharing their positive messaging with Nicholls and nearly 50 other WTU soldiers and family members Nov. 14 at the Olin E. Teague Medical Center in Temple, during a panel discussion on federal internships and employment opportunities.

“It was so uplifting,” Nicholls said. “They are a light for the soldiers who are leaving and thinking there is nothing out there for them. Well, there is something out there, but they have to want it, go for it and be that little light to make things happen.”

It also validated everything about the WTU and the “process” called healing and transitioning, said WTU’s intake company’s 1st Sgt. Renita Garrett.
read more here

Thankful for NBC and Dallas Morning News Cover Mistreatment of PTSD Soldiers

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 27, 2014

This all may seem like news to the American public, but it isn't. In the Veterans Community we talk about all of this while the press hasn't been interested. Graves are being filled every day across this country yet while the number 22 for veterans committing suicide a day may seem high to them, we know there are a lot more.

This morning as people watch Thanksgiving Day parades, we watch a parade of funerals that didn't need to happen. I'll be attending another one on Saturday for a veteran/firefighter killed by police. One more thing we talk about but the national press is obsessed with reporting on another event.

While Americans gather around their tables to give thanks for all they have with their families and friends, over 8,000 families have an empty chair and broken heart remembering all the other holidays they were grateful for the soldier setting their life aside for the sake of others yet left to suffer until all hope of healing was gone.

This morning military families are grateful for the reporting being done out of Texas because it is about us. About what far too many have known about in our world, but was kept secret from the American public.

“Injured Heroes, Broken Promises,” a joint investigative project between The Dallas Morning News and NBC5 (KXAS-TV), examines allegations of harassment and mistreatment in the U.S.’ Warrior Transition Units, which were created to serve soldiers with physical and psychological wounds. Reporters David Tarrant, Scott Friedman and Eva Parks based their findings on dozens of interviews with soldiers, Army officials and medical experts, and hundreds of pages of military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

It was the responsibility of every member of Congress to know what was going on in their own state so there is no excuse for them to simply come out and be "frustrated" now. Families have been screaming for help for decades while they were ignored. Veterans have been complaining about the lack of care and being betrayed by the Army at the same time they had to listen to generals and politicians talk about the "efforts" to care for those with PTSD.

We saw it all along yet no one seemed to care until Dallas Morning News and NBC 5 decided to actually do something about it.

While the national news stations and papers pretend as if nothing else is happening other than Ferguson, we are attending funerals.

Rep. Michael Burgess, a Dallas-area congressman and physician, expressed frustration that problems continue to pile up in the medical units set up to treat soldiers wounded in combat.

In 2008 another member of Congress was upset as well. The Courier Journal reported this.

Injured in a roadside blast in Iraq, Sgt. Gerald Cassidy was assigned to a new medical unit at Fort Knox, Ky., devoted to healing the wounds of war.

But instead of getting better, the brain-injured soldier from Westfield, Ind., was found dead in his barracks Sept. 21. Preliminary reports show he may have been unconscious for days and dead for hours before someone checked on him.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., linked his death in part to inadequate staffing at the unit. Only about half of the positions there were filled at the time. The Army is still investigating the death and its cause, and three people in Cassidy’s chain of command have lost their jobs.

“By all indications, the enemy could not kill him, but our own government did,” Bayh told the Senate Armed Services Committee recently. “Not intentionally, to be sure, but the end result apparently was the same.”

Bayh pointed to a September report from the Government Accountability Office showing that more than half of the Warrior Transition Units nationwide had shortages in key positions at the time. Of 2,410 positions, 1,127 — or 47 percent — had not been filled.

That was followed by Spc. Lawrence L. Holloway, 29, of Ponchatoula, La found dead in Fort Drum Warrior Transition Unit.

Holloway joined the Army in February 2004. He arrived at the upstate New York post in October 2004 after completing basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., and advanced individual training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

Pfc. Eli Mundt Baker, 22, of Foothill Ranch, Calif., was undergoing advanced individual training at Fort Huachuca, found dead WTU barracks.

That was followed by "Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general, said there has been “a series, a sequence of deaths” in the new so-called “warrior transition units.” Those are special units set up last year to give sick, injured and war-wounded troops coordinated medical care, financial advice, legal help and other services as they transition toward either a return to uniform or back into civilian life."

There have been at least three accidental drug overdoses and four suicides among soldiers in special units the Army set up last summer to help war-wounded troops, officials said late Thursday.

A team of pharmacists and other military officials met early this week at the Pentagon to look into the deaths in so-called “warrior transition units” — established to give sick, injured and wounded troops coordinated medical care, financial advice, legal help and other services as they attempt to make the transition toward either a return to uniform or back into civilian life.

The Army said officials had determined that among those troops there have been 11 deaths that were not due to natural causes between June and Feb. 5.

Cpl. Scott Vickrey, 23, of Fayetteville, Ark., was found unconscious in his room at Rough Rider Village by his squad leader.

Medical services personnel were dispatched to the barracks room, but Vickrey was declared dead at the scene, Fort Hood said Wednesday.

Rough Rider village is home to Fort Hood’s Warrior Transition Unit for wounded or ill soldiers.

Vickrey joined the Army in 2003 and served a tour of duty in Iraq from February 2004 through February 2005 with the 1st Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, during which he was decorated for repelling a suicide attacker and again for thwarting a homemade bomb attack.

Soldiers also found body of Spc. Jared Arnn, 21, of Boonville, Ind.

The body of Pvt. Paul Muse, a native of Oklahoma found dead at Fort Huachuca in November 2008.
The horrific stories have been reported for far too many years but nothing changed. Nothing changed because the national media stopped paying attention and let all of it go on and on.

We face it all with a blend of bitterness and hope for justice. Hope that the American public will care enough when they know what has been going on to actually do something instead of settling for anything as if it is better than nothing.

Denton native Zackary Filip, who was named 2010 Soldier of the Year by Army Times, said he was harassed and belittled when he sought help with his post-traumatic stress disorder at the Fort Hood Warrior Transition Unit.
(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

The war after the war
Wounded soldiers allege mistreatment in the Army’s Warrior Transition Units
By David Tarrant, Scott Friedman (NBC 5) and Eva Parks (NBC 5)
Published on November 22, 2014

KILLEEN — At a shop that sells vacation packages to soldiers in the Killeen Mall, there’s a shrine to Zackary Filip. Newspaper clippings, congratulatory letters from congressional leaders and a large poster of Filip in his Army combat uniform cover a wall.

The Denton native was named 2010 Soldier of the Year by Army Times for his actions while in near-constant combat in Afghanistan and just afterward during the Fort Hood massacre.

Filip, a combat-hardened medic, saved the life of a civilian police officer and treated many other victims of the Fort Hood attack that killed 13 and wounded 32 others five years ago.

By the age of 24, with a Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal with the V device for valor, Filip looked forward to a long, successful military career.

But the Army he served with such distinction wasn’t there for him when he most needed its help, he says.

When he began suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, he entered a special program — a Warrior Transition Unit — for soldiers in need of ongoing outpatient treatment. He expected to find the kind of care he needed to heal.

Instead, he once again felt under attack.

Related Stories Part 2: Wounded soldiers have complained of supervisors’ disrespect, unfair treatment and intimidation Complaints about wounded warriors’ treatment pile up
Benn sought to help, but PTSD hindered him
Editorial: Wounded warriors deserve better

NBC 5 takes a closer look at Warrior Transition Units
Hundreds of soldiers allege mistreatment at Army Warrior Transition Units
Injured soldiers question training of WTU leaders

Injured Heroes, Broken Promises: Hundreds of Soldiers Allege Mistreatment at Army Warrior Transition Units

Soldiers in WTU with PTSD degraded and told to "man up"

Psychiatrist left disillusioned with the Army’s understanding of PTSD

No Excuse For Fort Hood Mistreatment of Soldiers With PTSD

Chuck Hagel's Last Act Should Be Holding General Odierno Accountable For Suicides

Chuck Hagel's Last Act Should Be Holding General Odierno Accountable For Suicides

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 26, 2014

Before Chuck Hagel leaves Department of Defense he needs to hold General Raymond T. Odierno accountable for the deplorable treatment of soldiers with PTSD. There is no excuse for allowing any of this to go without explaining to families why he failed to learn what PTSD was.

Last year, without having to explain anything to anyone, Odierno laid blame on the soldiers and their families. This was an interview given to David Wood for the Huffington Post.

"First, inherently what we do is stressful. Why do I think some people are able to deal with stress differently than others? There are a lot of different factors. Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations.

But it also has to do with where you come from. I came from a loving family, one who gave lots of positive reinforcement, who built up psychologically who I was, who I am, what I might want to do. It built confidence in myself, and I believe that enables you to better deal with stress. It enables you to cope more easily than maybe some other people.

Then he went on to fall back on his usual line about making them resilient

So with a soldier like that, who may be at risk of suicide, how do you build resilience, give him the confidence you got when you were growing up?

Most of the time, these are good kids. The reason they came in is because they wanted to make a better life for themselves. For me, that's number one. They are doing this for a positive reason. They want to improve themselves, improve their families' ability to live.

Studies show that if they have more confidence in themselves mentally -- for example, if they increase their education, they increase their abilities to do their job in the right way, become more physically fit and are able to do well in physical training -- this starts to build their confidence. Then we try to give them coping skills and, depending on the individual, get them linked spiritually into whatever they happen to believe in.

The other piece, which the [Army] Surgeon General is working now, is the triad of sleep, nutrition and physical fitness. We are finding that, especially in high-stress environments, lack of sleep and bad nutrition potentially decreases your resilience and ability to cope. So it's all of these things we are focusing on in order to help these individuals.

Now we know because of fantastic reporting being done in Texas exactly what this attitude had produced.

Injured Heroes, Broken Promises: Hundreds of Soldiers Allege Mistreatment at Army Warrior Transition Units Wounded soldiers found harassment and verbal abuse from commanders assigned to care for the injured.
By Scott Friedman, Eva Parks and David Tarrant

Filip came home to Fort Hood suffering from post-traumatic stress — haunted by things he had seen. Then came another nightmare; the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead.

Filip jumped into action — helping save the life of a wounded police officer. For his heroics The Army Times named him the 2010 "Army Soldier of the Year."

"I was just kind of in awe of the whole situation”, Filip said.

But Filip said he was treated like anything but a hero at Fort Hood's Warrior transition unit or "WTU," where the Army sent him to treat his post-traumatic stress.

"WTU made everything a lot worse," Filip said. "I mean physically and mentally — especially mentally."

In page after page of documents obtained by NBC 5 Investigates, soldiers describe harassment, disrespect and unfair treatment from WTU commanders in complaints made to the Army Ombudsman and directly to unit leaders.

In some complaints anger pours out. One injured soldier writes: "This is getting to the point where it is more stressful here than it is in a combat situation. There is no dignity or respect for us."

Another said: "My stress levels are sky high, my depression is at an all-time low and I have never felt so abused, so neglected as I do right now. I completed my tour my duty and all I need is treatment." One wounded soldier reports, " ... his 1st Sgt. has 'created a climate of intimidation.'" And still another said, "she was told she's weak because she cries."

Dr. Stephen Stahl, a world renowned psychiatrist hired to train staff at Fort Hood's WTU five years ago, said the complaints do not describe an environment designed to heal the wounds of war.

In his own study of the WTUs, Stahl found many unit leaders lacked an understanding of mental health issues and that many did not believe post-traumatic stress disorder was real.

Stahl believes that drove staff to treat soldiers with PTSD like slackers who need to "man-up and move-on."

"The idea is that you're weak, you're cowardly, you're worthless, you're not strong and it's your fault," Stahl said, adding that it created a mentality that can destroy a healing soldier's self-esteem. "It also makes them doubt their medical care or their psychiatric care. The same Army that's telling you you're a slacker or a dirt bag gives you treatment and medications. Are you going to take it?"

Here is a Mom,

Suicide watch: Returning military members need support, mother warns
KENS 5
Joe Conger
November 24, 2014

SAN ANTONIO -- Doris Dodgen of Universal City says her family bleeds red white and blue. The military was her husband's passion and most of her children, too.

"A lot of pride. A lot of dedication and devotion. And a lot of patriotism. They love our country," said Dodgen.

But Brenton, Doris remembers, had a particular fondness.

"Ever since he was so young, probably age 2, he started wearing camouflage," she said.

Brenton would realize that dream. The future lieutenant was deployed overseas in the Middle East as a signal officer in Operations Enduring Freedom and Spartan Shield.

"He took it very, very seriously," his mother added.

But back stateside, something changed.

"He did come back a little different, yes. And he wouldn't talk much this time around," said Dodgen.

But he did talk on Facebook, posting a brief note one late October evening. And before Doris could reach Killeen, Texas, her son was gone.

"And I can tell you at that point in time in my life, a huge part of me died," Dodgen said.

The Department of Defense noted a self-inflicted gunshot wound was the manner of death.
read more of the story here

They started telling us they were "addressing the issue" of military suicides and the stigma of seeking help, yet above all of this, we need to add in the simple fact that in 2013 alone, 11,000 soldiers were given bad conduct discharges. Top that off with how many were forced out because of downsizing and then it is easy to see how dangerous it has been for soldiers to be treated this badly.

We see it all the time in our own communities when they commit suicide or face off with law enforcement. We see it at the VA hospitals. We see it with the homeless veterans.

No one has been held accountable for any of this.

Here is more of the investigation

NBC 5 Investigates has learned a Pentagon Inspector General Report this summer also found "systemic issues and challenges with the selection and training of leaders" at WTU's across the country.

For years WTU leaders got only two weeks of training and just a couple of hours on mental health conditions like PTSD.

Jennifer Lawrence, a trainer with the U.S. Army who oversees the training nationwide, said two weeks was enough to get leaders started and that the Army responded to criticisms in the Inspector General's report by hiring more staff to create smaller classes. She said they also added a week of "resilience training" that’s designed to prepare WTU leaders for the stresses of caring for the injured.

“Once that foundation is laid they should continue to educate once they get to their WTU',” said Lawrence.

“You know you have nightmares,” said Sgt. Ngala Benn, a former squad leader at Fort Hood’s WTU, when describing PTSD.

The Army put him in charge of injured soldiers even though he too was suffering from PTSD and taking 20 prescribed medications after serving in Iraq.

“You're trying to re-live the stuff and you get up in the middle of the night and you're sleepwalking with a weapon in your hand or you can't sleep unless you have that weapon next to you,” recalled Benn. Benn said in hindsight he was surprised he was put in charge of a dozen soldiers dealing with similar problems and doesn’t think he should have ever been put in that leadership position given what he was dealing with at the time.

They are all waiting for someone to be held accountable for their suffering. Families of the veterans are waiting to be able to stop blaming themselves. PTSD veterans are waiting for someone to be held accountable for what the leaders failed to learn and do no matter how many billions they were given to help them heal.

No Excuse For Fort Hood Mistreatment of Soldiers With PTSD

The news was stunning to many. NBC 5 and Dallas Morning News teamed up to investigate reports of wounded soldiers being mistreated at Fort Hood, Fort Sam Houston and Fort Bliss.

The soldiers returned home injured, both physically and mentally, and were once again under attack as they were ridiculed, harassed and threatened by commanders assigned to help the recover.

It was one thing to know what was going on and quite another to read how many more were being treated like this.

"Howard said the WTU medical staff tried to help but the unit’s non-medical commanders treated him more like a drunk and a troublemaker who needed to be punished, not a soldier suffering from PTSD who needed compassion."

It was so bad a psychiatrist quit.

Dr. Stephen M. Stahl, a psychiatrist who worked closely with the transition program at Fort Hood, left disillusioned with the Army’s understanding of PTSD. The sense was the disorder wasn’t real or that it was a weakness, he said.

While the general public hears that the military is doing this and that to help PTSD soldiers, the "this" is above and "that" that is a sin. But hey, why have a story like this hit the 24-7 news stations on a national level? Why let the American public know what is actually going on in this country and why they are seeing more and more veterans suffering right in their own communities?

Here are just a few of the stories tied to Fort Hood this year.

Specialist Gage Schellin Age 22 Investigation into Specialist Gage Schellin’s death continues at Fort Hood, where he was stationed. He had joined the Army two years earlier and returned in the spring from an 8-month deployment in Afghanistan.

Spc. Adrian Orlando Maganacasanova age 28 FORT HOOD — Officials released the name of a soldier found unresponsive Friday in his Killeen residence. Spc. Adrian Orlando Maganacasanova, 28, whose home of record is listed as Palmdale, Calif., entered active-duty service in February 2008 as a petroleum supply specialist. He was assigned to 615th Aviation Support Battalion, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood since February 2011.

Omar J. Gonzalez Only five months after a senior neuropsychologist in charge of Fort Hood’s outpatient psychiatry clinic revealed to WND a crisis in psychological testing and treatment at the U.S. Army post, a decorated war veteran who sought therapy at the installation is now in federal custody for jumping the White House fence and bursting through the executive mansion doors. On Sept. 19, Omar J. Gonzalez, a 42-year-old Army veteran who had deployed to Iraq three times and was injured by a homemade bomb, jumped over the north fence, sprinted across the lawn and was stopped only after he entered the White House doors.

Sgt. Triston James Johnson, 23, Houston, entered active duty service in October 2009 as a combat engineer, according to a news release from the post. He had been assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, since November 2012. Johnson deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn from April 2010 to March 2011.

Sgt. Kameron Alexander Womack, 24, of St. Louis, Mo., entered active-duty service in August 2008, as a combat engineer. He was assigned to 8th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, since June 2014.

Sgt. Gene Robert Brandes Jr., a 28-year-old native of Oak Ridge, was found unresponsive in his barracks room at Fort Hood, Texas on May 27. Sgt. Brandes has served in the military for nearly 8 years, entering in August of 2006 as a PATRIOT Launching Station enhanced operator/maintainer, according to a press release issued by the public affairs office. He was assigned to 4th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade in Fort Hood since April 2014.

Staff Sgt. Heidi Lynn Ruh 32 Fort Hood soldier has died of injuries suffered last week in a noncombat-related incident in Kosovo. Fort Hood officials on Tuesday announced the death of Staff Sgt. Heidi Lynn Ruh of Barrington, Illinois. She died at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo following an incident May 9. No other details were available Tuesday. The matter is under investigation by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Ruh joined the military in January 2003 as a biomedical equipment specialist and was assigned to the 1st Medical Brigade at Fort Hood. She was attached to Kosovo Force's Multinational Battle Group-East.

Chief Warrant Officer Deric M. Rasmussen, 33, of Oceanside, California, died May 11, in Mazar E Sharif, Afghanistan, as the result of a non-combat incident. He was assigned to the Company C, 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, Fort Hood,

Shooting at Fort Hood Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, 34, the alleged shooter, also wounded 16 other military personnel. Investigators are still piecing together a motive for his deadly spree.

Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Ferguson, 39, threw his body against the entryway of a door and became a human shield during the shooting. Sgt. Timothy Owens, 37, and Staff Sgt. Carlos Lazaney-Rodriguez, 38, were also killed in the violent incident.

Now, we can keep settling for the national press to zero in on what they want to focus on, or we can let them know what we expect out of them. If we do nothing, if we say nothing, if we demand nothing, then nothing will change for the men and women we claim to support.

If you are still wondering why suicides are so high go to the links and watch the videos. If you're still wondering why someone doesn't do something, then you failed to pay attention to what they already did. They told us one thing while shafting soldiers and that, that should have caused all of us to scream so loudly no one could ignore us.

Psychiatrist left disillusioned with the Army’s understanding of PTSD

Editorial: Wounded warriors deserve better Dallas News
November 24, 2014

The get-tough attitude doesn’t work when someone with PTSD is groggy from medication or sunk by depression. Telling that soldier to suck it up isn’t just bad medicine, it’s bad discipline.

Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer
Michael “Mikey” Howard gets medication from wife Robin at their Killeen home. Howard, a former combat medic, has PTSD and early-onset dementia. He sought relief from the Warrior Transition Unit but got “stress and work.”

The Army’s Warrior Transition Unit should be a place where the unseen wounds of soldiers, the psychological injuries, are salved and allowed to begin to heal.

Instead, as an exhaustive two-part report from The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV (NBC5) shows, it too often is subject to a military culture that either doesn’t comprehend or doesn’t care enough about the depth of pain that some soldiers experience upon return from war.

That is unacceptable in a program designed in 2007 to help the Army treat soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.

At the very least, the Army should ensure that a doctor’s orders trump higher-ranking officers when it comes to routine matters like showing up for formation or being assigned to night watch when a suffering soldier needs rest. The Army must also do more to meld military culture with good psychological care.

The Army should be, and is, a place of stern discipline. And there is evidence that soldiers recovering from PTSD can benefit from the strict routines of Army life.

But this isn’t about some slackers and complainers who don’t show up for formation. It’s about people like former Army medic Zackary Filip.

Filip displayed extraordinary courage in Afghanistan and then at home when he leaped to help the wounded cut down by Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.

Yet even someone like Filip, named 2010 Soldier of the Year by Army Times, has been caught between his doctors and his unit.

Dr. Stephen M. Stahl, a psychiatrist who worked closely with the transition program at Fort Hood, left disillusioned with the Army’s understanding of PTSD.

The sense was the disorder wasn’t real or that it was a weakness, he said.

Zackary Filip isn’t weak. And neither are the soldiers like him. The Army must respect that as it nurtures these wounded back to health.
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