Fort Carson News

No Suicide, Family Says

Jennifer Wilson, the Gazette (Colorado Springs, CO)

Nov. 5–Family members of a missing Fort Carson soldier said Sunday that Colorado Springs police told them that the body pulled Saturday from a local reservoir was that of their relative, Sgt. Shawn Stoddard.

But they don’t think Stoddard committed suicide, said Randy Garn, the uncle of the soldier from St. Anthony, Idaho.

Read More.

Fort Carson Expands Efforts To Help Traumatized Troops

Tom Roeder, the Gazette (Colorado Springs, CO)  November 3, 2007

Leaders at Fort Carson said Friday they’re expanding community outreach initiatives in a bid to more quickly identify war-related mental illness and family problems in the ranks.

The expansion of the post’s Warrior Family Community Partnerships precedes the homecoming of nearly 4,000 soldiers who have spent the past year battling in Ramadi and Baghdad.

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Army Agrees To Do More For PTSD

CBS News — The Army is making a “dramatic turn” in how it handles soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, a member of a veterans’ group investigating mental health care at Fort Carson said Wednesday.

Following two days of closed-door meetings with commanders and congressional staffers at the post, Steve Robinson, Director of Veterans Affairs for the group Veterans for America, said commanders have agreed to do a better job educating officers about the condition and take steps to amend the records of soldiers who have been wrongly diagnosed. Read More.

Our government doesn’t take care of veterans. Steve Robinson does

The New Republic– Before there was Walter Reed–before the revelations in The Washington Post, before the congressional hearings and presidential commissions and resigning generals–there was Joshua Murphy and his bad dream. In November 2005, Murphy returned home to Wichita Falls, Texas, after service that included a year patrolling the treacherous Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City as a specialist in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Prior to the war, he had been outgoing, social, well-liked–”just your basic eighteen-year-old kid,” in the words of his mother, Monica. But, after he came home, he started drinking heavily and hardly slept–in no small part because of a recurring nightmare.

In it, Murphy, who was a driver in Iraq, was in his Humvee. The Tigris River was on one side of him, a crowd of innocent Iraqi citizens was on the other, and a band of insurgents were right in front of him. His little brother and sister were in the backseat, and Murphy knew he had a terrible decision to make. Read More.

Trauma care better, group says

Rocky Mountain News — COLORADO SPRINGS - Fort Carson has taken steps to better help soldiers who return from combat with post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental conditions, though there still is work to be done, members of a veterans’ support group said Tuesday.

“I feel good about it,” said Steve Robinson, director of veteran affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based Veterans for America.

“I do believe the Army has a plan . . . We’re at the beginning phase.” Robinson and Veterans for America investigator Andrew Pogany led a group of congressional staffers to Fort Carson for a two-day visit that ended Tuesday. It was the first of five “fact-finding” visits to military bases around the country. Read More.