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Fort Carson

Senator questions injured soldier deployments

Anne C. Mulkern, the Denver Post

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee blasted the Pentagon on Wednesday for sending a wounded Fort Carson soldier back to Iraq, questioning whether it had been done to fill depleted ranks.

Citing a Denver Post report, Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, asked about an Army captain’s e-mail saying that Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team had “been having issues reaching deployable strength,” and that some “borderline” soldiers were sent overseas.

“Are there shortages in deployment strength that are now causing some of these decisions to be made that otherwise would not be?” Levin asked at a committee hearing.

It is against Army policy to redeploy soldiers unfit for duty, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren said.

“That should not be happening,” Geren said. “I can’t tell you that it’s not, but it certainly should not be happening.

“I don’t believe we’ve found any evidence that pressure has caused people to be sent that shouldn’t have been,” Geren added.

Fort Carson officials have said 79 soldiers who had been given medical “no go” status were deployed. At least six have returned to the U.S.

Those soldiers received light-duty jobs and continued treatment while in theater, officials said.

The Denver Post reported Sunday that a Fort Carson soldier, who said he’d been at Cedar Springs Hospital for treatment of bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse, was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

That 28-year-old soldier spent 31 days in Kuwait before two health care professionals there decided his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and “some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies,” according to an Army e-mail. The soldier was returned to Fort Carson.

The Army’s top doctor told senators that the soldier in the Denver Post story was considered fit for the duties he was assigned.

“My understanding of . . . this soldier is that he was not hospitalized, and the opinion of outside consultants was that his conditions should not limit his ability to be redeployed,” said Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, Army surgeon general.

After the hearing, Schoomaker said that many soldiers have a medical “profile” that limits some of their duties but does not make them unfit for deployment.

Asked whether someone with bipolar disorder with paranoia and homicidal tendencies should be fit for duty, Schoomaker said, “I’d rather not comment without understanding the case more thoroughly.”

Geren said in an interview that the Army was looking into the Fort Carson case, but that “our policy is no soldier is deployed that’s not fit for the duty for which he’s going to be assigned.

“That’s the rule,” Geren added. “If anybody deviates from that rule, they have not acted in accordance with Army policy.”

During the hearing, Levin asked Geren whether he had contacted the sender of the e-mail saying the Army was “having issues reaching deployable strength.”

“To let him know,” Levin said, “that’s not an acceptable reason for redeploying soldiers?”

Geren said he would do so.

“I’m a little surprised that he had not already checked that e-mail and looked into it,” Levin said after the hearing.

“It must be wider-spread than just one person writing an e-mail,” Levin added. “That person must have gotten it from somewhere.”

Ill GI says he was deployed from hospital

Erin Emery, the Denver Post

Health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for ’some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies.’

A Fort Carson, Colo., soldier who says he was in treatment at Cedar Springs Hospital for bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

The 28-year-old specialist spent 31 days in Kuwait and was returned to Fort Carson on Dec. 31 after health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and “some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies,” according to e-mails obtained by the Denver Post.

The soldier, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma surrounding mental illness, said he checked himself into Cedar Springs on Nov. 9 or Nov. 10 after he attempted suicide while under the influence of alcohol.

He said his treatment was supposed to end Dec. 10, but his commanding officers showed up at the hospital Nov. 29 and ordered him to leave.

“I was pulled out to deploy,” said the soldier, who has three years in the Army and has served a tour in Iraq.

Late last year, Fort Carson said it sent 79 soldiers who were considered medical “no-gos” overseas. Officials said the soldiers were placed in light-duty jobs and are receiving treatment there. So far, at least six soldiers have been returned.

An e-mail sent Jan. 3 by Capt. Scot Tebo, the brigade surgeon, says the 3rd Brigade Combat Team had “been having issues reaching deployable strength” and that some “borderline” soldiers were sent overseas.

“The chain of command takes each and every allegation of improper care of soldiers seriously,” said Col. B. Shannon Davis, chief of staff at Fort Carson. “Caring and competent commanders make these decisions. All soldiers’ medical records are protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and, without prior authorization from the soldier, it would be inappropriate and unfair for us to discuss the specifics of any soldier’s medical care.”

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, was outraged:

“If he’s an inpatient in a hospital, they should have never taken him out. The chain of command needs to be held accountable for this. Washington needs to get involved at the Pentagon to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

A Dec. 14 e-mail from Tebo recommended that the soldier taken out of Cedar Springs and two others - one with a shoulder injury, the other with mental health issues - be returned to Fort Carson.

The soldier said that on Nov. 29, an Army alcohol counselor told him alcoholism and anxiety could not stop him from being deployed. He was told an Army mental health counselor would be there for him in the war zone.

“They said: ‘You know what? Tough it out. All of us like to drink,’ ” the soldier said. “They had words of encouragement: ‘All the guys will be there. You’ll be among friends. You’ll have counseling there.’ “

Cedar Springs officials declined comment.

The soldier was escorted to Evans Army Community Hospital to collect three months of medication - Lamictal for treatment of bipolar disorder; Seroquel, an anti-psychotic; and Klonopin for anxiety and mood disorders.

He said a doctor at the hospital lowered the dosage of his prescriptions and told him he was on medications that would keep him from deploying.

“I had chain of command waiting outside, escorts who were waiting there and telling me to hurry up and get out. So I was just scared if I put up an argument. I told him I was fine and everything was fine,” the soldier said.

In the December e-mail, Tebo told brigade leaders: “Evidently, while at Cedar Springs, he was started on psychiatric medications that should have made him nondeployable, but somehow no one was notified.”

In Kuwait, the soldier isolated himself. He said he had “racing thoughts” and couldn’t keep still. He took medication - Seroquel - to go to sleep.

“I was … burning my fingertips with cigarettes, just anything to keep my mind off of things,” the soldier said. “I had homicidal thoughts. I don’t know at the time if I intended on doing anything. But at the time, it was there, I had homicidal and suicidal thoughts.”

He said he met with a mental health counselor almost every day. He was sent to the Navy psychological division, and he talked to a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

“They realized I was not supposed to be there, and they fought for me to go back to Fort Carson,” he said. “It took a long time. My chain of command wanted me to deploy to Iraq.

Since his return, he has been in treatment. He is undergoing the process to be medically discharged from the Army.

Hurt GIs’ medical status altered

Erin Emery, the Denver Post

Some say the Army is bending the rules to get soldiers redeployed.

COLORADO SPRINGS — Army Staff Sgt. Jack Auble was in the process of being medically discharged after serving nearly 20 years in the military when he was sent to Baghdad last year.

Auble, 43, suffers from severe osteoporosis of the spine, bulging discs and compression fractures.

Auble had a “permanent” profile, meaning his condition would not improve, and because of his limitations, he did not meet the Army’s retention standards.

Nevertheless, Auble’s medical paperwork was changed. He received a new, “temporary” status, used to indicate his condition would improve, and he was redeployed. He said he was not re-examined by a medical professional at Fort Drum, N.Y., before receiving a new profile.

Several soldiers from Fort Carson also claim that their “temporary” profiles were downgraded to give them fewer restrictions so they could be deployed.

Regardless of the profile, a commander can send a soldier to war if there is a job the person can do within the limitations set by doctors, and if there is appropriate medical care in the theater of operations.

Army regulations allow the changing of profiles after a medical examination, but the question is, are all procedures being followed?

The Government Accountability Office began an investigation into the problem last summer; a report is expected at the end of February.

At the request of the House Armed Services Committee, investigators focused on cases of soldiers whose medical profiles had been changed shortly before their return to Iraq. Preliminary findings are now being discussed with military officials.

GAO investigators have identified cases of unfit soldiers deployed from Fort Drum and from Fort Stewart and Fort Benning in Georgia, said Brenda Farrell, director of defense capabilities and management investigations for the GAO.

The Fort Carson soldiers, who said they did not visit a medical professional before their profiles changed, declined to be named because they said they feared retribution.

Col. James Terrio, Fort Carson’s deputy commander of clinical services, said he knew of no profiles that were changed at the post without a soldier seeing a medical professional.

“I could write a profile for a soldier, say he’s got back pain or something like that. That brigade surgeon could come through and either re-evaluate, talk to the soldier — maybe one of the limitations I wrote was too restrictive — and change that profile,” Terrio said. He said only health-care providers change profiles.

Some cite push to meet goals

But some say the military is stretched so thin and under pressure to meet deployment goals that it sends into war zones injured soldiers who wouldn’t be there otherwise.

E-mails from the brigade surgeon in Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, which sent 3,500 to 3,700 soldiers to war beginning late last year, said: “We have been having issues with reaching deployable strength, and thus have been taking along some borderline soldiers who we would otherwise have left behind for continued treatment.”

Army officials deny they are under pressure to fill combat slots.

“It has been a long-standing policy of the Army to carefully prioritize personnel assignments to those units deploying to combat zones,” according to Army spokesman Paul Boyce.

Commanders ultimately have the final say about who is deployed.

But in some cases, sending injured soldiers or those with medical conditions back to the battle zone may not benefit the effort.

In January 2007, for instance, Auble went to work in the operations center, a room full of computers where the battlefield is monitored, at Camp Striker in Baghdad, but he needed narcotics to dull excruciating pain.

“I took Percocet, and I also took Vicodin,” Auble said. “The guy who worked next to me . . . he noticed consistent grogginess, dozing off. I wouldn’t catch something that he would say and lose track of the battle and all of that stuff.”

Three months later, Auble, with the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, was medically evacuated from the war zone after he was sent to a doctor in the theater. He has since been permanently disabled retired.

A Fort Carson soldier with a shoulder injury, who asked not to be identified, said his profile was rewritten days before he deployed.

He said his original profile stated he was not permitted to carry a weapon or a rucksack or wear body armor.

His profile was changed to say that he could wear body armor and could do “combat missions fully geared up.” He said it didn’t “make any sense because my shoulder, obviously, still wasn’t healed.” He has since returned to the U.S.

Master Sgt. Denny Nelson, who has 19 years in the Army, was sent to the Middle East with a serious foot injury. His profile prohibited him from running, jumping and carrying more than 20 pounds. The Army assigned him to a job in Kuwait, but a medical professional there said he should never have been redeployed, and Nelson returned to Fort Carson.

“It’s not about the violation of a profile, it’s about the violation of a soldier’s safety and well being,” Nelson said. “The issue is, you’ve got soldiers that can’t put on their protective gear. Are they in light-duty jobs? Yes. But if they get mortared, they’re dead.”

Gen. Charles Campbell, commander of Army Forces Command, said the Army has “competent, seasoned, mature and compassionate brigade commanders making decisions with respect to deploying personnel. They are engaged, thoughtful and deliberate. I have confidence that the decisions they make consider the interests of the soldier and the unit.”

Fort Carson has 440 people in the medical evaluation board system, which reflects the number of people on post with permanent profiles. Fort Carson estimates it has 815 soldiers on post with “temporary” profiles.

“Most people think that if you go to war, you’re running around with all your body armor on, but in Kuwait, it’s kind of like being here except it’s a lot hotter and there’s a lot of sand. The threat there is very low,” Terrio said. “There are jobs where people just sit and answer their phone.”

Fort Carson sent 79 injured soldiers with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team to the Middle East in November and December to perform light-duty jobs. Most were sent to Iraq. Six of them have since returned.

GIs’ health a longtime issue

Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a retired Army brigadier general who served 28 years as an Army doctor, said balancing the needs of the Army with the health of soldiers is “always an issue you have to keep an eye on. You hear stories of this going all the way back to World War II. Years ago, there was a New England Journal article and then Physicians for Human Rights wrote a pamphlet on what they call dual loyalty — the conflict that military physicians are in with respect to the professional loyalty they’re supposed to have to the patients as well as the loyalty they have as soldiers to the service. These kind of situations demonstrate that conflict.”

Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at a research group called the Center for American Progress who worked as an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan, said sending injured soldiers to perform light-duty jobs is another sign of the pressure the Army is under.

“They are in a no-win position,” Korb said. “The Army is not big enough to support the surge, deal with Afghanistan and give people a minimum amount of time at home.”

The Army announced last week that it is considering cutting the length of tours from 15 months to 12 months because of stress on soldiers.

Also this past week, the National Priorities Project, a research group that analyzes federal data, released a report that showed fewer Army recruits have a high school diploma, a trend that has continued since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Soldiers are required to have a high school diploma or an equivalent.

The report said that nearly 71 percent of the Army’s 67,398 recruits last year had a high school education, while in 2005, 83.5 percent of recruits had at least a high school education.

Korb said more and more recruits are scoring below average on the armed-forces qualification test, and last year, the Army gave 8,000 “moral waivers” to recruits — 80 percent to recruits who committed misdemeanors and 20 percent for felonies, he said. Those with criminal records are not allowed into the service without such a waiver.

Korb said he thinks that after the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, it will take a decade for the Army to rebuild.

Soldier’s mother fights for his proper health care

Ed Kemmick, the Billings Gazette

Young Montanan suffers war’s ’signature injury’ from 20 roadside blasts

On the wall above Dawna Lynn Wells’ office desk, a photograph of her son, Nicholas, shows him at 8 years old, wearing an oversize Army helmet and camouflage shirt and pants.

“He was a big shopper at the Army-Navy store,” his mother said. “They knew us by name.”

Nicholas was born in Billings, but he was living with his family in Dillon when he joined the Army in 2004. That explains another photo of his mother’s. It shows Nicholas in March 2006, home on leave from his duties as an Army scout in Iraq.

In that photo he is mugging but obviously proud, showing off his Army uniform and the 101st Airborne patch on his right sleeve. He served in the 4th Infantry Division, Third Brigade Combat Team, and he saw a lot of action as a scout, sniper and lead gunner. His mother said he has a Purple Heart pending and received two Army Accommodation Medals, a Combat Action Badge and an Exemplary Action Award, among other achievements.

But Army Spc. Nicholas Wells, now 21, won’t be going back to Iraq, and he doubts very much that he’ll be able to pursue the goal he once had of becoming a doctor. In addition to some serious physical problems and post-traumatic stress disorder, Nicholas was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, which is being called the “signature injury” of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The brain injury was brought on by being near more than 20 IED explosions. Improvised explosive devices are commonly used by insurgents to attack coalition troops and convoys. One IED ruptured Nicholas’ left ear drum, resulting in 60 percent hearing loss in that ear, but each explosion played a part in damaging his brain through concussions of varying intensity.

“We call it the hand of God,” Nicholas said of IED explosions. “It’s like God slapping you to the ground.”

He is still at Fort Carson, Colo., from where he shipped out to Iraq in the fall of 2005, but he is in the Warrior Transition Unit, spending his days resting or making his appointments with an orthopedist and mental-health specialists.

“My job is just to transition back to civilian life,” he said.

He is supposed to undergo hip surgery sometime this year for his physical ailments, but the mental disorders are harder to treat. Nicholas has trouble remembering things, he is impatient, he finds it difficult to concentrate on anything. and he is quick to anger or, as he put it, he is “very short-fuse.”

“It’s something I deal with every day in one form or another,” he said.

At least he’s stateside and he’s receiving help. If not for the efforts of his mother, he said, he would have been shipped back to a combat position in Iraq, with little likelihood of receiving any treatment for his physical or mental problems.

In fact, Nicholas and his mother heard that her efforts played a large part in persuading commanding officers at Fort Carson to cancel the deployments of other soldiers in the 4th Infantry Division, and to bring home from Iraq soldiers who were found to have been deployed under inappropriate circumstances.

Dawna Lynn Wells, a physician assistant at the Hematology Oncology Centers of the Northern Rockies, said her main goal was to see that her son received the medical care he needed.

“The bonus was impacting a lot of soldiers I’ll never know,” she said.

In the Army

Nicholas was working for a contractor in Dillon, making $10 an hour with no benefits, when he decided to join the military. His mother said he called every recruiter he could find, and the first one to call back, the same day, was with the Army. The recruiter told Nicholas that if he wanted to see action as soon as possible, he should become a scout.

Nicholas enlisted the same day and told his mother about his decision that night. She had no objections, and she continues to believe her son made a decision that was right for him.

“The Army’s been good for him,” she said. “It matured him. It taught him how to work with a team.”

After training at Fort Carson, Nicholas was deployed to Iraq in November 2005 and served there until November 2006, with a leave home in March 2006. As a scout and Humvee gunner, he saw a lot of combat, and IED explosions were common occurrences.

“If you were the first convoy of the day, you were going to get hit,” he said.

He had his first serious anxiety attack toward the end of his leave, when he was returning to the post at Fort Carson. He was driving through the security checkpoint when “he had a meltdown,” his mother said. That wasn’t unusual. Dawna Lynn said soldiers suffering from PTSD often have trouble at airports, in crowded malls or at security checkpoints.

After experiencing additional anxiety and panic attacks, Nicholas was evaluated at a hospital and was told, in his mother’s words, that “he was having anxiety normal for the situation.”

He was sent back to Iraq, as planned, though he was told he would get some mental-health assistance there. His mother said he received none, and when he returned to the States in November 2006, he was still subject to severe attacks of anxiety and other symptoms of PTSD. In December 2006 he was placed on what the Army calls a “no-weapons profile,” meaning he wasn’t allowed to carry a gun because of psychiatric problems.

When he finally received mental-health care early in 2007, Dawna Lynn said, he was prescribed one medication to help him sleep, another to fight anxiety and depression and yet another drug for the panic attacks. He was told he had PTSD, a possible traumatic brain injury, post-concussive disorder and a general anxiety disorder.

Fractured femur

Then there were his physical problems. He suffered severe knee pain during his time in Iraq, and after his return to Fort Carson he began physical therapy. Last October, when he was in Billings on leave, he stepped out of the bed of a pickup truck and his knee buckled inward, fracturing his femur.

Some time after that, Nicholas was diagnosed with hip impingement syndrome. His mother said a misalignment where the femur joins the hip was the ultimate cause of Nicholas’ knee problems. Nicholas was placed on T-3 status, which meant he was temporarily unfit for deployment. A civilian orthopedist said, however, that if his hip problem was repaired, he could return to duty by Dec. 31, 2007.

The rest of Nicholas’ unit was preparing to return to Iraq for a 15-month deployment, but from everything Nicholas heard, his redeployment, if it were to take place, was months away. Things changed rapidly in late November.

On Nov. 27, a military orthopedist told Nicholas his knee injury could be treated in Iraq and the hip impingement could be dealt with on his return to the States. The next day, a lieutenant colonel issued a memorandum saying that although Nicholas was restricted from running because of his knee problems and femur fracture, “he is being deployed in the understanding that these limitations may affect and/or restrict his duty performance.”

Also on Nov. 28, Nicholas, who was still on a no-weapons profile, met with an Army psychiatrist who gave him five tablets of an anti-anxiety drug and asked him to go back to the waiting room while he made some phone calls. When Nicholas returned to the office, he said the psychiatrist acknowledged that he had been “leaned on” and was recommending that Nicholas was deployable and would leave with his unit in four days.

Nicholas said post scuttlebutt was that his unit, which had to be at 95 percent of its strength to be deployed, was down to 85 percent, and it badly needed soldiers. He and numerous other soldiers on T-3 status were swept up, he said.

“All the doctors pretty much caved and gave the guys deployable status,” he said.

On Nov. 29, Dawna Lynn and Nicholas’ girlfriend, Brittany Bealer of Billings, flew to Fort Carson. Their intention was to help Nicholas get ready for his deployment and then to drive his truck back to Billings, carrying everything he wasn’t taking with him. Dawna Lynn knew there were problems when Nicholas met them at the airport in Colorado Springs.

He found his mother at an Alamo car rental stand, and Nicholas happened to ask the woman behind the counter if they could get a military discount. Dawna Lynn said the woman asked Nicholas if he’d been in Iraq, and when he said yes, she asked, “Did you kill anyone?”

Dawna Lynn was stunned that anyone in a military town could be so insensitive, but she wasn’t prepared for Nicholas’ reaction. He went outside the terminal and threw up. After that, he was having one anxiety attack after another, and he was feeling overwhelmed by the sudden deployment order. His mother called a suicide crisis line, and the person there suggested he be taken to a hospital emergency room.

Time for help

Nicholas was reluctant to seek help, Dawna Lynn said, because he didn’t want to let his unit down and because one sergeant had already accused him of faking the knee injury. But after suffering more panic attacks, Nicholas asked to be taken to the hospital on the night of Nov. 30-Dec. 1.

He was diagnosed as suicidal and transferred to Cedar Springs Behavioral Health System. His mother, meanwhile, swung into action. Going through Nicholas’ papers, Dawna Lynn discovered that the Army psychiatrist had overridden Nicholas’ no-weapons profile and his status as unfit for deployment, and that Nicholas’ inability to run had also been brushed aside.

She contacted Andrew Pogany, an Iraq veteran who was working in Colorado Springs as an investigator and soldiers’ advocate for a group called Veterans for America. Pogany had been featured in a series of reports aired by National Public Radio in 2006 and 2007, looking into allegations that officers at Fort Carson were punishing soldiers who returned from combat with serious mental-health problems.

The NPR series led to investigations of the post, including one conducted by the Pentagon and another by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators.

After Pogany gave Dawna Lynn advice on how to help her son, she wrote letters to all three members of Montana’s congressional delegation, to all presidential candidates in both parties and to members of a congressional subcommittee on military affairs. She also filed a formal complaint with the office of the inspector general for Fort Carson and the commanding general of the post.

Perhaps because Fort Carson had been under such heavy scrutiny, Dawna Lynn got quick results.

“The Army treated me with respect and they listened to my concerns,” she said.

Early in December, Nicholas’ deployment was canceled and he was placed in the Warrior Transition Unit to prepare for a return to civilian life. Early this month, he was officially diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.

Dawna Lynn said a major at the post subsequently told her that the deployment of numerous other soldiers whose nondeployment status had been overridden was halted on Dec. 3, and on Dec. 18 soldiers who were already in Kuwait awaiting deployment to Iraq were returned home. She said she didn’t know how many soldiers were affected by the orders, but that they numbered in the hundreds.

Numbers hard to come by

That could not be confirmed by officials at Fort Carson.

Dee McNutt, the public-affairs officer at the post, said it would be virtually impossible to determine why individual soldiers had their deployments canceled because there are so many possible reasons. All she would say is that the Fort Carson “chain of command is exemplary” at responding to the concerns of soldiers at the post.

The officers carefully examine all information brought to their attention, she said, “and they err on the side of the soldier” in making their decisions.

Pogany, who has been working for the National Veterans Legal Services organization since Jan. 1, said he didn’t know how many soldiers were affected by the review that was sparked by Dawna Lynn’s efforts on behalf of her son.

However, he said, “I received confirmation that that had happened and that commanders at Fort Carson were working very hard to determine who was sent and who shouldn’t have been.”

He also said he personally knew of six soldiers whose deployments were canceled, because he was helping them make the case that that they had been ordered overseas despite medical problems that should have prevented their deployment.

Dawna Lynn said she is still a big supporter of the Army and understands its desire to deploy soldiers who may not be fit for combat. The Army’s duty is to fight, she said, and the Army’s tendency is to do everything it needs to do to prepare for battle. But to the Army’s credit, she said, commanders appeared to do everything they could when she brought her concerns forward.

“I don’t want to bash the Army because I think they’re really trying,” she said.

And despite Nicholas’ troubles, she is also grateful.

“I know he has both hands and legs, which a lot of soldiers don’t have,” she said. “And he is alive.”

On the other hand, Dawna Lynn doesn’t like what she learned about how the military sometimes fails to acknowledge, much less reward, the sacrifices made by American soldiers. She doesn’t understand how anyone could ignore a wounded soldier.

“They got hurt defending us,” she said. “They got hurt fighting a battle we sent them to.”

Ailing GIs deployed to war zones

Erin Emery, the Denver Post

Ft. Carson sent ailing GIs to meet deployment goals, notes say

COLORADO SPRINGS — Fort Carson sent soldiers who were not medically fit to war zones last month to meet “deployable strength” goals, according to e-mails obtained by The Denver Post.

One e-mail, written Jan. 3 by the surgeon for Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, says: “We have been having issues reaching deployable strength, and thus have been taking along some borderline soldiers who we would otherwise have left behind for continued treatment.”

Capt. Scot Tebo’s e-mail was, in part, a reference to Master Sgt. Denny Nelson, a 19-year Army veteran, who was sent overseas last month despite doctors’ orders that he not run, jump or carry more than 20 pounds for three months because of a severe foot injury.

Nelson took the medical report to the Soldier Readiness Process, or SRP, site on Fort Carson, where health-care professionals recommended Nelson stay home.

The soldier, who has a Bronze Star and is a member of the Mountain Post’s Audie Murphy Chapter, was sent to Kuwait on Dec. 29.

Nelson says he was one of at least 52 soldiers deployed who should not have been, and a veterans group says the military is endangering soldiers to meet its goals.

But Fort Carson officials say they do not believe unfit soldiers have been sent to the Middle East and say there is no repercussion for not meeting goals. They say the battalion commander has the final decision as to who is deployed.

On Jan. 5, a physician in Kuwait sent a strongly worded e-mail to Tebo urging him to send Nelson back to the U.S.

“This soldier should NOT have even left CONUS (the United States). . . . In his current state, he is not full mission capable and in his current condition is a risk to further injury to himself, others and his unit,” said the physician, Maj. Thomas Schymanski.

Nelson, 38, had fractured his leg and destroyed the tendons that hold the bones in his feet together while jumping on his daughter’s trampoline.

He arrived back at Fort Carson on Sunday.

“I just want to make sure these soldiers get back safe. I got back, and the only reason I got back safe is because I’m an E-8 (master sergeant). If I was a private or a specialist, I guarantee you, I’d be in Iraq,” he said. “If nothing comes out of this other than those soldiers coming back home before one of them gets killed, then I can sleep at night. But God forbid if something happens, and I didn’t do anything . . . .”

Nelson went through Fort Carson’s Soldier Readiness Process, a clearinghouse where legal, medical and financial records are examined, and it was recommended that he stay home.

No number on “no go’s”

Fort Carson could not say Wednesday how many soldiers were considered “no-go’s” by medical professionals at the SRP site but were ultimately sent overseas.

“The SRP, what they do is they screen soldiers for deployment, . . . and if a soldier is identified as a no-go in the SRP site, then the soldier is seen by a specialist,” said Maj. Harvinder Singh, the 3rd Brigade Combat Team’s rear detachment commander.

Nelson said he was not seen by a specialist or any medical professional after the SRP site identified him as a no-go.

Nelson was to serve as a liaison officer and assist soldiers in transitioning from Kuwait to Iraq.

Singh said he does not believe medically unfit soldiers have been deployed to Iraq. He said soldiers with medical issues are only sent to theater if there is a light-duty job for them and medical services are available in theater. He said 3,500 of the brigade’s 3,700 soldiers were deployed. The others probably stayed home because medical services could not be found for them in theater.

Goals for commanders

Dee McNutt, spokeswoman for Fort Carson, said she knew of no Army policy that defined “deployable strength.”

“Every commander has a goal, and you try to achieve that goal, . . . but there is no repercussion if you don’t hit that goal,” Singh said.

Col. James Terrio, deputy commander for clinical services at Evans Army Community Hospital, said, “The issue with who you take, it is the commander’s decision.” A commander, he said, is familiar with the level of danger and the needs of the unit. A job in Kuwait, for instance, would not require a soldier to wear Kevlar, and a job as a liaison officer would not require running or walking.

Of the 1.6 million service members who have served in Iraq, 34 percent have served two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said: “The military must follow existing law and examine our soldiers before they deploy to the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones. And the military must stop sending soldiers with physical or psychological conditions that require medical treatment into the war zones because this endangers the soldier, the unit and the mission.”

Nelson said units are being deployed so rapidly, with 15 months in theater and 12 months off, that “they’re having trouble getting them healthy.”

Nelson said that when he arrived at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, he was told he would be going to Iraq sooner than he thought.

“The agreement was that I was going to be in Kuwait for four or five months, do physical therapy, and then when I’m healthy, I go forward to Iraq,” Nelson said. “I’m not going to Iraq not being able to wear any of my gear, not carry a weapon. I become a liability to everybody around me because if they get mortared, they’re going to have to look out for me because obviously, I can’t run. I can’t look out for myself. Now I’ve got soldiers worrying about my welfare, instead of their own.”

Nelson said there were two soldiers deployed with a torn rotator cuff. Another soldier was sent overseas who had mental-health issues, and another suffered from nerve damage to his groin area and had been taking morphine for seven months. When that soldier went to a clinic in Iraq to ask for more pain medication, medical professionals said he could not have it and he was sent home, according to Nelson.

Instead of going to Iraq, he went to another Kuwait post, Camp Arifjan.

Nelson said he was told by superiors that he would be in charge of 52 soldiers who were receiving medical treatment.

“I expected to find a whole bunch of people, but when I got there, they were all gone. They were already all in Iraq,” Nelson said.

Those soldiers would have received medical treatment in Iraq, said Singh.

Fort Carson was at the heart of a congressional investigation last year after reports revealed soldiers were not receiving quality medical care after returning from Iraq. Some soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder said they were punished, rather than treated, or thrown out of the Army for “personality” problems.