Horror follows troops home
By TOM ROEDER and CARY LEIDER VOGRIN THE
GAZETTE
March 25, 2007 - 1:19AM
“Imagine you’re home in bed, sound asleep, then
you wake up and hear glass breaking in your
children’s room.
“Now imagine feeling that way for a year.”
The waking nightmare has followed Fort Carson Sgt.
Christopher Cain and more than 1,500 other local
soldiers home from Iraq.
Most of the mental health problems faced by
homecoming troops are mild, Fort Carson officials
say. Up to a third report a little sleeplessness here
or paranoia there, the post’s top doctor said. These
symptoms will disappear after a month or so at home
for all but a few.
But a growing number of cases are more severe, like
Cain’s. Nearly 600 Fort Carson soldiers were
diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder last
year, up from 102 cases in 2003 when soldiers
started returning from their first tours in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It was the fourth straight year with a
significant increase in the number of soldiers being
diagnosed with PTSD.
With symptoms that range from hyperawareness to
angry outbursts, PTSD is an anxiety reaction to
traumatic events, which Iraq brings by the truckload.
It plagues up to 10 percent of soldiers returning from
war.
Now the military is discovering a new problem.
Substantial numbers of troops are showing lingering
signs of traumatic brain in- juries suffered in Iraq,
mainly concussions caused by roadside bombs.
All this can add up to some scary side effects.
Commanders say mental health problems from war
could be tied to other troubles, from an uptick in the
divorce rate to more drunken driving arrests.
“One of the things we stress is that nobody goes to
war and comes back the same,” said Jill Nugin, who
coordinates the post’s family advocacy program.
“We’re busy, but we’re not dealing with things that
have hit a scary level.”
Not everyone agrees.
Fort Carson faced congressional and Pentagon
scrutiny this year after complaints that care at the
post was inadequate and that soldiers with war-
caused mental illness were being improperly
discharged.
One of the biggest critics is former Fort Carson
soldier Andrew Pogany. For three years, he has
spent about 40 hours a week digging into complaints
and trying to help scores of soldiers who he said are
receiving inadequate care.
“Everything we see today is the result of institutional
failure and people who are so institutionalized it is
difficult for them to see institutional failures,” said
Pogany.
Post spokesman Lt. Col. David Johnson said that in
about a dozen incidents, soldiers have experienced
trouble getting care because of undereducated
leaders at the platoon and squad level.
He said the post has launched an education
campaign to ensure that commanders know the
importance of getting troops mental health care.
The rise in PTSD cases mirrors a rise in crime
statistics at Fort Carson. The number of soldiers
going AWOL for a month or more went from 22 in
2003 to 110 last year. Domestic violence reports
rose from 21 in 2003 to 79 last year, and theft
reports jumped from 68 to 179.
Pogany said the Army’s biggest failure is its inability
to help mentally ill soldiers who use drugs or commit
crimes.
“We’re leaving a fallen comrade behind, but it’s not
on the battlefield, it’s back here at home,” he said.
Commanding Gen. Robert Mixon said he and other
commanders at Fort Carson are having to learn how
to determine what criminal activity is a symptom of
mental illness. Some soldiers will get court-martialed,
others will get treatment.
‘ODD BEHAVIORS’
Pvt. Aaron Dunn, for one, traces his drug addiction
to post-traumatic stress.
“I started using meth to drown out the symptoms,”
the 25-year-old said. He said he doesn’t even
remember last Thanksgiving, when he was on
methamphetamines, an antidepressant, alcohol and
the pain reliever Percocet. He said he had also
taken Ambien, a sleep aid recently linked to bizarre
and dangerous behaviors.
Dunn said his PTSD symptoms began after he was
run over by a Humvee in March 2004 and suffered a
broken wrist, ruptured bladder and fractured pelvis.
He was sent to recover at Fort Hood, Texas, then
back to Iraq about six months later.
Dunn said his big troubles started when his tour was
finished, and he returned to Fort Hood.
“I wouldn’t want to do anything. I had no emotion
toward anything. I would snap. I’d start crying,” he
said.
Dunn, who graduated from high school in Longmont,
said he started using meth in 2005.
“My reasoning behind it was, ‘What’s this compared
to what I’ve done?’” he said. “‘What’s doing drugs
compared to taking a human life?’”
His wife, Mary, noticed “odd behaviors,” including
paranoid comments.
“We were still at Fort Hood. He started going out a
lot, and you know, started drinking a lot. He was real
distant from the family,” including their two young
daughters, Mary Dunn said.
It was a year before his meth use was discovered
during a drug test at Fort Carson, where he had
been reassigned.
“The psychologist said I was using meth to, quote,
‘Stay in La-La Land,’” Aaron Dunn said.
Since February 2006, he said he’s been at St.
Francis Behavior Health Services twice and at Cedar
Springs Behavioral Health System once for inpatient
care not offered at Fort Carson.
In one of those instances, he pulled off the freeway
at Garden of the Gods Road and called 911. “I had
a panic attack while driving down I-25,” he said.
He’s now sitting in the county jail, which holds
prisoners for the military, on multiple charges that
include allegations of sexual assault, disrespecting
an officer and meth use. He won’t discuss the first
two allegations.
Aaron Dunn, assigned to the 984th MP Company,
said he was a model soldier before suffering
posttraumatic stress symptoms.
His military defense attorney, Capt. Elizabeth
Talarico, confirmed that her client has been
diagnosed with chronic PTSD but would not
comment on whether that will be used in Dunn’s
defense.
Richard Travis, formerly the Army’s senior
prosecutor at Fort Carson and now in private
practice in Colorado Springs, said he is representing
soldiers in other cases where PTSD is a factor.
In one divorce case, a wife cited PTSD in hopes her
husband won’t get unsupervised visits with their
children.
No divorce statistics are kept at the post, but Nugin
said marital strife has increased as spouses have
been separated by multiple war tours.
“I’ve had other guys in the context of divorce talk
about PTSD and the attempt to get counseling and
how difficult it is to get individual counseling,” Travis
said. “At least some of my clients did not want to
participate in group sessions because they did not
feel comfortable doing so.”
In courts-martial, Travis said PTSD “becomes an
issue when you try to figure out why someone who
was a good soldier now has issues.”
RETURN-VISIT STRESS
Rates of diagnosed mental problems are higher for
the Iraq war than for any earlier conflict. Experts
attribute most of that to advances in understanding
of mental health — things that would have been
ignored in the past such as mild irritability and sleep
disorders are being seen as symptoms of mental
health problems.
And it is known that combat leaves a mental mark
that can run deeper with increased exposure.
PTSD cases increase with return visits to Iraq, said
Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army’s recently retired
surgeon general. Kiley was one of several Army
leaders who lost jobs amid a scandal at Walter Reed
Army Medical Center where wounded soldiers said
red tape and poor conditions hampered their
recoveries.
Thousands of Fort Carson soldiers have been to
Iraq twice since the war began in 2003, and
hundreds have served there three times or more.
The post’s 3,600-soldier 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat
Team will head to Iraq in September for its third
yearlong tour in five years.
Kiley also said that PTSD rates are higher among
soldiers not properly trained for the combat they
face.
Another contributor is what Fort Carson now
considers to be deployed soldiers’ most common
health problem: “traumatic brain injury.”
Symptoms of brain injury, including forgetfulness,
insomnia and aggression, mimic PTSD.
Col. Steve Knorr, the post’s top psychiatrist, said the
post is doing well in its first extended war in the
modern era of mental health awareness.
But from the commanding general on down, officials
at Fort Carson say blending sensitivity into the Army’
s John Wayne culture isn’t easy.
“We are a professional fighting force,” Mixon said.
“Any indication of a perceived weakness is not
something we’re used to.”
Capt. David Larimer of the 2nd Brigade Combat
Team is helping soldiers get treated for PTSD and
other conditions.
“It was not addressed in my training,” Larimer said.
That training, though, has changed in a hurry. Knorr
holds regular classes at the post aimed at every
soldier with enough rank to lead troops.
The message: Mental trouble is no different than
any other battle injury and should be treated
accordingly.
“It’s the same as being shot in the leg,” he said.
Legs bleed, but troubles with soldiers’ minds can be
harder to spot.
“The biggest problem is stigma,” said Col. John Cho,
who commands Evans Army Community Hospital at
Fort Carson.
Soldiers don’t want to acknowledge that they have a
problem because they think it would be a career
roadblock and damage their standing with
comrades, he said.
The post relies on questionnaires to assess how
soldiers feel when they get home, and the watchful
eyes of commanders and spouses to determine
which soldiers need help.
Most, like Cain, report their mental illness to
commanders.
“It was a Sunday and I took myself to the emergency
room,” Cain said of a day in 2005 when he sought
help at Evans.
It wasn’t an easy call for Cain, who knew that by
seeing a psychiatrist he was running the risk that he
might be found mentally unfit to lead troops.
He said his commanders have been supportive,
telling him to get healthy so he can come back.
But Cain, who said he’s still isolated from family
members and full of anxiety about what he went
through in Iraq, won’t be going back.
His soldiers with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team are
in Iraq again, serving in Ramadi under another
sergeant.
Cain’s getting out of the Army. He said he couldn’t
stay.
“I would risk making a decision that could get
someone hurt,” he said.
By TOM ROEDER and CARY LEIDER VOGRIN THE
GAZETTE
March 25, 2007 - 1:19AM
“Imagine you’re home in bed, sound asleep, then
you wake up and hear glass breaking in your
children’s room.
“Now imagine feeling that way for a year.”
The waking nightmare has followed Fort Carson Sgt.
Christopher Cain and more than 1,500 other local
soldiers home from Iraq.
Most of the mental health problems faced by
homecoming troops are mild, Fort Carson officials
say. Up to a third report a little sleeplessness here
or paranoia there, the post’s top doctor said. These
symptoms will disappear after a month or so at home
for all but a few.
But a growing number of cases are more severe, like
Cain’s. Nearly 600 Fort Carson soldiers were
diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder last
year, up from 102 cases in 2003 when soldiers
started returning from their first tours in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It was the fourth straight year with a
significant increase in the number of soldiers being
diagnosed with PTSD.
With symptoms that range from hyperawareness to
angry outbursts, PTSD is an anxiety reaction to
traumatic events, which Iraq brings by the truckload.
It plagues up to 10 percent of soldiers returning from
war.
Now the military is discovering a new problem.
Substantial numbers of troops are showing lingering
signs of traumatic brain in- juries suffered in Iraq,
mainly concussions caused by roadside bombs.
All this can add up to some scary side effects.
Commanders say mental health problems from war
could be tied to other troubles, from an uptick in the
divorce rate to more drunken driving arrests.
“One of the things we stress is that nobody goes to
war and comes back the same,” said Jill Nugin, who
coordinates the post’s family advocacy program.
“We’re busy, but we’re not dealing with things that
have hit a scary level.”
Not everyone agrees.
Fort Carson faced congressional and Pentagon
scrutiny this year after complaints that care at the
post was inadequate and that soldiers with war-
caused mental illness were being improperly
discharged.
One of the biggest critics is former Fort Carson
soldier Andrew Pogany. For three years, he has
spent about 40 hours a week digging into complaints
and trying to help scores of soldiers who he said are
receiving inadequate care.
“Everything we see today is the result of institutional
failure and people who are so institutionalized it is
difficult for them to see institutional failures,” said
Pogany.
Post spokesman Lt. Col. David Johnson said that in
about a dozen incidents, soldiers have experienced
trouble getting care because of undereducated
leaders at the platoon and squad level.
He said the post has launched an education
campaign to ensure that commanders know the
importance of getting troops mental health care.
The rise in PTSD cases mirrors a rise in crime
statistics at Fort Carson. The number of soldiers
going AWOL for a month or more went from 22 in
2003 to 110 last year. Domestic violence reports
rose from 21 in 2003 to 79 last year, and theft
reports jumped from 68 to 179.
Pogany said the Army’s biggest failure is its inability
to help mentally ill soldiers who use drugs or commit
crimes.
“We’re leaving a fallen comrade behind, but it’s not
on the battlefield, it’s back here at home,” he said.
Commanding Gen. Robert Mixon said he and other
commanders at Fort Carson are having to learn how
to determine what criminal activity is a symptom of
mental illness. Some soldiers will get court-martialed,
others will get treatment.
‘ODD BEHAVIORS’
Pvt. Aaron Dunn, for one, traces his drug addiction
to post-traumatic stress.
“I started using meth to drown out the symptoms,”
the 25-year-old said. He said he doesn’t even
remember last Thanksgiving, when he was on
methamphetamines, an antidepressant, alcohol and
the pain reliever Percocet. He said he had also
taken Ambien, a sleep aid recently linked to bizarre
and dangerous behaviors.
Dunn said his PTSD symptoms began after he was
run over by a Humvee in March 2004 and suffered a
broken wrist, ruptured bladder and fractured pelvis.
He was sent to recover at Fort Hood, Texas, then
back to Iraq about six months later.
Dunn said his big troubles started when his tour was
finished, and he returned to Fort Hood.
“I wouldn’t want to do anything. I had no emotion
toward anything. I would snap. I’d start crying,” he
said.
Dunn, who graduated from high school in Longmont,
said he started using meth in 2005.
“My reasoning behind it was, ‘What’s this compared
to what I’ve done?’” he said. “‘What’s doing drugs
compared to taking a human life?’”
His wife, Mary, noticed “odd behaviors,” including
paranoid comments.
“We were still at Fort Hood. He started going out a
lot, and you know, started drinking a lot. He was real
distant from the family,” including their two young
daughters, Mary Dunn said.
It was a year before his meth use was discovered
during a drug test at Fort Carson, where he had
been reassigned.
“The psychologist said I was using meth to, quote,
‘Stay in La-La Land,’” Aaron Dunn said.
Since February 2006, he said he’s been at St.
Francis Behavior Health Services twice and at Cedar
Springs Behavioral Health System once for inpatient
care not offered at Fort Carson.
In one of those instances, he pulled off the freeway
at Garden of the Gods Road and called 911. “I had
a panic attack while driving down I-25,” he said.
He’s now sitting in the county jail, which holds
prisoners for the military, on multiple charges that
include allegations of sexual assault, disrespecting
an officer and meth use. He won’t discuss the first
two allegations.
Aaron Dunn, assigned to the 984th MP Company,
said he was a model soldier before suffering
posttraumatic stress symptoms.
His military defense attorney, Capt. Elizabeth
Talarico, confirmed that her client has been
diagnosed with chronic PTSD but would not
comment on whether that will be used in Dunn’s
defense.
Richard Travis, formerly the Army’s senior
prosecutor at Fort Carson and now in private
practice in Colorado Springs, said he is representing
soldiers in other cases where PTSD is a factor.
In one divorce case, a wife cited PTSD in hopes her
husband won’t get unsupervised visits with their
children.
No divorce statistics are kept at the post, but Nugin
said marital strife has increased as spouses have
been separated by multiple war tours.
“I’ve had other guys in the context of divorce talk
about PTSD and the attempt to get counseling and
how difficult it is to get individual counseling,” Travis
said. “At least some of my clients did not want to
participate in group sessions because they did not
feel comfortable doing so.”
In courts-martial, Travis said PTSD “becomes an
issue when you try to figure out why someone who
was a good soldier now has issues.”
RETURN-VISIT STRESS
Rates of diagnosed mental problems are higher for
the Iraq war than for any earlier conflict. Experts
attribute most of that to advances in understanding
of mental health — things that would have been
ignored in the past such as mild irritability and sleep
disorders are being seen as symptoms of mental
health problems.
And it is known that combat leaves a mental mark
that can run deeper with increased exposure.
PTSD cases increase with return visits to Iraq, said
Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army’s recently retired
surgeon general. Kiley was one of several Army
leaders who lost jobs amid a scandal at Walter Reed
Army Medical Center where wounded soldiers said
red tape and poor conditions hampered their
recoveries.
Thousands of Fort Carson soldiers have been to
Iraq twice since the war began in 2003, and
hundreds have served there three times or more.
The post’s 3,600-soldier 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat
Team will head to Iraq in September for its third
yearlong tour in five years.
Kiley also said that PTSD rates are higher among
soldiers not properly trained for the combat they
face.
Another contributor is what Fort Carson now
considers to be deployed soldiers’ most common
health problem: “traumatic brain injury.”
Symptoms of brain injury, including forgetfulness,
insomnia and aggression, mimic PTSD.
Col. Steve Knorr, the post’s top psychiatrist, said the
post is doing well in its first extended war in the
modern era of mental health awareness.
But from the commanding general on down, officials
at Fort Carson say blending sensitivity into the Army’
s John Wayne culture isn’t easy.
“We are a professional fighting force,” Mixon said.
“Any indication of a perceived weakness is not
something we’re used to.”
Capt. David Larimer of the 2nd Brigade Combat
Team is helping soldiers get treated for PTSD and
other conditions.
“It was not addressed in my training,” Larimer said.
That training, though, has changed in a hurry. Knorr
holds regular classes at the post aimed at every
soldier with enough rank to lead troops.
The message: Mental trouble is no different than
any other battle injury and should be treated
accordingly.
“It’s the same as being shot in the leg,” he said.
Legs bleed, but troubles with soldiers’ minds can be
harder to spot.
“The biggest problem is stigma,” said Col. John Cho,
who commands Evans Army Community Hospital at
Fort Carson.
Soldiers don’t want to acknowledge that they have a
problem because they think it would be a career
roadblock and damage their standing with
comrades, he said.
The post relies on questionnaires to assess how
soldiers feel when they get home, and the watchful
eyes of commanders and spouses to determine
which soldiers need help.
Most, like Cain, report their mental illness to
commanders.
“It was a Sunday and I took myself to the emergency
room,” Cain said of a day in 2005 when he sought
help at Evans.
It wasn’t an easy call for Cain, who knew that by
seeing a psychiatrist he was running the risk that he
might be found mentally unfit to lead troops.
He said his commanders have been supportive,
telling him to get healthy so he can come back.
But Cain, who said he’s still isolated from family
members and full of anxiety about what he went
through in Iraq, won’t be going back.
His soldiers with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team are
in Iraq again, serving in Ramadi under another
sergeant.
Cain’s getting out of the Army. He said he couldn’t
stay.
“I would risk making a decision that could get
someone hurt,” he said.
Stigma has become a
nightmare
By CARY LEIDER VOGRIN, THE GAZETTE
March 25, 2007 - 1:10AM
Michael Lemke’s voice betrays his anger. He
returned from Iraq suffering post-traumatic stress
symptoms, and he doesn’t think the Army did
enough to help him or those who came after him.
“Soldiers coming back with PTSD are facing a
stigma. I don’t care what the chain of command
has recently said,” Lemke said, referring to the
Army’s recently retired surgeon general, who
praised Fort Carson for its mental health
programs during a January visit.
“There’s a huge stigma,” Lemke continued,
describing a “machismo thing” in which “seeing
messed-up stuff is part of being a soldier, killing
people is part of being a soldier.”
“Let’s face it,” he said. “The military is not a
touchy-feely organization, so when it comes to
mental health issues, it’s ‘Suck it up, soldier, and
drive on.’”
PTSD has become a focal point for Lemke, who
was in the first wave of soldiers to enter Iraq in
2003.
He attends a PTSD therapy group at the
Colorado Springs VA clinic, blogs about the
subject on the Veterans For America Web site
and fields calls from soldiers across the country.
He’s also working on his master’s degree in
counseling at Colorado Christian University with
the intention of helping others who have been to
war.
“It is the only thing I can do with my life to make
sense of this wasteful war, and the ways it
sickened my mind and body,” he wrote in an e-
mail that followed an interview. “It is the only way I
can turn a huge and depressing negative into a
useful positive. I feel it’s why God saved my life in
Iraq.”
Lemke said he wanted to go to the Middle East,
specifically to Afghanistan. He said that three
days after seeing a college roommate-turned
New York firefighter standing in the rubble of the
Twin Towers, he went to a recruiter’s office in
Grand Junction, where he was living. At the time,
he had been out of the military for 12 years;
Lemke had been active-duty Army at Fort Carson
in the 1970s and then spent time in the Reserves.
“I wanted to go to war. I was mad,” he said.
In early 2003, days shy of his 44th birthday, Sgt.
Lemke was in the Middle East with a Colorado
Army National Guard unit, the 220th MP
Company, which was readying to march into Iraq
after the armored spearhead of the invasion.
What he saw at an Iraqi mass grave filled with the
bodies of political prisoners executed under
Saddam Hussein can’t easily be forgotten.
“Bodies everywhere, hundreds of feral dogs
eating and feeding off of the corpses, some of
them running around with body parts like an arm
or a hand or a leg in their mouth, like it was a
bone,” he said. “One day my platoon shot 70
dogs.
“It’s certainly one of the most disgusting,
abhorring things I’ve ever witnessed. When you’
re there at the time, you have these
compensatory coping mechanisms. You turn it
into humor, you joke about it, you know. We
found a body that was just the leg from the
kneecap down to the foot and we named him
‘Skip.’ You do stuff like that.
”Your brain just manufactures a way to handle it
at the time,” he said. “In a military environment, it’
s often humor, or it’s often really sick humor. But
it comes back, and it comes back to you in a way
that’s not humorous.”
Lemke returned to Fort Carson in August 2003
with orthopedic problems — he was having
trouble walking — exposure to tuberculosis and a
head full of terrible visions.
For the first three weeks back, he said, he rarely
slept — maybe 90 minutes a night. While seeing
a nurse practitioner for TB medication, he
confided that he had been drinking every night —
“getting obliterated,” he said — to try to sleep.
“At that point, she said, ‘Well, do you want a
mental health referral?’ I said, ‘I believe I have
PTSD.’” Lemke said he also saw several
chaplains — in Iraq and at posts en route to Fort
Carson — to talk about how he felt.
In group therapy sessions Fort Carson, he said
rules were laid down about what topics were off-
limits.
“We were told in the therapy group we couldn’t
talk about the chain of command,” he said, still
infuriated years later. Not only do soldiers often
have issues with their superiors’ decisions in war,
the chain of command also has the ability to
stymie soldiers’ efforts to get mental health help
or to label them as discipline problems if they
seek it, he said.
“You think any private practice with their own
shingle hanging in this town would try to tell a
client, ‘You can’t talk about that?’ That’s
malpractice in my book.”
Lemke spent a year in medical holdover. While
awaiting word on what kind of disability rating he’
d get for PTSD and other medical issues, he
worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross on post,
did patient data entry at Evans Army Community
Hospital and supervised soldiers in the barracks.
He’s angry at the decision that finally came down:
A disability rating of less than 30 percent, which
meant a lumpsum payment instead of lifetime
checks. He refers to it as a “30 percent shell
game” that cheats soldiers out of what’s due
them.
He also thinks the public isn’t taking notice nearly
enough.
“I believe Americans care to the extent that they
want our men and women to stop dying and
getting wounded,” he said. “But I don’t know if
they realize how much a soldier faces returning
from war.”
He also distrusts much of the local media, which
he says hasn’t done enough to delve into the
PTSD issue. He refused to show documentation
of his diagnosis to The Gazette.
“No, I’ve given enough paper to too many
journalists. The Army in D.C. (DA/DOD) and Fort
Carson won’t dare deny they diagnosed me with
PTSD,” he wrote in an e-mail.
The post declined to discuss Lemke’s medical
status because of confidentiality laws.
Lemke still takes part in group and individual
therapy for PTSD at the Colorado Springs VA
clinic. He now receives disability pay from the VA,
which he said gave him a much higher disability
rating of 80 percent. To draw the $1,319 a
month, though, he said he had to repay his Army
severance check of roughly $28,000.
Lemke said he sometimes relies on sleep
medications to combat nightmares, and he’ll take
Xanax, a drug to lessen anxiety or panic, if he
knows he’ll be around crowds.
All of these things help, he said, but they don’t
get rid of PTSD.
“I benefit going to group,” he said. “I’ll have more
dreams and do worse in my week if I don’t go.”
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0236 or cary.
vogrin@gazette.com
Ads by Google
American Soldiers In Iraq
Violence in Iraq Kills 10 U.S.Soldiers. Re
nightmare
By CARY LEIDER VOGRIN, THE GAZETTE
March 25, 2007 - 1:10AM
Michael Lemke’s voice betrays his anger. He
returned from Iraq suffering post-traumatic stress
symptoms, and he doesn’t think the Army did
enough to help him or those who came after him.
“Soldiers coming back with PTSD are facing a
stigma. I don’t care what the chain of command
has recently said,” Lemke said, referring to the
Army’s recently retired surgeon general, who
praised Fort Carson for its mental health
programs during a January visit.
“There’s a huge stigma,” Lemke continued,
describing a “machismo thing” in which “seeing
messed-up stuff is part of being a soldier, killing
people is part of being a soldier.”
“Let’s face it,” he said. “The military is not a
touchy-feely organization, so when it comes to
mental health issues, it’s ‘Suck it up, soldier, and
drive on.’”
PTSD has become a focal point for Lemke, who
was in the first wave of soldiers to enter Iraq in
2003.
He attends a PTSD therapy group at the
Colorado Springs VA clinic, blogs about the
subject on the Veterans For America Web site
and fields calls from soldiers across the country.
He’s also working on his master’s degree in
counseling at Colorado Christian University with
the intention of helping others who have been to
war.
“It is the only thing I can do with my life to make
sense of this wasteful war, and the ways it
sickened my mind and body,” he wrote in an e-
mail that followed an interview. “It is the only way I
can turn a huge and depressing negative into a
useful positive. I feel it’s why God saved my life in
Iraq.”
Lemke said he wanted to go to the Middle East,
specifically to Afghanistan. He said that three
days after seeing a college roommate-turned
New York firefighter standing in the rubble of the
Twin Towers, he went to a recruiter’s office in
Grand Junction, where he was living. At the time,
he had been out of the military for 12 years;
Lemke had been active-duty Army at Fort Carson
in the 1970s and then spent time in the Reserves.
“I wanted to go to war. I was mad,” he said.
In early 2003, days shy of his 44th birthday, Sgt.
Lemke was in the Middle East with a Colorado
Army National Guard unit, the 220th MP
Company, which was readying to march into Iraq
after the armored spearhead of the invasion.
What he saw at an Iraqi mass grave filled with the
bodies of political prisoners executed under
Saddam Hussein can’t easily be forgotten.
“Bodies everywhere, hundreds of feral dogs
eating and feeding off of the corpses, some of
them running around with body parts like an arm
or a hand or a leg in their mouth, like it was a
bone,” he said. “One day my platoon shot 70
dogs.
“It’s certainly one of the most disgusting,
abhorring things I’ve ever witnessed. When you’
re there at the time, you have these
compensatory coping mechanisms. You turn it
into humor, you joke about it, you know. We
found a body that was just the leg from the
kneecap down to the foot and we named him
‘Skip.’ You do stuff like that.
”Your brain just manufactures a way to handle it
at the time,” he said. “In a military environment, it’
s often humor, or it’s often really sick humor. But
it comes back, and it comes back to you in a way
that’s not humorous.”
Lemke returned to Fort Carson in August 2003
with orthopedic problems — he was having
trouble walking — exposure to tuberculosis and a
head full of terrible visions.
For the first three weeks back, he said, he rarely
slept — maybe 90 minutes a night. While seeing
a nurse practitioner for TB medication, he
confided that he had been drinking every night —
“getting obliterated,” he said — to try to sleep.
“At that point, she said, ‘Well, do you want a
mental health referral?’ I said, ‘I believe I have
PTSD.’” Lemke said he also saw several
chaplains — in Iraq and at posts en route to Fort
Carson — to talk about how he felt.
In group therapy sessions Fort Carson, he said
rules were laid down about what topics were off-
limits.
“We were told in the therapy group we couldn’t
talk about the chain of command,” he said, still
infuriated years later. Not only do soldiers often
have issues with their superiors’ decisions in war,
the chain of command also has the ability to
stymie soldiers’ efforts to get mental health help
or to label them as discipline problems if they
seek it, he said.
“You think any private practice with their own
shingle hanging in this town would try to tell a
client, ‘You can’t talk about that?’ That’s
malpractice in my book.”
Lemke spent a year in medical holdover. While
awaiting word on what kind of disability rating he’
d get for PTSD and other medical issues, he
worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross on post,
did patient data entry at Evans Army Community
Hospital and supervised soldiers in the barracks.
He’s angry at the decision that finally came down:
A disability rating of less than 30 percent, which
meant a lumpsum payment instead of lifetime
checks. He refers to it as a “30 percent shell
game” that cheats soldiers out of what’s due
them.
He also thinks the public isn’t taking notice nearly
enough.
“I believe Americans care to the extent that they
want our men and women to stop dying and
getting wounded,” he said. “But I don’t know if
they realize how much a soldier faces returning
from war.”
He also distrusts much of the local media, which
he says hasn’t done enough to delve into the
PTSD issue. He refused to show documentation
of his diagnosis to The Gazette.
“No, I’ve given enough paper to too many
journalists. The Army in D.C. (DA/DOD) and Fort
Carson won’t dare deny they diagnosed me with
PTSD,” he wrote in an e-mail.
The post declined to discuss Lemke’s medical
status because of confidentiality laws.
Lemke still takes part in group and individual
therapy for PTSD at the Colorado Springs VA
clinic. He now receives disability pay from the VA,
which he said gave him a much higher disability
rating of 80 percent. To draw the $1,319 a
month, though, he said he had to repay his Army
severance check of roughly $28,000.
Lemke said he sometimes relies on sleep
medications to combat nightmares, and he’ll take
Xanax, a drug to lessen anxiety or panic, if he
knows he’ll be around crowds.
All of these things help, he said, but they don’t
get rid of PTSD.
“I benefit going to group,” he said. “I’ll have more
dreams and do worse in my week if I don’t go.”
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0236 or cary.
vogrin@gazette.com
Ads by Google
American Soldiers In Iraq
Violence in Iraq Kills 10 U.S.Soldiers. Re
 |  |  |