Posted on 10/17/2003 2:10:36 PM PDT by tomball
FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors.
The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.
"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I have done everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st Class Willie Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation Company. Buckels served in the Army Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first Gulf War. "Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army has changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen."
Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying to get doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of his abdomen since doubling over in pain there.
After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20 percent of his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his family in Mississippi. "They have not found out what my side is doing yet, but they are still trying," Buckels said.
One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.
The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.
Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.
The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting better treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or Army Reserve are left to wallow in medical hold.
"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves," said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she developed a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment.
A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public affairs officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not returned.
Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.
Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.
Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.
They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.
"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.
That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.
He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.
"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."
First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.
But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.
Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.
Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more doctor appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.
"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.
Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get to see doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.
"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first and they put us on hold," said another soldier who returned from Iraq six weeks ago with a serious back injury. He has gotten to see a doctor only two times since he got back, he said.
Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq. "There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here who got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is putting a lot on these families."
The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.
In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of the military.
"Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror," Bush said. "And you're making your state and your country proud."
No, those conditions are only at the National Guard Training Center. The rest of the post has modern facilities.
I don't think this would have happened in the AF to be honest (to this extent at least). One reason being the AF seemed to do a better job of retention when it came to medical staff, while, IMO, it seemed like many in the medical profession in the Army were there doing their time so the Army would pay for their training/college, and they had no desire to make a career out of the military.
Unlike the Army, a higher percentage of those exposed to combat/extreme conditions are going to be officers and middle-senior NCOs, and you can take it to the bank that this would never have happened to a group of them. Yes, it shouldn't matter if it's an E-2 or an E-6 or an O-1 that is wounded. Of course you wouldn't have large groups, because outside of a base coming under attack, the majority of those in the AF that would be injured would be few since usually you either completed your mission in one piece or you didn't come back.
It's sad, it sucks, and it shouldn't matter, but because the AF was always top-heavy with officers due to the nature of our mission and the fact that most bases were operating around the clock (things never felt like "peacetime" to me), we always seemed to have better facilities.
Not to turn this into an AF vs Army argument, but I've often believed that the AF valued its people much higher than the Army (especially its enlisted).
Part of it maybe that we required longer commitments upon enlistment or commission, and part of it maybe that we have a larger ration of very technical/skilled people (hence the longer enlistments).
A lot of enlisted jobs in the AF, they could require a lot of education, hence a large investment and not as easy to replace as quickly, while (according to relatives) the Army saw a lot of more of its people as being, for lack of a better phrase, easily replaced.
You can't just replace somebody that works on and with nuclear weapons, and when you have weapons systems that are around 50 years old (B-52s, etc.) you sure as hell do not want to lose the institutional knowledge that senior NCOs accumulate.
Tell it, brother. Why don't the leadership schools emphasize just that?
Desert the army, repudiate your citizenship, and sneak over the border as an illegal immigrant. Then you can get first-class medical care. I'm sorry, the country really is that screwed up. Oh, and it doesn't help to vote, because judges can rule every word in the Constitutional unconstitutional.
Billions to protect Iraq, not one penny for protecting the US border!
I've slept in the snow in Norway...had to get out of the pup tent to take a leak.
1st Combat Comm Gp. Wiesbaden W. Germany '79-'82
Conditions bad or conditions normal, the quarters are not the issue.
It may be normal to wait weeks for medical care, but it isn't right, and it doesn't make it good policy.
I wouldn't be upset if they were housed in tents and told to dig their own latrines, but they damned well should recieve prompt medical care. At least as prompt as a General Officer stationed at the Pentagon would recieve. After all, they are the real soldiers.
So9
IOW you didn't engage your brain before putting your fingers in gear. Common problem, but at least you fessed up to it.
That's fine if the activation is for training, but when it's for real, they become active duty soliders and should be treated as such. Do you think all the Guard Divisions called up for "the duration" in WW-II were treated as second class soldiers? I very much doubt it, and if they had been, there'd have been hell to pay.
It may not be normal to wait weeks for medical care but it does happen. As an example I had a shipmate who hurt his back, we were on mainland Japan, the closest specialist was stationed on Okinawa. Unfortunately he was on 30 days leave. Now the military could have sent the guy with the bad back to Hawaii but it was more costly to fly him there. So guess what? He waited over a month to see the doctor, it happens, may not make sense but that's the way it is. And if you think junior personnel are going to get the same prompt treatment as a General Officer your living in la la land!!! It ain't going to happen.
But reservists and other "non lifer" types are different, they vote and they don't forgive and forget very well either.
. In the Air Force, we didn't wear unit insignia on our uniforms, with some exceptions such as a ball cap to be worn with fatigues (pre-BDU days) and command level patches on those fatigues as well. But on our blues, no unit insignia. So most of the time, if you didn't already know, you couldn't tell the reservists from the active duty guys, except the reservists tended to be a bit older, and a bit more competant for their rank or grade. One former reserve CO of mine was not particularly amused when, when acting for the head of Intell at PacAF at a PacCom meeting of some sort, during a stint of active duty "for training", to have some active duty puke (non-AF I think) making some smart ass remark about reservists, especially since he outranked the puke. On top of being an O-6, he is an Aggie. Definitely was not amused, neither was the puke after the Colonel straightend him out. :)
Yeh, but they don't really belong to him, and could give a F-word. Meanwhile they do belong to someone, someone who should be raising bloody hell. That's one difference with Guard and Reserve folks, they have a long time attachement to their units, which is good and bad, but mostly good and something the Regular forces could emulate a bit. During the early Afghanistan business, some Air Guard units sent their First Shirt, even though they were only sending a "slice" of their unit. The Command Senior NCO then reported back to the CO about how "his" people were being treated, and hell was raised as appropriate.
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