Mystery Illness Kills Missouri Soldier

Missouri News-Leader ^ | 7/16/03 | Eric Eckert

[SpeakLittle_ThinkMuch]

Mystery illness kills Missouri soldier
Josh Neusche died Saturday; his family waits for answers.
By Eric Eckert
News-Leader Staff

July 16, 2003

 

Montreal, Mo. — Seventeen-year-old Jacob Neusche spent Tuesday morning packing up his big brother's belongings — books, a high school letterman's jacket and a Class A uniform.  "That's what Josh will be buried in," the teenager said, referring to the uniform.

 

Missouri National Guard Spc. Josh Neusche, 20, died Saturday at the Homburg Hospital in Germany from a mysterious illness. A member of the 203rd Engineer Battalion, he is the only Missouri National Guardsman on the Department of Defense's casualty list.

 

Family and friends are awaiting the soldier's body, scheduled to arrive Thursday in the United States.

 

They are also waiting for autopsy results, and his parents, Mark and Cindy Neusche, are calling for an investigation.

 

"He's always been healthy," Mark Neusche said. "Hell, he's a cross-country runner. There's no reason for a boy of his health to deteriorate so quickly."

 

Cindy Neusche said her son collapsed July 2 while in Baghdad and was transported to Germany. Doctors there told the family they believed Josh suffered from pneumonia due to fluid that had collected on his lungs. But then his liver, kidneys and muscles started to break down, his mother said.

 

"They were doing some things there, trying to get his kidneys flushed out," she said through tears. "They told us his potassium levels came up so far and he needed to go on dialysis."

 

The Neusches traveled to Germany Friday to be with their son. When they arrived, they found him in a drug-induced coma. The grief-stricken couple weren't able to talk with their boy, but they believe he knew they were there.

 

"In our hearts, we felt he heard us," said Cindy Neusche. "You could tell by the machines he was on. His heart rate got faster when we talked to him."

 

Josh Neusche died the next day.

 

Doctors and family members are still befuddled by the strange illness. There's got to be an explanation, Mark Neusche said. He prays the hospital's autopsy will reveal the cause.

 

"I know the doctor over in Germany said he got into some type of toxin," Mark Neusche said. "Several soldiers were in similar conditions while we were there."

 

So far there has been no hint of an official inquiry.

 

"That's not under investigation," said U.S. Army Spokesman, Lt. Col. Jeff Keane, from Virginia.

 

"To my knowledge, we've not been asked to do that (investigate)," added Whitney Frost, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton.

 

Meanwhile, friends and family have been reminiscing about their loved one.

 

"I lost the person I looked up to the most," Jacob Neusche said of his brother. "I guess now the role I'll have to step into is caring for my mother and dad. My brother always did that."

 

Friends remembered how Josh loved to play his trombone, his reign as Camdenton High School's 2002 prom king and his penchant for mathematics.

 

"He was a tutor for little kids," said friend Danny Pacholski. "The guy was a genius at math. ... It's really heartbreaking that this happened. We were always supposed to grow up with each other."

 

Josh's high school sweetheart, Krissy Lewis, said he lived his 20 years to the fullest. The couple broke up after high school, but stayed close friends.

 

"He was the most outgoing person I'd ever met," Lewis said, adding that friends have been consoling each other since they learned of the death. "One moment, I'm OK and then it hits me that I've lost the first love of my life."

 

Josh joined the National Guard in high school. When he was activated in March, the young man was enrolled at Southwest Missouri State University as a freshman.

 

He was taking general-education courses and had been dating fellow student Layne Clark for eight months. Clark, 19, said she and Josh talked many times about getting married.

 

"We met at college through a friend of ours," Clark said Tuesday. "We loved to go dancing. We saw a lot of movies and we enjoyed just being together — doing nothing."

 

Clark said the young soldier believed in his mission.

 

"He was so proud to serve his country. He thought this was the right thing to do and he wanted to do it. He was the most courageous man I'd ever known."

 

On Sunday — the day after learning of Josh's death — Clark received a two-page letter from her boyfriend; it was postmarked June 30.

 

"He just told me that everything was going all right and he'd be home soon."

[sadvet]

Local news (KY3-Springfield) reported the Army is sending a team to investigate in both Germany and Baghdad. 3 soldiers have died and others were infected but recovering. The soldiers all had different jobs but all worked with the ground.

[OldCorps]

17 shots is scarey.

One time my unit was alerted for a contingency mission to deploy with little notice to, er, a foreign continent. We were all lined up and given shots like running through a gantlet. I was miserable the next two days.

Same thing happened for desert storm. Unfortunately, the army thinks your body belongs to them. Remember the big dust up over anthrax vacine for the military. You had a choice, take a court martial or take a shot. And i also remember having no option on confiscation of my DNA. We were told to go get our blood drawn. Not showing up was not an option.

I love the army, it is one of the greatest institutions in our country. But man, I think these medical types have waaaaaay to much power.

[OldCorps]

no, it wasn't SOP. It was a quickly executed CYA operation.

[InShanghai]

Not withstanding the potential subject discussion of 'predestiny', we are saddened by the young man's passing. Not the least because he was serving his nation and people. It leads one to reflect on how much we take for granted. Life is fleeting in the grand design. Enjoy every moment you can. Do not let adversity poison your attitudes. Seek out the wonders and sweetness of our Earthly realm. From the descriptions of this young man, he knew at 20 what a multitude will never grasp. Live life and be happy.

Very well put!

[SpeakLittle_ThinkMuch]

An update to the original article, this one from the Washington Times...

U.S. parents say son in Iraq was casualty of chemical weapons
By Charles Laurence
Published August 4, 2003

---

The parents of an American soldier who died in Iraq after contracting a mysterious pneumonialike illness that ravaged his major organs are convinced that their son stumbled across deadly chemical weapons while clearing rubble from one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.
Spc. Josh Neusche, 20, who had been conducting cleanup operations in Baghdad, died July 12 after being transferred from his base at the airport to a U.S. military hospital in Germany.
Army specialists are analyzing tissue samples from his liver, kidneys and lungs to determine the cause of death.
Two U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq have died after their major organs failed. Seven others have reported similarly serious symptoms, although overall about 100 cases have been diagnosed since March 1.
Lt. Gen. James Peake, the Army surgeon general, has sent two doctors and four other disease specialists to Iraq and two more doctors to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where some of the troops were treated after being flown from Iraq. The teams are retracing the soldiers' steps in hopes of pinpointing the source of infection.
Mark and Cindi Neusche of Montreal, Mo., told the Sunday Telegraph that their son had lapsed into unconsciousness less than an hour after writing a letter to them in his tent.
He had begun to complain of a sore throat and difficulty in breathing, and had been making his way to the field dressing station at the camp when he came across a medic, muttered a few words and collapsed at his feet.
The Army believes Spc. Neusche had been suffering from pneumonia.
Mr. Neusche, 40, an electrician, said: "I honestly feel that he must have got into some sort of chemical weapon or something. For Josh to fall into a coma in just a few hours, it has to be something like that. He was a strong boy and he knew how to look after himself. This could not have been a natural thing. We have been told that his lungs and kidneys collapsed, and he had toxins eating at his muscle structure."
Mrs. Neusche, 43, added: "I still want to know what my son died of. But we know that he had been on a hauling mission for 20 hours, and he told us in a letter that he had been clearing rubble from one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. I am convinced that he stumbled across something deadly from a chemical weapon that had been buried in that palace."
Spc. Neusche, who was serving with the 203rd Engineer Battalion in Baghdad, was buried with full military honors in Montreal on July 22 after his body was returned from Germany.
After the funeral, Rep. Ike Skelton, Missouri Democrat, said: "The Army has confirmed that three or four of the soldiers in Josh's unit are among those who got sick. They are investigating everything it could possibly be. I'm confident that we will get some answers."
Military officials said there was no evidence that the cases, which are spread among troops deployed across Iraq, were caused by exposure to chemical or biological weapons, or environmental toxins.
"It is pneumonia. The question is what is the cause," said Lyn Kukral, spokesman for Gen. Peake and the Army Medical Command.
"The epidemiological teams will look and follow the facts wherever they lead," she said. "You've got a healthy population and a young population, and you have two soldiers who have died. And that's a concern."
Fifteen of the 100 soldiers were ill enough to require ventilator support. According to the Army, these severe cases have been spaced out fairly evenly, which doesn't suggest a single-source epidemic. Three occurred in March, three in April, two in May, three in June and four in July.
Mrs. Neusche said receiving the flag at her son's funeral was an honor.




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