Neglected by DIA and VA, defense employee suffered alone after stints in Iraq
By Erik Slavin, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, October 28, 2007
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a three-day series about post-traumatic stress disorder. Today’s story looks at one man’s descent into a living hell with PTSD that his family says began as a civilian deployed to Iraq and ended in an Arizona cemetery. Monday’s story visits a group of South Korea-based troops who meet to deal with their issues. On Tuesday, Stripes explores the different types of care available to those suffering from the disorder across the Pacific.
In 2004, William Blair e-mailed his wife Noriko a picture of himself in an Iraqi jail cell.
Noriko knew he wasn’t a prisoner, but she knew little else about his job with the Defense Intelligence Agency.
When he returned from Iraq a year later after a second deployment, Noriko Blair realized that William wasn’t the same witty, calm, peaceful man she had married. But she did not know how badly he had been wounded.
After 38 years of serving his country as a retired active-duty soldier and a Defense Department civilian, Blair died in July 2006.
Death didn’t come from a bullet or a mortar round. It came from the anguish brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder and the heart attack that struck after alcohol abuse broke his body, his family said.
Blair’s death could have been prevented, said his son, his wife and a former colleague who served with him in some of the world’s toughest places.
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