Report: 57% of troops sent on combat tours
By Tom Vanden Brook - USA Today
Posted : Monday Aug 11, 2008 9:12:30 EDT
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has pushed an increasing percentage of its troops to combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past two years, seeking to spread the burden on forces strained by multiple deployments, records show.
Through June, 57 percent of active-duty soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen have served in or near Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s up from 50 percent in August 2006.
The Army, which shoulders most of the combat, has shifted many soldiers to specialties needed for the fight. They include infantry, military police and intelligence. In 2006, 58 percent of active-duty soldiers had served combat tours. That compares with 68 percent in 2008. About 10 percent more are in initial training and soon will be eligible for a combat deployment, said Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman. Soldiers who haven’t served in Iraq or Afghanistan may have medical problems, or they have specialties such as foreign language skills useful in other parts of the world, she said.The percentage of soldiers who have served multiple deployments has jumped, as well. Today, 31 percent of soldiers have been to war zones more than once. That compares with 20 percent in 2006. The number of soldiers with more than five tours has increased to 2,358 in 2008, compared with 961 in 2006.
Martin said commanders should carefully monitor soldiers and Marines who face the most stressful combat assignments, calling them “canaries in the coal mine.”
“Those who are most exposed and in the most challenging spots are at greater risk for post-traumatic stress,” he said.
go here for more
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/gns_deployments_081108/
I post this last year on this blog. The report came out in December 2006
Repeat Iraq Tours Raise Risk of PTSD, Army Finds
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 20, 2006; Page A19
U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health
http://woundedtimes.blogspot.com/2007/08/ignoring-increased-risk-of-ptsd-in.html
So why is it no one took this seriously? Why didn't anyone do anything about the Army and National Guards and Reservists carrying the weight of the two occupations on their shoulders? The results are devastating. Increased suicides. Increased attempted suicides. Increased PTSD wounded and there is no end to the redeployments. Yet they wonder why there are so many.
The time between deployments is not good either.
Statement of Colonel Charles W. Hoge, M.D., USA
Director, Division of Psychiatry and Neuroscience
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
Department of the Army, U.S. Department of Defense
Soldiers encounter a variety of traumatic experiences and stresses as part of their professional duties. The majority cope extraordinarily well and transition home successfully. However, surveys in the post-deployment period have shown that rates of mental health problems, particularly PTSD, remain elevated and even increase during the first 12 months after return home, indicating that 12 months is insufficient time to reset the mental health of Soldiers after a year-plus combat tour. Many of the reactions that we label as “symptoms” of PTSD when Soldiers come home are, in fact, adaptive skills necessary in combat that Soldiers must turn on again when they return for their next deployment.
This testimony has different figures on the redeployment risk and also credits BatttleMind with some seeking help in 30 days. This is very troublesome. It is also troublesome that the report also said that there are less than half seeking treatment.
How many reports do we need to read before the DOD takes any of the seriously? The Army and citizen soldiers have the longest deployments, not enough time between them and not enough understanding of what PTSD is so they can and do get help as soon as possible.
There are far too many coming home, waiting to "get over it" and when they understand they cannot get over it on their own, they are redeployed instead of treated. They go back into battle mode already wounded, cycle back into life back home only they are more wounded than they were the first time home. Now think of 5 deployments "five tours has increased to 2,358 in 2008" and all of this is a bad omen of what we will be facing when we are unable to keep up with any of these wounded now.
When it comes to doing outreach work, the DOD and the VA have gotten better at it but we need to ask what good the outreach work is doing when there are still not enough mental health professionals now. The outreach work I do on the education end will do no good at all unless there are people there who can diagnose and treat our veterans. We need as many as we can get taking care of them. Time to stop taking baby steps and start to treat PTSD as if it was the most dangerous enemy this nation could ever face because it is. When we lose more after combat than we do during it, there is no stronger enemy on earth than the enemy who penetrates do deeply it attacks the soldiers as well as their families. Do we listed to the omen finally after it has been screaming for years?
Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
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