PTSD:Bringing the war back home

Bringing the war back home ...
Growing numbers of war-traumatised US servicemen are going on the rampage. so what is the army doing to help its damaged GIs?
From Andrew Purcell in New York
BEFORE HE went on the rampage, John Russell was showing such obvious signs of combat-related stress that he should have been sent home from Iraq, according to military mental health professionals. The army sergeant, who killed five fellow soldiers at a clinic at Camp Liberty in Baghdad on Monday, was nearing the end of his third tour of duty. That he was still in a war zone despite his superiors knowing he was a threat to himself and others is a symptom of the institutional pressure to keep damaged men fighting.

Floyd "Shad" Meshad, director of charity the US National Veterans Foundation, was an army medic in Vietnam, where he counselled soldiers in the field suffering from combat-related stress.

"It's clear that this situation was escalating and sending this guy back for a third tour was just insane," he told the Sunday Herald. "If they see any sign of breaking or snapping they need to remove soldiers completely out of the combat zone and get them into professional care. That's the bottom line."


John Keaveney, a Scot who joined the US Army during the Vietnam war and now runs a veterans support organisation in California, believes that unless the military improves its mental health treatment, there will be similar massacres - but this time of civilians back home, not fellow GIs in a combat zone.

"It'll be a recurring theme," he said. "You have to understand how desperate a person has to be to get a gun and to kill something snapped inside of him, his mental pain became unbearable and he thought that maybe lashing out at people would bring attention to the fact that he was injured."

Russell's commanding officer had confiscated his weapon a week earlier because of concerns about his mental state, but on the way out of the clinic, he wrestled a gun from the staff sergeant who was escorting him, returned inside and began killing, apparently indiscriminately. Two of the dead were officer counsellors, including a volunteer psychiatrist from the army reserve. Three others were enlisted men.

Russell's comrades said that he was angry because his nightmares and constant anxiety were not taken seriously. His father, Wilburn Russell, claimed he had been sent to the clinic for punishment, not treatment. "I think they broke him," he said.

In an email, John Russell had said he was worried he would be dishonourably discharged, losing his salary and army pension, soon after taking out a mortgage on a house in Sherman, Texas.

A career soldier with the 54th Engineering Battalion, Russell had served in Kosovo and Bosnia. His specialism, salvaging robots used to destroy roadside bombs, meant that he saw "a lot of carnage and things he shouldn't have seen", according to his father. He lived in Germany, but on visits back to family in Texas he was perceptibly different - more nervous and unpredictable with each deployment. "Nobody should have to go three times. They should've realised that," his father said.
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Bringing the war back home