Army Heads Afraid of Reporters After Wounded Transitioned Into Hell

Wounded soldiers’ treatment not just a Texas problem
Dallas News
By David Tarrant, Scott Friedman (NBC 5) and Eva Parks (NBC 5)
Published on April 3, 2015

Complaints of Army harassment afflict transition units across U.S. and persist despite promised remedies

The Army surgeon general’s office is in charge of the Army Medical Command, which oversees the WTUs. Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army’s surgeon general, declined multiple requests for an interview. Army Secretary John McHugh also declined to be interviewed, citing an ongoing investigation of the Fort Hood WTU that began after the initial reports last fall by The News and KXAS-TV.

Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army’s surgeon general, ordered an investigation at Fort Carson after a soldier on the Colorado base complained of mistreatment by behavioral health professionals. She told Pentagon reporters in February that the case did not indicate a “systemic” problem with Army care.
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

The complaints roll in from soldiers across the country.

Fort Knox, Ky., Nov. 4, 2013: “The leadership in his company does not care about soldiers, treats them like garbage and talks down to them.”

Fort Irwin, Calif., May 23, 2014: “The unit is dysfunctional and is causing more stress to the … soldiers than they are helping.”

And Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, Sept. 4, 2014: Soldier “felt threatened by the platoon SGT.”

These are not examples of a tough dressing-down of regular infantry by an old-school sergeant.

These complaints come from wounded, injured or ill soldiers who are supposed to find caring and healing at the U.S. Army’s Warrior Transition Units, or WTUs, but instead are experiencing mistreatment and harassment by superiors.

Many of the soldiers are getting treatment for physical or psychological wounds suffered in combat.

Since 2010, across the country, WTU soldiers have lodged more than 1,100 complaints about the way their chain of command treated them at more than two dozen WTUs, according to an ongoing investigation by The Dallas Morning News and its broadcast partner, KXAS-TV (NBC5).

Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, had the most complaints, with 163 reports in the five-year time frame; Fort Hood, in Killeen, was second with 142.

In November, The News/KXAS-TV investigation first revealed problems at three Texas WTUs. Reporters examined complaints filed to the Army’s ombudsman program from soldiers at Fort Hood; Fort Bliss, in El Paso; and Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio.

On Feb. 3, a top Army official appeared before a congressional hearing to address the problems at the Texas WTUs. Col. Chris Toner heads the Warrior Transition Command in Alexandria, Va., which provides oversight and policy guidance for the WTU system.

Toner confirmed that there had been incidents of “disrespect, harassment and belittlement of soldiers” at Texas WTUs from 2009 to 2013. At Fort Bliss, he said, there were problems “beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
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