US Navy "Moral Injury" Step In Healing Souls

Soldier’s journey to heal spotlights ‘soul wounds’ of war
Associated Press
JULIE WATSON
Published: August 23, 2015

The Navy now runs one of the military’s first residential treatment programs that addresses
the problem — the one that Powell found.

This March 17, 2015 photo shows a photgraph of now-retired U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Marshall Powell standing with a U.S. Army MEDEVAC helicopter in Iraq during his last tour to the country, at Powell's brother's house in Crescent, Okla. Powell, who served as a military nurse in Iraq and Afghanistan, was deeply haunted by his experiences, and nearly lost his own internal war with depression before finding meaningful help.
(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

SAN DIEGO (AP) — “It was just another day in Mosul,” the soldier began, his voice shaking. Sgt. 1st Class Marshall Powell took a deep breath. He couldn’t look at the other three servicemen in the group therapy session.

He’d rarely spoken about his secret, the story of the little girl who wound up in his hospital during the war in Iraq, where he served as an Army nurse. Her chest had been blown apart, and her brown eyes implored him for help. Whenever he’d thought of her since, “I killed the girl,” echoed in his head.

Powell kept his eyes glued to the pages he’d written.

He recalled the chaos after a bombing that August day in 2007, the vehicles roaring up with Iraqi civilians covered in blood. Around midnight, Powell took charge of the area housing those with little chance of survival. There, amid the mangled bodies, he saw her.

She was tiny, maybe 6 years old, lying on the floor. Her angelic face reminded him of his niece back home in Oklahoma.

Back in the therapy room, saying it all out loud, Powell’s eyes began to fill just at the memory of her. “I couldn’t let her lay there and suffer,” he said.

A doctor had filled a syringe with painkillers. Powell pushed dose after dose into her IV.

“She smiled at me,” he told the others in the room, “and I smiled back. Then she took her last gasp of air.”
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