Joy and tears greet US Army troops back from Iraq

Joy and tears greet US Army troops back from Iraq
By Dan De Luce (AFP)


WASHINGTON — Mothers cried and children squealed with delight as a company of US troops arrived back from Iraq on Saturday, after a year-long tour marked by desert heat and monotony.

A crowd of families roared as 124 soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, arrived marching in formation, part of a wave of homecomings as President Barack Obama scales back the US role in Iraq.

The welcoming ceremony at Fort Myer, outside Washington, was a joyous event for the soldiers and their loved ones after 12 months of separation, even if the legacy of the US invasion of Iraq remains a subject of bitter debate at home and abroad.

"It has been a very long year," said a tearful Charlotte Thompson, whose 25-year-old son had volunteered for the Iraq assignment.

The unit spent most of its time guarding a prison with about 300 Iraqi detainees in Taji, and carried out combat patrols as well, officers said.
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Joy and tears greet US Army troops back from Iraq

Charlie Company Marine finds future after falling apart

Charlie Company's Lance Cpl. Andrew Tetloff may just have managed to save some lives by talking about this. He could have kept his life more of a secret than talking about it and played it safe but he did a remarkable job of telling his story, telling what he did wrong and why he did it, taking responsibility and how he is moving on. His character was still there and so many people stepped up to help him and yes, forgive him, that it proved what can happen when people have support. Justice is not just about locking people up but taking a look at their lives. When it comes to someone in the military, their past does matter. No history of problems but back from war suddenly they are getting into trouble screaming "help me" and veterans' courts are trying to address this. This is a great article to read.

Aug. 8, 2010
Marine finds a future after falling apart
Supporters help him out of addiction, into success
BY JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER


MIDLAND -- Going from combat camo and Kevlar armor as a Marine in the Middle East to an orange jumpsuit, chains and shackles as a defendant back home was a hellacious four-month journey for Andrew Tetloff.

"We got off that bus, and there was all this screaming and cheering," Tetloff recalled of the parade he and his comrades received in Lansing after returning from their deployment. "It was one of the best moments of my life -- if not the best."

That was late April 2007, and Lance Cpl. Tetloff, of Charlie Company, 1/24th U.S. Marine Reserves, was home after seven months in the middle of violent Fallujah, Iraq.

"Then it was, 'OK, you're done,' " now what? he said.

By early September 2007, scared, strung out on opiates and struggling to readjust to life stateside, a 22-year-old Tetloff was snatching money from startled customers at a Midland ATM. Quickly arrested, he immediately owned up to the crimes and soon stood ashamed before a Midland County judge, pleading guilty and accepting the blame and punishment.

Tetloff's story is not a cautionary tale of a good Marine gone bad. It is, instead, a story of one young man's struggles, his rebound and his unusual allies.

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Marine finds a future after falling apart

RELATED INFORMATION
Reconnecting with Band of Brothers

They've become cops, rebuilt businesses, trained allies overseas, gone to school, re-enlisted and returned to quiet civilian lives.

With today's article, the Free Press begins an occasional series reconnecting with Michigan's Band of Brothers -- all Marine Reserves -- their families and friends who shared their lives with readers and online viewers.

Throughout their 2006-07 deployment to Fallujah, Iraq, the Free Press followed the men and families of the 1/24th Marine Reserves through combat, holidays, struggles, triumphs, memorials and homecomings with written stories and videos.

The stories of Michigan's Band of Brothers were honored with a national Emmy for current events.

In the weeks and months ahead, the Free Press will be presenting some of those same men and their families as they are today.

Joe Swickard



Read more: Marine finds a future after falling apart freep.com Detroit Free Press Reconnecting with Band of Brothers

Blood Brothers of Charlie Company

Eye Witness To The Horrors Of War
Reporter Shares First Person Account Of The Origins of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

June 25, 2008


CBS) CBS News has reported extensively on the mental and physical health of American service members fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and the many veterans who have returned home. We have chronicled the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, an increase in veteran suicides and a VA system grappling to deal with the big issues. We recently had the opportunity to hear first hand from a colleague who is looking to answer one fundamental question about war: what does it actually take to trigger PTSD?

Kelly Kennedy is a health reporter for Army Times. A former soldier who served in the first Gulf War and Mogadishu, Somalia, she embedded last summer as a journalist with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry in Adhamiyah, Iraq - a neighborhood in Baghdad. Even though Kennedy says she doesn’t have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from her trip, she says she understands how the emotional repercussions of war could develop into a full-blown disorder.

Kennedy is the author of a four-part series called Blood Brothers, a you-are-there account of the daily struggle to hunt insurgents, dodge roadside bombs-- often hitting them-and treat the physical and emotional wounds of the soldiers in the hardest hit unit since Vietnam.

"I was numb," is how Kennedy describes readjusting to life after Iraq. "I remember talking to the guys about how you have to feel things or else things are going to get worse. If you can tell the stories enough times, then the details won't have as much an effect on you as they would the first time you tell the story."


She says in the weeks following her return she was distracted, not paying attention and driving through stop signs and red lights. She says she knows from experience how easy it is for servicemen to return home and "shut down" because communicating those experiences can be too difficult and stressful.

For every one soldier, who leaves Iraq with no PTSD symptoms, there are five soldiers who suffer from PTSD or major depression - according to a study from the Rand Corporation.

Kennedy spoke with CBS News investigative producer Michael Rey and summer intern, Kim Lengle, who produced the video.



By Michael Rey
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/25/cbsnews_investigates/main4207662.shtml

Air Force Combat Station named for Staff Sgt. Carletta Davis

Air Force renames clinic after fallen soldier

Staff report
Posted : Thursday Apr 10, 2008 11:17:39 EDT

The Air Force combat clinic at Forward Operating Base Warrior in Kirkuk, Iraq, was renamed and dedicated to Army Staff Sgt. Carletta Davis, a combat medic who was killed by an improvised explosive device Nov. 5.

She was killed during her third rotation to Iraq.

Davis was assigned to Charlie Company, 10th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, and was a member of her brigade commander’s personal security detachment.

Her patrol struck an improvised explosive device during combat operations Nov. 5, south of Kirkuk, according to a Defense Department press release.

The roadside bomb also killed Pfc. Adam Muller, Staff Sgt. John Linde and Sgt. Derek Stenroos, all with 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/army_davisclinic_041008w/

The 'Inside' Story On A Mutiny In Iraq

Readers of this blog will remember the series Editor and Publisher is addressing here. It was a fantastic job of reporting what life is like in Iraq for Charlie Comopany. I just wonder what took them so long to do this?

The 'Inside' Story On A Mutiny In Iraq



By Barbara Bedway

Published: February 13, 2008 8:30 AM ET

NEW YORK When Army Times medical reporter Kelly Kennedy embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq last June, a mutiny was probably the last thing she expected to cover. But the catastrophic losses of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment that preceded the revolt -- including 14 soldiers killed, more than any other Army company sent to Iraq -- convinced Kennedy and her editors at the Gannett-owned, independent weekly to greatly expand the scope of her original assignment.

Instead of focusing on the near-miraculous efforts of the on-site medics, the 37-year-old Kennedy would instead chronicle the company's entire 15-month deployment. "Blood Brothers," the resulting four-part series that appeared in December, became "one of the single best examinations of an Iraq war deployment so far," in the words of Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Kennedy, herself an Army veteran, "took readers deep inside a combat unit in a way nobody else has," he observes. "She knows when an Army public affairs officer is pushing a line of b.s. and can sense when a soldier is afraid to be candid in front of a superior. Her military experience clearly gives her subjects a level of trust that they would not have with someone who had not personally served."

But it wasn't easy. "I cried a lot writing this story," admits Kennedy, who had just started following Charlie Company a few days before the June 21st IED blast that killed five of its soldiers. "They'd been great to us, hanging out the night before, doing karaoke," she recalls.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/
article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003710253

Blood Brothers Part Four Picking Up The Pieces of Charlie Company

Defense Department research shows one-third of Iraq war veterans have sought help for mental health issues, and officials estimate 150,000 troops have suffered concussions — mild traumatic brain injuries — since the war in Iraq began.

Picking up the pieces

Charlie 1-26 comes home from war
Stories by Kelly Kennedy - kellykennedy@militarytimes.com
Posted : Saturday Dec 15, 2007 15:52:21 EST

For 12 months, Spc. Tyler Holladay, 22, patrolled the violent streets of Adhamiya, Iraq. He raced to strap tourniquets on wounded buddies to save their arms and legs. He picked out pieces of shrapnel and performed battlefield tracheotomies to open airways.

As a medic, he’d seen more than enough to know he wanted to avoid bullets, grenades and roadside bombs — especially roadside bombs. Back in March, when a military police company had hit a daisy-chain of roadside bombs, Holladay helped fill body bags with the liquefied remains of fellow soldiers.

“That was the day I thought, ‘You’re not only going to die here, you’re going to be disfigured,’” he said. “‘It’s going to hurt. It’s going to be quick. And it’s going to be messy.’”

Now it was the last day of July 2007, almost exactly a year since he took up residence at Combat Outpost Apache in Adhamiya, one of Baghdad’s worst neighborhoods, and Holladay was out on patrol with Alpha Company. The platoon was searching an abandoned car. Normally, they would have first surrounded it with Bradleys to keep themselves safe from snipers, but not this time. They were in a hurry and had only one Bradley on the patrol.

“I’m on one knee between the car and a wall,” Holladay said. “I take two steps back, and I’m joking about a girl, and all of a sudden, I heard a loud bang. I looked down and realized I’d been shot.”

The bullet entered through his back and exited through his stomach. He understood instantly that he had a stomach wound — on a soldier’s most-feared list, it stands just behind a sucking chest wound. He also knew he would have to treat it himself.

“My gunner was looking at me with a dry Curlex bandage,” Holladay said. “I needed a wet dressing. I had him treat my back while I concentrated on the front.”

He could tell his large and small intestines had been hit.

“I realized my stomach was filling up, so I had some internal bleeding,” he said. “I knew what the chances for survival were. I was really scared.”

As he started to fade out, he asked his gunner to relay a message to the other medics: “I love them and I’ll miss them.”

“Probably the greatest feeling in my life was to wake up,” Holladay said. Doctors at a military hospital in Baghdad had stitched his intestines back together. He couldn’t eat for several days, but would require no further surgery.

Holladay was the last member of 1-26 wounded in Adhamiya. In 15 months, 31 men from 1-26 were killed and 122 wounded, making it the hardest-hit battalion since the Vietnam War. Charlie Company suffered the most, with 14 men killed — most of them in Adhamiya, one attached to another company. Holladay had served as one of Charlie’s medics, but he remained at Apache when the company moved to the base established at the old Ministry of Defense.

“I could never get away from Sector 19,” he said, referring to Adhamiya’s roughest area. “And sure as hell, I got shot in Sector 19.”
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/bloodbrothers4/

“Thirty-one guys of 100 were on anti-depressants by the end,” Charlie Company

“Thirty-one guys of 100 were on anti-depressants by the end,” Hoffman said. “We kind of pushed it a little. We stretched it because that’s what they’re doing in the civilian world.”

The meds, he said, helped. After seeing five men killed and 22 wounded in one day, Hoffman himself went on Celexa after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. When he stops taking it, he said, his own anger bubbles to the top. But with it, he feels calm.

Getting the pain out in the open

Debriefings, therapy help soldiers grieve

Posted : Sunday Dec 2, 2007 16:44:43 EST

After an improvised explosive device demolished a 30-ton Bradley, killing six men, Chaplain (Capt.) Ed Choi gathered the men of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, for a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing.

When a unit experiences a catastrophic event, a chaplain or mental health professional talks them through what they’ve experienced in the belief that reliving the event right away will help them deal with it better later. The debriefings also help chaplains discern which soldiers may need more attention.

“At first they’re hesitant, and then everyone starts talking,” said Maj. Scott Riedel, brigade chaplain for 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, to whom Charlie Company was attached when the June 21 tragedy occurred. “It may seem cruel, but in all honesty, they’re all thinking about it anyway. We are the healthy way of getting this out.”

Chaplains perform the debriefing, but Riedel said it’s more of an additional duty than part of their religious duties.

“We don’t pray before and we don’t pray after,” he said. “It’s just the chaplain who does the CISD.”

Some chaplains perform an immediate “diffusing” session — within hours of an incident — that consists of just a quick “what happened,” with no major detail.

“I don’t think diffusings work as well,” he said. “Their minds are not there — they’re not ready. You have to give them one day to grieve.”

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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/bloodbrothersside2/