If you haven't done so already, you owe it to yourself to read the excellent article published recently in The Nation, called "Denial in the Corps." The author, Kathy Dobie, did another great piece for GQ recently, which we blogged about here. (That entry was entitled, "Superb Writing about a Vietnam Vet's PTSD and Subsequent Nervous Breakdown.") Kathy Dobie is a superb writer, who crafts an excellent narrative -- every sentence in the Nation piece is worth reading, and both informs and moves the story along. Regrettably, the story is a painful one to tell, about how Marines haven't yet fully risen to the challenge of taking care of their own who have been used up, broken down, or shattered into pieces by their experience at war. Three paragraphs are the sum of the story:
"According to civilian and military defense lawyers, mental health professionals and veterans' advocates, the trajectory of [one of the Marines profiled]'s postdeployment life, with untreated PTSD leading to misconduct and then punishment, is all too common in the Marine Corps. A marine endures one, two, even three tours in Iraq, serves honorably and well, but returns suffering from combat trauma and starts to drink or abuse drugs or becomes violent at home, and suddenly finds himself ostracized, punished and drummed out of the Corps with an other-than-honorable or bad-conduct discharge. A history of service is tarnished, and the marine is denied benefits--even the treatment necessary to recover from combat trauma--and left with only a bitter sense of betrayal. A Corps review in 2007 of 1,019 other-than-honorable discharges issued to combat veterans during the first four years of the Iraq War found that fully a third of the discharged marines had evidence of PTSD or another combat-related mental illness. Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps's legal defense counsel for the western United States, estimates that of all the Iraq combat veterans his office defends, one-third have PTSD or another combat-stress mental health issue. Many of these clients have served at least two tours in Iraq.
The factors leading to the abandonment of combat-broken marines are both cultural and operational. The Marine Corps is the youngest, most male, most junior and least married of all the services. Sixty-six percent of the troops are 25 or younger; 13 percent are teens; and 39 percent hold the rank of private, private first class or lance corporal. Fewer than 7 percent are female. The Corps's deeply macho culture, which values stoicism in the face of pain and disdains "weakness," makes it hard for marines to seek help. Judith Broder, a civilian psychiatrist who treats Iraq and Afghanistan vets, says, "They all know of stories where buddies have asked for help and have been ridiculed by the chain of command or given some kind of treatment that is not really adequate and told they have to go back."
This harsh culture is exacerbated by the relentless tempo of training and deployment, which pressures commanders to quickly replace broken marines with deployable ones. "You read the Marine Corps values and you'll find that anybody that gets hurt isn't courageous or doesn't have honor," Judith Litzenberger, a civilian defense lawyer and twenty-one-year Navy veteran, explains. "That's how the marines interpret it: 'I went to Iraq and I didn't whine and I didn't claim that I had a mental disorder, and damn well marines don't do that--we suck it up.' And it has to be that way because they have a mission that's bigger than the number of people they have. They can't spend all their time taking care of people who have mental disorders. They've got to wash them out quickly and move on."
There are institutional benefits for washing them out quickly and moving on, and the articles goes on to suggest what those are. At its most extreme, it's ultimately all about the money. One retired Air Force colonel, in charge of medical operations in the Air Force's European headquarters, who is quoted in the story, cuts right to the point: "Every kid that gets kicked out with PTSD is gonna be a lifetime of disability payments for the government. Every kid who gives up and kills himself, nothing."
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The trouble is, though, the thing that gets people in this predicament -- PTSD -- is war itself. Marines and other servicemen and women aren't creating PTSD -- they're developing it, from and in combat. And combat at a level -- longer tours, more deployments, less time between tours -- that is just unprecendented. Rather than preparing for the logical outcome of that -- more PTSD cases, a greater need for care -- and PLANNING on and for that -- the tendency seems to be, still to some degree, to blame the participant, and refuse to acknowledge the greater problem -- or the link between the two: combat and PTSD.
A current and disturbing example, surfaced on this blog, is the case of Lance Corporal Eric Acevedo, accused of murdering his former girlfriend in Saginaw, Texas, in what certainly "seems" be a PTSD-related event. We dug a little bit into his background, and found the extent of the combat he'd seen in the Marines, and what had happened on his tour. (Read about that here.) Even found the great, iconic photograph of him, in the Marine's own photo archives, pictured above. What happened? WIthin three days, the Marines had removed all trace of Eric Acevedo from their publically-searchable archives. No photo, no attached story, no reference to the memorial service he attended (where the photo by Heidi Loredo was taken), where ten of his fellow Marines who died in Fallujah were honored. All references to Lance Corporal Eric Acevedo -- VAPORIZED. As though he no longer existed; or had in fact, never existed. What disturbs me the most about this is the simple, brutal fact. If Lance Corporal Eric Acevedo, a three tour Marine, ended up with PSTD, no matter what he did AFTER he had it -- it's clear where he got it, and how. For the Marines to distance themselves like that from him goes against all the Three Musketeer-ing sentiment we usually associate: the all for one, and one for all stuff that gets so many guys (and gals) through their unbelievably rigorous training, and in and out of battle. It creates a terrible impression, too: that while the Marines may be all for one another, on the battlefield, so long as it's a reasonably level playing field; but is the top brass really all for the average Marine? Only time will tell, but if the Eric Acevedo story is any indication, the perspective is, get in trouble and you're expendable. In fact, we never knew you.
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The Marine Corps's legal defense counsel for the western United States, Lieutenant Colonel Vokey, quoted in the Nation article says prophetically: "The problem is I don't think the system accounts for these folks with PTSD. There's got to be another way to handle this without lumping them in with every other marine who commits misconduct. They were fine when they went to Iraq, we broke them, this is what combat did to them, and I think we should feel some responsibility for what happens to them." Absolutely; that's EXACTLY the point.
