Fixing Hell (27 page)
On many occasions the system gets in our way of helping a soldier get the help that he needs. A reporter by the name of Lisa Chedekel published an article in the Hartford Courant on October 3, 2007, about how many soldiers who committed suicide on their return home from the war had previously been seen by an Army mental health provider. She reported that 43 percent of the soldiers who committed suicide had been prescribed psych medications before and 60 percent were seen by mental health providers before the suicide. A shocking 36 percent had been seen by an Army mental health provider within just thirty days of committing suicide.
Death always finds a soldier, either on the battlefield or at home.
That thought kept going through my mind over and over as I reviewed this newspaper article. Chedekel didn’t know that the system gets in the way. Usually these soldiers get lost in the system and commit suicide not because they receive poor treatment by the psychologist or psychiatrist, but because the soldier’s commander won’t listen to them. I wish I had a nickel for every time I said to a commander, “Captain, this guy is not doing well. You need to leave him home,” but then they made my patient deploy anyway. Well, usually they had to send the soldier back early from the deployment. This was a common battle between the mental health department and the manpower demands of the commander’s mission.
On October 19, 2007, USA Today published an article saying that mental illness was the number two complaint among soldiers when they returned home. The numbers are simply staggering. Since 2006 they increased by 20,000, which was about a 70 percent increase over the twelve previous months. According to this article, one out of every seven returning veterans reports a problem with PTSD, depression, or alcohol. Most of the reports just don’t know that these numbers are a gross underestimate. Like me when I returned back from the war, I was not going to say “yes” or “true” to any questions on any medical/mental health screening form. Why? Well, the answer was simple. If I said yes to any questions, that meant that I would be kept at a regional hospital for another month or two, perhaps maybe five or ten months until everything was diagnosed and treated. Soldiers want to go home to their wives, just like I did.
Also, I felt the screening questions to be a violation of my privacy. I did not ask to be evaluated and I wanted to deal with my PTSD symptoms in my own way. As a result of these dynamics, we missed a lot of soldiers like myself. I honestly felt emotionally harmed by the screening process. Just when I would neatly tuck the emotional pain away, some medical general would get an idea to have us screened again. The nightmares returned every time after they forced me to dredge up those memories. Or we would be forced to attend some bullshit seminar on combat battle fatigue taught by an officer who had never deployed anywhere. That was usually an immediate turnoff. Soldiers who have deployed a lot, including myself, find it difficult to take advice or orders from those who have never deployed. On one occasion I was ordered to attend a seminar at Tripler Army Medical Center with two hundred of my closest friends who had all deployed. At Tripler, an Army psychologist who thought he knew it all told us, “You will have nightmares, get drunk a lot, have PTSD, beat your wife, and threaten people.” This enraged me. How dare this ignoramus tell me I’m going to do all those things just because I was in combat?
Given the staggering amount of data documenting the prevalence of mental health problems among the troops, I reflected on my fight with Colonel Kerry Matson when I was down range at Abu Ghraib, trying to convince her that the soldiers at Abu Ghraib needed mental health care on site, not a dangerous convoy trip away. The fact that I even needed to make that argument to her was amazing and awful. I also thought of the warrant officer and interrogator Betty Patterson, who often talked with me about how she had seen two interrogators blown apart by a mortar attack. Her words rang in my ears as I wondered how she was doing, probably home from Iraq by now: “Sir, they died right there in front of my eyes . . . One of their body parts were laying on the ground. I stood there dazed when the medics picked them up and put them in a body bag. After a while, I couldn’t do my work and I just cried a lot. Sir, we didn’t have no psychologists, no chaplains or anybody to help us deal with this. Colonel, sir, it was shameful how they just left us there with no help.”
No human being should have to see that amount of death and feel that amount of pain.
I was sent into hell and asked to fix it, I said to myself. Did I? God, I hope I really made a difference.
The global war on terrorism will go on for many years to come. But I was coming to realize that, yes, I had survived, psychologically and physically. And I was beginning to realize that I had made a difference. Many of the positive changes I recommended are still in place at Army detention facilities around the world, and that is one of my proudest achievements.
Another morning found me in my favorite Old Navy pajamas, hot coffee in hand, kicked back in my favorite chair upstairs with the TV tuned to a movie on HBO. I could hear Janet and Judy downstairs, happily making breakfast. Unlike the recent, shameful episode in which I lashed out at my sweet grandchild, this time I was truly relaxed and felt whole again. But still, as I sipped my coffee and enjoyed the quiet of the morning, my thoughts drifted away for a few moments, back to the death ceremony when we loaded the soldier’s flag-draped coffin onto the C-130 cargo plane on the flight line in Kuwait. I could see myself standing there in 130-degree heat, saluting as the honor guard marched by with my fellow soldier’s coffin. I did not know that soldier’s name. All I knew was that this soldier had given his or her life in service to our country, fighting evil on a foreign soil. And this soldier was somebody’s brother, sister, mother, father, son, husband, and America was a better place because of him, his deeds, his dedication to duty for us.
As I heard my granddaughter’s laugh again, I snapped back into the present. I smiled to myself and took comfort in knowing that my rage had faded away, as well as my many hauntings in the night. But then again, the image of the soldier’s coffin being carried on board the C-130 I would always hold on to. I decided to never allow myself to forget this image, my sense of gratitude for those who volunteer for the fight and pay the ultimate price. This image over the years would serve to provide me with a sense of comfort knowing that America has many great men and women willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for its safety, and the fight against evil, tyranny, and terror.
My granddaughter came up the stairs, jumped on my lap, and took a big swig from my coffee cup. I hugged Judy tight and felt a warm satisfaction in this quiet moment with one of God’s sweetest creations.
I look forward to the day when I can sit at Café Du Monde in New Orleans, have a café au lait with Judy, and tell her the story of the great men and women I served with in Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan. I want to tell her how I was a part of the fight to help save our humanity.
Go to the Basement
May 2005
E
ven though I felt that I was getting back to normal, smiling and laughing like my old self, my brain and my psychomotor skills still sometimes showed some of the aftermath of my time in Abu Ghraib. With no warning, my brain would involuntarily go on pause. To cope, I busied myself with administrative matters of the department while my colleagues, staff, friends, and students attempted on many occasions to get me to talk about what happened at Abu Ghraib. It wasn’t until May 2005, while I was teaching a psychology workshop to a group of young Army captains in our training program, that I seemed to come out of the mental fog. In my time away from classroom instruction, I started organizing my thoughts on Abu Ghraib, trying to bring some order to my memories and to find the lessons that might help other soldiers and psychologists. I was reluctant to talk with anyone about those experiences and what I had learned, but I knew that it was important to document them.
One day I was about halfway through my planned classroom discussion when I asked if anyone had any questions. A young Army captain by the name of Jessica Schuster from Minnesota surprised me and spoke up. Captain Schuster was like many young female Army officers. She was a former goalie on a girls’ hockey team, frequently lifted weights, and she had a get-down-to-business approach and style.
“Sir, I got an e-mail from one of my professors back at Minnesota and he told me that you were the guy sent to Abu Ghraib to put procedures in place to fix that horrible tragedy,” she said. “Colonel James, our year here is winding down. Sir . . . so, even though you haven’t talked about this much, my question is . . . sir, what leadership principles did you take away from Abu Ghraib?”
It wasn’t the first time I had been asked this question, of course, and I was used to just brushing it off. I could have easily demurred and returned to the day’s lesson, but for some reason my mind was receptive when the query came from Captain Schuster. At that moment, my brain and my memory seemed to start working again and in a very fluid way I was able to organize my thoughts. I felt like I was finally ready to tell someone about Abu Ghraib. I felt I finally understood it enough that I could offer some useful lessons. I don’t know why it happened at that moment, but it did, and I decided to answer the captain’s question.
I thought for a moment about the notes I had been making on lessons from Abu Ghraib, and then I turned, looked Captain Schuster right in the eyes, and whispered, “Schuster, you got to be there.”
She responded in a kind of a confused way. “Sir, what did you say? I didn’t hear you, sir.”
I repeated myself, louder, so the whole group could hear. “You have to be there. Captain Schuster, as a leader you need to always remember to be there. Never allow yourself to be a vacant, distant, and emotionally detached leader.”
I explained that there were many reports of the brigade commander, the post commander, and the task force commanding general of Abu Ghraib as simply being vacant leaders. They weren’t there.
“Sir, forgive me for asking something stupid and dumb, but Colonel, I really need to get in the weeds of it because when I graduate from here, I may never have another chance to talk with you about this again, sir,” she continued, speaking with an intensity I had not heard from her before. “Sir, why is this so important?”
“Well, Schuster, if I’m not there as a leader that will leave a message to my subordinates that I’m gone, not only physically but most importantly it sends the message that I left the mission, and I don’t care about the mission,” I told her. “When that happens we may as well pack up our shit and go home.”
She looked stunned, like she didn’t expect such a strong answer from me.
“Captain Schuster, you and your student colleagues need to hear what I’m about to say next,” I said, glancing around to the other attendees, who were now paying attention. “You gotta go to the basement.”
I heard one of the other students, Captain Jones, whisper, “Huh?” as she looked to the person next to her. “Go to the basement? What’s he talking about? Did he get hit on the head in Iraq?”
She didn’t think I had heard her and was a bit embarrassed when I looked directly at her and said, “Yes, I did get hit in the head. But nevertheless, Captain, you still need to look in the basement every chance you get.”
Nobody in the room seem to get my meaning yet, and Jones spoke up for the confused but intrigued. “Sir, what do you mean by ‘going to the basement’?”
“Well, gang, here’s the deal,” I said. “As a leader, you need to learn the value of getting up off your asses and looking under every rock when people least expect it, and going down into the basement and checking under every rock of every building. Then and only then will you be able to figure out what the hell is going on in an organization. More importantly, your troops will respect you for it. One of the problems in most organizations is that rarely will you find its senior leaders getting down and dirty to the lowest level and looking in every closet and every basement of every building.”
“Sir, what’s that going to tell you?” Captain Schuster asked.
“Easy answer, Captain,” I said. “Number one, it will tell you where the skeletons are, and number two, it will tell you where all the broken crap is hidden. Number three is most important. It will tell your subordinate troops that you have a vested interest in their organization and let them know that they can’t hide anything from you. Remember, Captain, your troops will judge you by your deeds, not your bullshit words.”
“But sir,” Schuster responded, “would it be better to have this as a planned inspection schedule?”
“Hell no,” I told her. “Good leaders are available twenty-four seven. On many occasions at Abu Ghraib, I would simply go walking around the compound and just see what I could find. I would find doors and gates unsecured and guards sleeping on duty. They’d see me walking around and act like they’d never seen a colonel before, because in that place, many of them hadn’t. No wonder we had so many goddamn escapes every month. Sometimes the best way to figure out how well an organization runs may very well be to show up at 0200 and ask a bunch of questions to the first private or young officer you come across. And while you’re there, it would be a good idea to just sit down and have a cup of coffee with a bunch of the soldiers and let them ask you questions about the mission, your goals, and the Army. And guess what, you’d be amazed at how much you can learn about what works and what’s broken. The added benefit would be that these young troops will love the hell out of you and respect you no end for taking the time to reach down, talk with them, and ask them how they feel about something.”
I paused for a breath and realized that the young officers were intensely interested in what I was saying. Damn, I think they’re getting it, I thought.
“Captain Schuster, I need to also add that, as a leader, you need to have a very, very clear set of behaviors that are the dos and don’ts for your organization. In other words, they should be posted everywhere, what behaviors will be accepted in our organization and what is clearly, flat-out not to be tolerated.”