| August
2, 2007
How Army Spc. Eugene Cherry Won
His Rights
Fighting
PTSD; Fighting the US Army
By ERIC
RUDER
During
Eugene Cherry’s deployment in Iraq, he witnessed unspeakable
horrors that were seared into his memory. Like many others, he returned
with his physical being intact, but struggled mightily with aggressive
behavior, uncharacteristic outbursts of emotion and dizzying mood
swings.
But
when he went to military medical facilities with these classic signs
of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Eugene found his commanding
officers and base medical personnel woefully unequipped to help
him.
After
he went AWOL to deal himself with his crisis of depression and anxiety,
the military sought to demote, dishonorably discharge and imprison
Eugene for the “crime” of trying to salvage his mental
health.
This
is where the case of Eugene Cherry diverges from countless thousands
of other men and women who served in Iraq. Today, a few weeks after
his scheduled court-martial, Eugene is a free man--a civilian again,
with a general discharge under honorable conditions.
This
infuriated some of Eugene’s commanding officers, who had taunted
him with threats of demotion and imprisonment. “You must have
had Johnnie Cochran for a lawyer,” fumed one.
In
fact, Eugene had something better.
Eugene
returned in June 2005 from his yearlong deployment to Iraq as a
medic with the 10th Mountain Division.
In
a low, hoarse voice, he recounts how his explosive ordnance team
cleared a neighborhood of Iraqi civilians so it could explode a
van packed with explosives at one in the morning. When the “all
clear” signal was given, the van was detonated, largely demolishing
the apartment building it was parked in front of.
Suddenly,
amid the smoke, flames and debris caused by the blast, “a
bunch of people came running out of their houses, screaming and
yelling that people are hurt,” Eugene said in an interview.
“Next thing I know, they’re yelling my name, ‘Cherry,
we need you, we need you!’”
First,
there was a grandfather whose 8-year-old grandson had glass embedded
in his face. Then, Eugene was called to a more urgent case.
“I
walk into what once was somebody’s living room,” Eugene
remembers. And when he turned over the middle-aged woman lying face
down, “half her face was blown off--there was a flap of skin
barely holding the right side on,” he recalls. “She
also had an eye avulsion, a gash across her chest and a partial
amputation of her right foot.”
The
platoon leader asked if the woman needed a medevac, and Eugene immediately
said yes. But five minutes later, all the troops were moving out,
the medevac was canceled, and the woman was placed in an Iraqi ambulance
with four other people.
Eugene
can’t say for sure, but he doubts that she made it.
And Eugene’s squad never discussed the incident again.
This
is when Eugene began having difficulty sleeping--terrible insomnia
that plagues him to this day. He requested treatment for PTSD while
still in Iraq, and when he got back to Fort Drum, home to the 10th
Mountain Division, he continued to seek it.
But
the base--where 15,000 of the most heavily deployed soldiers in
the U.S. military are stationed--was unprepared to deal with Eugene’s
symptoms. So Eugene made the decision to go AWOL, and returned to
Chicago’s South Side to live with his mother while he sought
counseling.
Once
home, his mother called the GI Rights Hotline, which put her in
touch with Ray Parrish, a GI rights counselor based in Chicago who
has become an expert at helping people get benefits and medical
treatment out of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Ray arranged
for Eugene to be treated by Hannah Frisch, a clinical psychologist
with 37 years experience, who specializes in PTSD.
Sixteen
months later, Eugene felt sufficiently strong to return to Fort
Drum--and face whatever disciplinary sanctions the military decided
to throw at him.
It’s
no secret why military service members like Eugene can’t get
treatment while they’re on active duty or after they get out--the
military establishment systematically disregards the mental health
of returning troops.
The
Defense Department makes only a symbolic effort to determine whether
returning troops need help--despite the fact that numerous studies
show at least one in three Iraq veterans and one in nine Afghanistan
veterans will face a serious mental health issue, such as depression,
anxiety or PTSD.
This
effort amounts to a questionnaire about battle experiences that
no one thinks soldiers fill out truthfully--primarily because they
fear retribution for reporting mental problems, and because many
are told that they will have to stay on base for further observation
instead of going on leave to see their families if they report issues.
Moreover,
Navy psychologist Mark Russell testified before the President’s
Task Force on Mental Health that only 10 percent of military psychiatrists,
psychologists and social workers have received recommended training
for dealing with PTSD diagnosis and treatment.
Military
personnel who seek care must struggle with the disastrous effects
of the VA’s chronic mismanagement, underfunding and jumbled
bureaucracy.
“Massive
miscalculations by the VA have dramatically worsened the mental
health crisis,” according to a report on military mental health
issues prepared by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “In
February 2006, the VA claimed it was expecting only 2,900 new veteran
PTSD cases in FY 2006. The actual number is likely to be about six
times that: 17,827 new veterans received an initial PTSD diagnosis.”
This
is just one symptom of a larger problem of backlogged VA claims.
More than 700,000 new veterans are eligible for VA-provided health
care, and about one-third have already sought it.
Since
2003, the number of pending claims at the VA has climbed steadily
to 378,000--83,000 of which have been pending for more than six
months. The average wait time has risen to 127 days, and an appeal
of a soldier’s disability rating can take 657 days--almost
two years.
It’s
not difficult to figure out why so many able-bodied troops return
with debilitating mental health issues. Study after study has documented
that multiple deployments, longer deployments and shorter breaks
between deployments increase the susceptibility of active-duty troops
to adverse reactions to combat stress.
Plus,
as Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott told the Senate Armed Services Committee,
the military has a “strong incentive to assign [disability]
ratings less than 30 percent so that only separation pay is required
and continuing family health care is not provided.”
In
the words of Ron Smith of Disabled American Veterans, “People
are being systematically underrated. It’s a bureaucratic game
to preserve the budget.”
The
consequences of this fiscal cruelty are everywhere--and they’re
devastating. The number of suicides in the Army is the highest since
1993. And that doesn’t count people like Sgt. Walter Padilla
who commit suicide after they’ve been discharged.
According
to the New York Times, Padilla, who had been diagnosed with PTSD
at Fort Carson, “could not ward off memories of the people
he had killed with a machine gun perched on his Bradley fighting
vehicle. On April 1, according to the authorities and friends, he
withdrew to the shadows of his Colorado Springs home, pressed the
muzzle of his Glock pistol to his temple and squeezed the trigger.”
Alcohol-
and drug-related incidents are also on the rise, a nearly three-fold
increase from 2005 to 2006. And now 8,000 female veterans--a record
number--are homeless and living on America’s streets.
In
March 2007, Eugene had been waiting several weeks to find out how
the military planned on dealing with him, but he knew he was ready
for whatever came his way.
“I
knew the system,” Eugene says. “I worked an administrative
job with upper-level officers and NCOs, who showed me stuff, and
I learned stuff on my own, so I knew how to fight the system. In
the military, the system is designed to intimidate soldiers and
make them feel helpless, like they have no way to fight back.”
Eugene
also had plenty of civilian supporters. He didn’t have Johnnie
Cochran, but he was in touch with Tod Ensign, the director of Citizen
Soldier and founder of the Different Drummer Café, a GI coffeehouse
in Watertown, N.Y., just a few miles from Fort Drum. Eugene had
also joined Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).
And
he contacted the office of Sen. Barack Obama, who got his start
in politics not far from Eugene’s neighborhood in Chicago.
Obama’s office launched an investigation into Eugene’s
case, requesting all documents in Eugene’s personnel file.
Meanwhile,
an effort began in March to launch a full-fledged IVAW chapter at
Fort Drum, which in the course of a few months attracted more than
a dozen active members.
In
mid-May, the Army announced it would try to court-martial Eugene,
and his hearing was set to begin July 9. But through the efforts
of Parrish, Frisch and Ensign, Eugene’s case started attracting
publicity.
Plus,
the IVAW organized a bus tour to reach out to active-duty troops
at 10 military installations on the East Coast--with the last stop
in Watertown on July 8, coincidentally a day before Eugene’s
trial was set to begin.
With
five days to go, Eugene got the good news. The military was dropping
its effort to court-martial him, and instead planned to give him
a general discharge under honorable conditions--no reduction in
rank, no jail time and the retention of most of his veterans’
benefits, most importantly, his service-connected health care treatment.
“Most GIs like Eugene are serving lengthy prison terms for
being AWOL this long,” said Parrish.
The
difference is that Eugene fought back and fought hard. And rather
than hand the IVAW chapter on base another issue to organize around,
the brass surrendered.
“It’s all about the support base that you have,”
said Eugene. “They want to make it seem like you’re
a screwed-up soldier, a liar--that you had issues to begin with.
They’ll try every dirty trick you can think of, and that you
brought this on yourself. But I got the last laugh.”
Eric
Ruder writes for the Socialist
Worker.
Sen.
Russ Feingold is a Democrat from Wisconsin..
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