It Doesn't Seem to Get Better

From NYT, this story on Warrior Transition Units. It seems as though there are some things the Pentagon is just not equipped to deal with -- like wounded soldiers.

But interviews with more than a dozen soldiers and health care professionals from Fort Carson’s transition unit, along with reports from other posts, suggest that the units are far from being restful sanctuaries. For many soldiers, they have become warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers. Because of their wounds, soldiers in Warrior Transition Units are particularly vulnerable to depression and addiction, but many soldiers from Fort Carson’s unit say their treatment there has made their suffering worse.

I have a feeling there are gaps in the Pentagon's world view on this sort of thing:

Senior officers in the Army’s Warrior Transition Command declined to discuss specific soldiers. But they said Army surveys showed that most soldiers treated in transition units since 2007, more than 50,000 people, had liked the care.

Those senior officers acknowledged that addiction to medications was a problem, but denied that Army doctors relied too heavily on drugs. And they strongly defended disciplining wounded soldiers when they violated rules. Punishment is meted out judiciously, they said, mainly to ensure that soldiers stick to treatment plans and stay safe.

“These guys are still soldiers, and we want to treat them like soldiers,” said Lt. Col. Andrew L. Grantham, commander of the Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Carson.

The colonel offered another explanation for complaints about the unit. Many soldiers, he said, struggle in transition units because they would rather be with regular, deployable units. In some cases, he said, they feel ashamed of needing treatment.

“Some come to us with an identity crisis,” he said. “They don’t want to be seen as part of the W.T.U. But we want them to identify with a purpose and give them a mission.”

The problem is, "these guys" are wounded soldiers, and the treatment has got to be different. I will readily grant that there are a lot of good people doing their best to help these guys get their heads back together, but there are conceptual gaps in the way the Army thinks that are undercutting those efforts.

I have no solutions -- I've got ideas, because I've dealt with emotionally damaged people, but I'm not going to be making recommendations on the basis of a newspaper article. I just want to point out, though, that the military, aided and abetted by those in Congress who "support the troops" by giving them inadequate equipment and inadequate care when they have been wounded-- whether physically or emotionally, or both -- doesn't have what it takes to do it right.

Last year, The Associated Press reported that the transition unit at Fort Bragg in North Carolina had a discipline rate three times as high as the 82nd Airborne Division, the base’s primary occupant.

General Cheek said the Army’s own survey of other major posts showed that discipline rates in transition units were about the same as in regular units.

He asserted that most cadre members, who receive extra pay and training for the job, do their jobs well, working long hours and spending weekends checking on soldiers. Discipline, he said, is a form of tough love.

“If we are going to maintain safe discipline, all rules must apply,” the general said. “We do have an expectation that our soldiers want to get better.”

The question is, can the Army actually help them get better?

And as usual, there are the glaring discrepancies between what the Army says and what outside sources say. I'm generally against argument by anecdote, because you can find an anecdote to refute anything. But the point is, and maybe the brass should start thinking along these lines, those anecdotes need extra attention.