Salon: Forgotten Casualties (Mentally Scarred Soldiers Ignored)

[kskiska]

Mentally scarred by the horrors they've endured in Iraq, many returning U.S. soldiers say the military isn't giving them the help they deserve.

By Lynn Harris

Mike Lemke, a 45-year-old Army National Guard police sergeant from Grand Junction, Colo., volunteered for active duty after seeing the twin towers fall on TV. "I wanted to, you know, kick some tail," he says. He was sent home from Iraq in August 2003 because of orthopedic and cardiovascular problems -- and with memories and feelings he couldn't shake. He'd seen what was left of one of Saddam's prisons, prowled by feral dogs with rotting limbs in their mouths; he'd mingled constantly with civilians, never knowing if one was armed. "You never feel completely safe," he says. "That stays with you."

Lemke could not sleep for his first 22 days in the medical barracks in Colorado's Fort Carson, where he remained for more than a year on "medical holdover" -- a period during which wounded soldiers await treatment and subsequently either return to duty or get a medical exit from the Army. He experienced flashbacks and temper surges and would hit the dirt at the sound of a jackhammer.

No one approached Lemke to inquire about his mental health. Only when a nurse practitioner happened to ask him how he was sleeping did the story come out -- and even then it took him two weeks to accept her suggestion that he seek counseling.

Why didn't Lemke ask for help? "There's a culture here of unless your legs have been torpedoed off or your arm's shot off, then it's not a combat injury," he says. "I did the same thing that everyone does in the military: You suck it up. You don't whine."

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