What do you guys think?
FORT BRAGG, N.C. – Staff Sgt. Jason Jonas says when he goes to bed at night, he is terrified his medication will cause him to oversleep and miss morning roll call again.
His commanders are fully aware the paratrooper wounded in Afghanistan has been diagnosed with a sleep disorder, because he is one of about 10,000 soldiers assigned to the Army’s Warrior Transition units, created for troops recovering from injuries.
Instead of gingerly nursing them back to health, however, commanders at Fort Bragg’s transition unit readily acknowledge holding them to the same standards as able-bodied soldiers in combat units, often assigning chores as punishment for minor infractions.
And a further clip of it:
Sgt. Sheree Snow, 30, of Indianapolis, said she was evacuated from Iraq to Germany with fibroid tumors in February 2008, had a hysterectomy that May and was prescribed pain and sleeping medication for months afterward while at Fort Bragg. She said the medication led her to miss nine morning formations, and when she was trying to wean herself off the painkillers, an entire day.
Thornton, her commander, punished her with 14 days of extra duty and docked her two months’ pay, she said
OK, well this story has been bouncing around all day among my friends, and I find it a rare occassion where we are all on differing sides.
[Language warning after the jump]
This was part of one of my email responses:
TSO: That’s the thing, I have no problem with contacting the media when shit doesn’t get fixed. I just don’t trust the media enough to take this entire story at face value without some more depth. Our shit was absolutely FUBAR, but we didn’t really do anything except address it through a middle of the night distribution of an award winning newsletter. If I was injured, and slept through formation and they tried to take my money, I would have appealed that shit to the fucking supreme court, and losing there would have shit on Ginsburg’s desk.
However, a friend of mine had some first person accounts that differed greatly from mine:
Friend CIB recipient: Having been in the transition battalion at Bragg, it’s a pretty miserable place. There’s a lot of lax discipline there, but idiotic, chicken-shite adherence to things that didn’t make sense. I had major sciatica at the time, with an inflamed, bulging disc and was given a P3 profile that essentially said “No Push-ups, No Sit-ups, No lifting over 10 lbs, No Running, walk at your own pace” Now, we all know this was ideal, because that’s about what my physical capabilities are normally.
I got put into the PT group (because we were in a military unit all soldiers had to do PT every morning) with all the broken people who couldn’t do anything according to profile. I’m not making it up, we had guys in formation with walkers and polio crutches and the Company commander would try to march us places.
The NCO’s were a little better, but it depended on who you had. Most didn’t give a crap. I had two soldiers in my squad (I was a squad leader) who had heavy medications and problems with sleep. I called them every day at 20 minutes before formation to make sure they were out of bed. They weren’t late on my watch. That’s what an NCO is supposed to do. The Platoon Sergeant regularly gave the broken platoon PT like…um…walk to Burger King at your own pace. Get breakfast. Dismissed.
There were a lot of goldbrickers there, for sure. Almost everyone there was in a state of clinical depression either because they were good soldiers having a hard time adjusting to the idea of no longer being useful or just bad soldiers who didn’t care and there was a big miasma hanging over the place. You know what units are like when nobody cares and management’s answer to everything is to yell louder and enforce rules no matter how implausible? Of course you guys do…what am I saying.
Anyway, yeah…upper echelons treated everyone there like shite and assumed we were all goldbricking. They were right about some to be sure, maybe even as much as half-but the one thing it’s right about, everyone was desperate to get out of there. In terms of miserable, even the stories of Blanding I heard don’t compare. I wanted to shoot myself daily.
Now, I’m wondering what you guys think.
Category: Politics
Yes. I can attest to personally witnessing this. Soldiers with sleep problems are kind of in a double bind. If they take their meds, they just might get good solid sleep. On the other hand, if they oversleep formation, they will get counseled and then Articled. The problem is that not everyone is a good NCO enough to make sure someone is waking up the soldiers with sleep problems. And some NCOs do think the soldiers are shamming, so they don’t believe them and don’t care. Or they’re resentful about being assigned to a WTU.
Shouldnt the person held responsible for this, be the NCO in charge of the soldier? Joe will try to get away with anything, so his team leader takes care of that…and the squad leader of him, and the PSG of him and the FSG of him…
Dont we get paid more as NCO’s to be responsible for our soldiers? Yes, a Joe can get something and screw it up once, but if its an ongoing issue…someone above him has stripes to correct it.
TSO: I couldn’t pretend to write it better than you just did. You are exactly right.
I’d fully back what Army Sergeant said there, and from personally witnessing a lot of it. I also agree that a lot of this falls on good NCO’s doing what they’re supposed to do. Yeah, if you think a guy is shamming, and certainly there are those who are-I saw that in spades-you still “motivate” them to meet the requirements put out for them and overcome the obstacles when you have genuine problems with sleep.
I had sleep problems because of the pain meds I was on. It took me a while to get the right time at night to take them so I could wake up for formation. I was so paranoid about it that I had my wife calling me on the phone from Virginia at 0515 every morning so I had time to get up and go.
I have nothing but disdain for malingering, and I hated my time in transition because I felt like a lot of them were all around me…and when you’re in a barrel of apples, from the outside everything looks like apples. I hated being looked at like an apple and I hated not being able to do what I used to do physically.
That said, I don’t generally think yelling at soldiers and enforcing chicken shit rules like an ass-hat martinet is the way to deal with malingerers either, because it essentially contributes to the already existing feeling of the solid soldiers that they’re worthless because they’re not out where their brothers are on the pointy end of things.
As a second note, I’d add that there’s a segment in the excellent Neal Stephenson novel “Cryptonomicon” where a Japanese soldier in World War II named Goto Dengo is in a recovery battalion as a wounded soldier. The way that the author describes the shame…particularly given the psychological and philosophical outlook of the Japanese soldiers of the time, is fantastic. He is essentially second class because he is a broken person.
As a soldier you are trained and deep in your heart want to “suck it up and drive on” It resonates in your core, in your heart and you believe that you are better than mere mortals because you know what you can overcome. And you are better than mere mortals, because you can overcome (as is aptly said in Ghostbusters) “Shit that would turn you white”
Sometimes though, your body betrays you and finding out the hard truth that there are physical limitations that you can’t overcome is a hard truth. I’m not saying we all need to hug and have trust falls, but I am saying it’s a really difficult thing to have to look at yourself in the mirror when you realize that.
S6R:
You said it really well-and you’re not the only one who gets paranoid. I also take sleep meds. I own multiple alarm clocks, one cellphone, and have been known to have people call me.
There are some other crazy things I see: victims of sexual assault not allowed same-sex battle buddies upon request…one girl with a shunt in her brain was accused of faking seizures. Um, guy? I’m pretty sure no one malingers that hardcore, and if anyone does, MY HAT IS OFF TO THEM. If anyone is that committed to malingering that they will let people stick tubes in their brain just to milk their sham time more? They clearly deserve it.
I was on medical hold for a brief time in Ft. Benning and it was the most depressing time in my Army career. “CIB Recipient” said everyting I was thinking.
If we weren’t in this illegal war…then none of this would be happening. Its a shame we have to have Americans injured for no reason.
SD- STFU, you troll. Another example of idiots should not speak, lest they identify themselves.
Matt:
Go easy on SD; One night under Mommy’s bed, some alien forms stuffed his skull cavity with a permanently damp sponge, totally filling the void, and causing him to conjur up the idea that he has the capacity to reason. It really isn’t his fault. What with his “Southern” thingy being that he is from the southern part of a Yankee state’n’all, he even thinks that makes him a “Southerner”.
nuf sed
Southern, you are such. an. asshole. It’s not about your or your beliefs. IT.IS.ABOUT. THEM.
Haven’t had any combat but I did have an experience that caused me issues in sleep and otherwise. My squad leader checked on me daily to make sure I was where I was supposed to be. If there is an NCO who is fucking up, then he needs an attitude check. These guys need to be respected and treated as fairly as possible. We don’t all react to non-normal situations and injuries and bounce back like some.
And, it so sucks that the “mortal complex” can weigh them down. Can someone do something positive to help them as opposed to putting them in situations that cause a failure? There are extenuating circumstances, after all. And the powers that be have to know they are all not malingerers.
F.O…which Yankee state do you think I come from? Evidently you either are unaware of US history, or since you can’t sell a map with a racist term on it, you have no use for one!
I agree with S6R. But the other issue at hand is this: should troops go to the press to solve their problems?
Yes and no. No, they should follow the proper channels. BUT here’s the rub: sometimes the proper channels are part of the problem, so yes they should if they’re not getting satisfaction. It would be naive to think that everybody does everything right all of the time, but you should give them a chance. Once they’ve proven that the proper course of action either isn’t a concern of the command, isn’t a priority, or isn’t in their best interest then hell yeah, call the press.
I don’t like the AP any more than anyone else here because they tend to malign the military with every keystroke, but in this set of circumstances they may have actually gotten some facts right for a change.
Landstuhl Germany. Detachemnt of patients. These were people who were there for medical treatment but didn’t require complete hospitalization. Every night at 2300 was ‘bedcheck’ which entailed whatever PFC/SPC that had duty walking into a room and turning on the light and calling roll of everybody in the room. That lasted 2 nights until the Major in my room threw a boot at the soldier. Then it became the duty cracking the door and asking “Is everyone present?” And then there was formation every morning at 0530 for all personel. If you had an appointment you were released, everybody else was required to PT, regardless of profile status. I seriously wanted to kill the Captain who was the OIC with her “Camp Counsellor Jenny” attitude. Yes I understand we were there for medical treatment not a holiday, but seriously, bed checks and 0530 formations for PT? We had people on some serious meds and with some serious problems. It was wonderful when my room mate the Major went high and right on CPT Jenny
Stacy-
Sorry that you had to deal with that kind of crap. Wasn’t there a charge nurse or some medical personnel who could create a different protocol? It just seems senseless to me to do create situations for failures to occur.
I know not everything the Army does makes sense, but these stories all point to absolute stupidity.
I remember it like it was yesterday, man. I had rotated back stateside after an unfortunate situiation with a civilian chick in Berlin…suffice it to say the dripping has all but stopped…anyways, I had been taking Nyquil from the PX to help with all the PTSD shit I’ve been dealing with…you know, all the baby-killing and paratrooping into the middle of flea markets…so I figured I deserve some Z’s. That’s when First Sergeant comes in, starts yelling at me and tossed me out of my bunk and onto my swollen man-parts. He grabs me up and tells me that I need to get my shit squared away…that I’m a lazy piece of shit…that the fries are sitting there burning and there’s a line of cars wrapped around the drive through. That Nyquil is some good shit, man.
SPC Jesse Joshua McDonalds
101st Airborne Culinary Combat Brigade
Ft. Gordon, GA
Stupidest Dhimmicrat:
Which “Southern State” is north of DC? I recall your faint voice claiming that you “came down to DC” to an event. Was Maryland one of the “Southern States? If so, then my mistake, if not, then how does one describe a northbound trip as going “down to DC”? And yes, I have met a few of your ilk here in the deep south, but by and large, they migrated here from the northeast. And what am I doing talking to you anyway? It isn’t like we have a common language……….
nuf sed
Actually, Maryland is technically south of the Mason-Dixon and had its capitol occupied by Federal troops during the WBTS as the legislature was actively considering articles of secession…that’s the technical side of it…the functional side is quite different. Most of us in the Deep South link Maryland in with the rest of the Northeast, both politically and ideologically…and to be honest, we ain’t too effin’ sure about North Carolina either. So while SD is historically and geographically accurate, “southerners” from Maryland have damn little in common with those of us down here.
Shortly after arriving in Germany in 1989, I was late for formation three times in one week. I had just moved off-post in anticipation of my wife’s arrival. First time was straight up my fault- did not set the alarm. Second time forgot my ID at the house. And finally, like a keystone cop movie, had a flat tire on the bike. My squad leader,SSG Kuhl, broguht me into the platoon sgt’s office and ripped me a new a-hole. Up one side, down the other. Ordered me to report 30 mins early for the next two weeks. On Monday AM, he was there waiting my arrival. And on Tuesday, and Weds, etc. On Friday PM, once we were released for the weekend, he took me aside and asked me if I had learned my lesson? Yes, of course. SSG Kuhl then told me that if I was ever late again, he would recommend me for an Article 15. Period, end of story. He then canceled the punishment for the remaining week. He was tired of waking up so damn early. I was never late for another formation under SSG Kuhl. That was NCO leadership. 20 yrs later, his lesson still shines bright whenever I might be late. SSG Kuhl led from the front. He trained his troops, looked out for us, and demonstrated that he would do whatever he asked us to do. I always considered Article 15s as a last resort. Only when NCOs ran out of ideas, did you get the hard-bars involved. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you have more than one soldier late for formation, claiming that it is due to sleep meds, then that is a trend. How about figuring out who is on meds/similar ailments, put them all in the same squad/plt, place a squared away NCO in charge (if there is one available in the WTUs. I have my doubts from the repeated issues I keep hearing about these units.), and use some common sense. On the flip side, personal responsibility needs to be addressed. The Soldiers need to… Read more »
Its a shame that getting a Medical board takes so long, but its that way for a reason. If you have a legitimate injury, then you will get a disability check from the government for the rest of your life. As was said above, there are some sub-standard soldiers looking for a free ride, so the long process hopefully will weed out some of the goldbrickers. Maybe they should come up with a fast track process so the guy limping with shrapnel in his leg isn’t placed in the same category as the clerk with soft tissue pain in his neck.
B22: Does it count if I had a soldier who was nothing but soft tissue and was a pain in MY neck?
Claymore, I can’t really tell you bout NC and I’m a native Tar Heel. We seem to love our Republicans, as long as they stay out of the Governor’s chair. I did see this story in last night’s online Journalnow.com edition but, per the standard “crappy website’ couldn’t get in to read it. I think the guy that is leading the charge on this one is from here in Winston Salem, or at least that’s how it sounded in the tease. I would like to apologize to England for our new president. I’ll also offer apologies to my husband (US Army ret’d) and my son (currently at Marine Aviation school in Fl) as well as all past and present military members for this guy from our town _ I sincerely hope that what he started does not make things worse for anyone in actual need of being in a transition unit.
here is the result:
Army To Review Troops’ Treatment
[Washington Times, March 12, 2009, Pg. 6]
The general in charge of the Army’s more than 9,000 wounded soldiers is ordering a review of how the ones at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg are being punished for minor violations.
I would be powerfully leery of bringing in the media to a situation like that. Press coverage is like NBC–effective, maybe, but you just don’t know where that crap is going to go, who it’s going to affect, or how long it will take to clean up.
That said, I could easily believe that things get that bad. Where do they get the WTC NCOs? One of our SSGs had to come back from OEF for gall bladder surgery a few weeks ago and even though he’s on track to be medically released and sent back to Bagram, the WTC scheduled him for a complete physical (a week after his last one) just because their protocol required him to come in and be seen by someone, whether he needed it or not.
I suspect inflexible, stupid rules done for Joe’s own good are part of the problem, but we are hurting ourselves when we promote people too fast to be as seasoned as an NCO ought to be. A good, experienced sergeant might have found a solution that didn’t involve a healing soldier wasting half a day at the hospital for tests he didn’t need.
I’d like to think I would have.
(SSG) Sig