Army Acts to Curb Abuses of Injured Recruits

[cal04]

The Army has shaken up a program to heal recruits injured in basic training after soldiers and their parents said troops hurt at Fort Sill were punished with physical abuse and medical neglect. The program, which treated more than 1,100 injured soldiers last year at five posts, normally returns three-fourths of its patients to active duty, according to Army statistics. But at Fort Sill, recruits said, injuries were often subject to derision, ignored or improperly treated. Two soldiers in the program have died since 2004, one or possibly both of accidental overdoses of prescription drugs. The latest death, in March, remains under investigation, the Army said.

"I am an inmate," one soldier, Pfc. Mathew Scarano of Eureka, Calif., wrote in a letter home in January two months before he died. "I sometimes ask those friends of mine with jailhouse tattoos if they'd rather be back in jail, or here. So far, they are unanimous — jail." Commanders acknowledge problems with the Physical Training and Rehabilitation Program, and they have ordered changes here at the Field Artillery Center and at the other training centers. For the first time, as a result of the Fort Sill problems, a medical professional is to head each program. A civilian spokesman at the fort, Jon Long, said an investigation had substantiated "misbehavior" by a drill sergeant who, soldiers say, kicked a trainee with stitches in his knee.

Mr. Long said the sergeant had been suspended and reassigned, along with another drill sergeant who, soldiers complained, had repeatedly awakened injured trainees throughout the night for uniform changes and formations.
The events, after a drill sergeant's bribery scandal last year and a drug sting that ensnared 12 soldiers, have thrown a cloud over Fort Sill, one of the centers for nine weeks of basic training where volunteers first report on the way to Iraq or elsewhere. G.I.'s who fall prey to sprains and fractures and cannot complete the often grueling passage to "warrior" are sent to the Physical Training and Rehabilitation Program, where a motto reads "Heal and Ship."

Soldiers' blogs reflect dissatisfaction at some of the other programs, too, but Lt. Col. Michael Russell, command psychologist at the Training and Doctrine Command in Fort Monroe, Va., who was involved in the new therapy, said just Fort Sill had had a fatality or major complaints. The other sites are Fort Benning, Ga.; Fort Jackson, S.C.; Fort Knox, Ky.; and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. "Of course, we take anything like that very seriously," Colonel Russell said. "We're going to put medical people in charge." At Fort Sill, an artillery captain has been in charge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12training.html?hp&ex=1147406400&en=f5a77975778d7cff&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[President Kerry]

1. News like this surely ain't gonna help in a recruiting crunch..

Or the morale of those they DO recruit for that matter.

[davepc]

2. The pressure to provide bodies goes all down the line

From recruiters to get them in, and on the drill instructors to make sure they finish basic.

All that pressure, plus no oversight...leads to tragedy.

[Miss Chybil]

3. Parents have to pray their kids haven't gone off to be killed in

some foreign land only to end up having them killed at the hands of those who are supposed to be training them to stay alive. This is the worst form of evil. I hope the people responsible for these tragedies rot in hell, but since I don't believe in hell, I think they should be sent to Iraq.

[rodeodance]

4. whow. this is a horrible story to read--to think people of trust would do

this to our troops in training!

[rodeodance]

5. says many had joined to serve in Irag-yet referred to as "malingerers"

...In interviews, soldiers and parents said injured troops regularly suffered punitive treatment as malingerers, although many had joined specifically to serve in Iraq.

A trainee with a broken finger who was described by fellow soldiers as frustrated by indifferent treatment, slashed himself with a razor, smeared himself with feces and walked around naked, the Army confirmed. Regarded as faking illness, he was returned to his unit to finish training.

Soldiers in the 40-member unit said their injuries often went unattended in stays that exceeded six months and worsened while they waited to see specialists in short supply because of medical needs in Iraq.

"I don't want to say cruel and unusual punishment, but that's what it was," said Tom Nugent of Candor, N.Y., near Ithaca. His son Pvt. Justin Nugent has had two operations since a shoulder "popped out" after push-ups in July.

[rodeodance]

7. When I look at this--the army teaches them how to demoralize others (as

they themselves are demoralized).


...Private Thurman, who has completed more than four months in the program and has been sent to his first duty station as a computer artilleryman, and other soldiers said morale plummeted around mid-January with the arrival of a new drill sergeant, Robert Langford.

On the Martin Luther King's Birthday holiday weekend, with the rest of the post off duty, Sergeant Langford ordered the therapy unit to move out the bunk beds and lockers and hand scrape the wax off the floor tiles. When the results were not to his liking, the soldiers said, the sergeant had them redo it. While scraping, Private Scarano cracked his injured shoulder, he wrote home.

The kicking episode occurred about that time, soldiers said, when Sergeant Langford ordered an injured private, Damien McMahon, 21, of Emporia, Kan, "to take a knee," or bow, after losing his temper in a formation. Private McMahon, who had had knee surgery for a staph infection and was also in disciplinary trouble for sneaking to the PX on a tobacco run, said the investigators had asked him not to discuss the case. But he confirmed accounts by fellow soldiers that he had protested that kneeling was painful and that the sergeant had kicked him in his bad knee, loosening one of nine stitches.

Sergeant Langford, reached by telephone at home at Fort Sill, refused to discuss the accusations and denied that he had been suspended before hanging up.

[Miss Chybil]

10. Drill sergeants are not allowed to touch a trainee - period.

If this happened, he should be charged with assault.

[saigon68]

6. DeHumanize them--THAT WAY they'll Kick the Shit out of the NATIVES

AND MAYBE EVEN KILL THEM

[rodeodance]

8. yes, that just hit me -see my previous post.

[crikkett]

9. At least they're not acting to curb reports of injured recruits.