From: The American Legion Magazine,
June 2016
Booted after battle
By
Ken Olsen
Max Fernandez was
arrested for a bar fight the first weekend after he came home from Iraq. The
Marine Corps machine gunner didn’t think twice about the altercation.
“Coming back, my
mindset was so aggressive,” he says. “I thought it was funny.”
No one pressed charges
and Fernandez’s commanders ignored the incident, he says. He and his buddies
continued partying and fighting until Fernandez was booted out of the military,
without getting treatment for an IED blast that damaged his vision and hearing
– or the nightmares that followed him home from combat.
Today Fernandez is
living in a homeless shelter in Los Angeles, undergoing treatment for
addiction, pursuing a VA claim for PTSD and TBI, and trying to rebuild his life
under the shadow of a bad discharge. It’s the story of thousands of former
service members who don’t get help when their combat injuries fuel misconduct.
Instead, they are discarded with involuntary discharges that prevent them from
receiving military retirement, medical care, disability and GI Bill benefits –
all in the interest of speed and cost savings.
“According to current
DoD and service branch regulations, it’s permissible to separate service members
who have committed misconduct, even if they are suffering from a mental
disorder that makes them unfit to serve,” says Thomas Moore, manager of the
Lawyers Serving Warriors project at the National Veterans Legal Services
Program. “I believe this is a big problem.”
There’s a cultural
issue at work, too, says Kathleen Gilberd, executive director of the Military
Law Task Force. Sick or injured troops are considered troublemakers simply
because they are not fit to deploy. “That means getting rid of them, usually
without medical benefits, for misconduct or other designated mental and
physical conditions,” she says.
LIFE SENTENCE
Being dismissed from
the military leaves an indelible stain on a veteran’s pride – and his or her
future.
“An other-than-honorable
discharge usually means something went awry with you in the service”, says
Waldo Tapia, an attorney who recently left the Inner City Law Center on Skid
Row in Los Angeles and is representing Fernandez. “It’s a difficult stigma to
overcome, particularly if it’s tied to PTSD.”
Civilian jobs are
often unavailable once a prospective employer sees a problem discharge on
a veteran’s DD-214.
“If you get caught
using drugs at a warehouse job, you might get fired,” Tapia says. “If you get
caught using marijuana in the military, the other-than-honorable discharge
follows you forever.”
Many of these veterans
end up homeless. Many have no access to health care even though VA has the
discretion to provide medical benefits on a case-by-case basis. Veterans who
are kicked out of the military for misconduct related to PTSD, TBI and other invisible
wounds are also excluded from receiving help from many nonprofits, says
Kristina Kaufmann, executive director of the Code of Support Foundation.
In other words, the
people who most need help often are the least likely to receive it.
HISTORIC PRACTICE
Involuntary discharges
have been a volatile issue since at least the Vietnam War. A 1980 Government
Accountability Office (GAO) investigation recommended that service members have
the right to a hearing before being tossed out of the military. But the boards
that review these cases are usually sympathetic to the wishes of commanders
eager to get rid of service members, and the service members are often
convinced that they are better off if they waive their right to a hearing,
Gilberd says. There is also a persistent myth that other-than-honorable
discharges are automatically upgraded if service members stay out of trouble
for six months after leaving the military, which may give them an incentive not
to pursue a hearing that would help their case. It’s unfair to just blame
commanders, who are dealing with the realities of fighting long wars with an
all-volunteer force.
“I get it,” Kaufmann
says. “I was a commander’s wife during the surge from ’06 to ’08. I remember
the pressure on my husband to have a battalion that is at full strength and
ready to deploy.” And similar pressure to get rid of people who aren’t. Involuntary
discharges again became an issue during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A
litany of negative media prompted Congress to order the military to carefully
review the combat experiences of service members before discharging them for
misconduct. Yet another 22,000 soldiers have been involuntarily discharged
since that 2008 legislation was passed, according to an investigation by National
Public Radio. Today the Army Inspector General is conducting its own
investigation, again under pressure from Congress.
Involuntary discharges
for misconduct are only part of the problem. A significant number of U.S.
service members who are discharged for personality disorders or adjustment
disorders are also diagnosed with combat-related mental health issues such as
PTSD during military medical exams.
“We’ve reviewed cases
where service members have been consistently diagnosed with PTSD, yet one
diagnosis of personality disorder results in their administrative separation,”
Moore says. “Many are then consistently diagnosed with PTSD by VA examiners
after discharge from service.”
Service members
separated for personality disorders may receive honorable discharges, but they
do not have access to key benefits associated with medical retirement.
“The most valuable
retirement benefit is access to the military’s health-care program, TRICARE,
which provides medical care for the veteran and the veteran’s dependents,”
Moore says.
ATTITUDE PROBLEM
Service members are
reluctant to seek help, even when they know they’ve been injured – particularly
when it comes to mental health issues. “There’s a kind of attitude that PTSD is
a weakness – that a good soldier, a strong soldier, just works through it,”
Gilberd says.
Fernandez is but one
example of that attitude. The physician who examined his squad after their
armored cargo carrier was hit by an IED near Fallujah in February 2006
recommended they spend a week on light duty as part of their recovery. They
refused. “None of the Marines I was with or knew wanted to leave the field,”
Fernandez says. “Any injury I had, I had to push out of my mind.”
That attitude is
pervasive, Tapia says. “A lot of guys don’t want to report an illness or injury
because they worry they will be viewed as holding their unit back.”
As a result, many
aren’t diagnosed until they get out of the service, Kaufmann says.
Once back in the
United States, Fernandez continued to deny he’d been injured. “I was having
nightmares and intrusive thoughts,” he says. “I had the option of seeing people
(medical staff), but that would have been frowned upon.”
Instead, Fernandez
self-medicated. He and his buddies “drank day and night.” He flunked a random
drug test and was stripped of a promotion. But the Marines allowed him to stay
after he pleaded his case to a non-judicial punishment board. That is, until he
got in yet another fight that left one man in a coma. He went from proud Marine
to homeless addict with an other-than-honorable discharge in a matter of
months.
“I was bitter,” he
says. “Instead of looking at the paperwork – drug abuse – what about the two
years that I served? They need to reform the rules and regulations to deal with
the epidemic of psychological issues people are coming back with.”
Society shares the
blame for the military’s attitude. “I think it’s a complete misunderstanding of
PTSD and TBI,” Kaufmann says. “But it’s not just the military. We’re terrible
with mental health in this country. We have such a lack of understanding and fear
any anything mental health-related.”
HAZING THE INJURED
Fernandez might not
have fared any better if he had sought help for his injuries. Service members
who seek treatment for PTSD and other mental health issues are often harassed
to the point of career-ending misconduct, Gilberd says.
Michael Wells knows
this territory firsthand. He says he encountered hostility at Fort Gordon, Ga.,
when he sought help for PTSD and TBI following his second tour in Iraq in 2008.
His acting first sergeant tried to prevent him from getting mental health
treatment; he sneaked off to his psychiatric appointments anyway, he adds. The
repercussions escalated.
“He tried to take away
my security clearance,” Wells says of the first sergeant. “He threatened me
with physical harm.” Amber Wells, who met her future husband at Fort Gordon
during this ordeal, worried Michael would kill himself. “They wouldn’t let him
go to the hospital,” she says. “They would say, ‘Real men don’t get PTSD.’”
The first sergeant
also blocked his attempts to apply for medical retirement, Wells says. He
reported the harassment to a command sergeant major from another unit and the
Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) without result, he says. Then,
finally, he just left Fort Gordon.
“He had actually gone
to his psychiatrist – it’s in his records – and said, ‘If you don’t help me,
I’m going AWOL,’” Amber says. “His psychiatrist basically laughed at him.’”
Fort Gordon referred
questions about Wells’ case to U.S. Army Medical Command, which did not respond.
However, the office of Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., confirmed that it is working
on the case.
DISAPPEARING ACT
Once he reached the
point that he couldn’t look at his uniform, Wells left Fort Gordon and traveled
the country until he was certain his unit had dropped him from the rolls. He
then turned himself in at Fort Knox, Ky., where he was given an
other-than-honorable discharge. He spent the next three years scraping by with
Social Security disability and low-income housing while fighting to get help
for PTSD, TBI, and neck, back and hip injuries. An Idaho employer fired him
when it discovered he had PTSD, on his third day on the job. Other help was
off-limits. “There were a lot of outreach programs and veterans services I
couldn’t use because I had an other-than-honorable discharge,” Wells says.
“We survived on just over $1,000 a month for a couple of years.”
Amber filed VA
disability claims on his behalf and scoured the Internet for help. She
connected with Reno, Nev., radio host Boone Cutler and his wife, who raised the
money to bring the Wells family and their two children to Reno. There, Michael
finally got his first treatment at the local VA, but only after threatening to
kill himself.
“It took me getting
hospitalized for PTSD, survivor’s guilt and suicidal thoughts,” he says.
Cutler also connected
Michael with Heller, whose staff was instrumental in getting his discharge
upgraded to general under honorable conditions because of his PTSD. And VA
eventually granted Wells a 90 percent disability rating for PTSD and hip
problems. Today, he and his family are living in Texas, where he is undergoing
a series of hip
surgeries. Heller’s office is helping him pursue a 100-percent disability
rating.
It’s been an arduous
and dispiriting journey, Amber says. “Even after you fight for your country,
you have to come home and fight for your benefits,” she says. But they believe
Michael’s case shows that with persistence and the right advocate, other
service members can overcome a bad discharge.
“It took five years,”
he says. “But I want other soldiers to know that it’s possible. No matter what,
keep trying.”
Ken Olsen is
a frequent contributor to The American Legion Magazine [1]
This is a link and a PDF for the form needed to initiate an upgraded
discharge:
http://arba.army.pentagon.mil/documents/dd0293.pdf
