Does the Military Send Sick Soldiers to War?

By Nina Berman, AlterNet. Posted November 3, 2006.

The government's own military doctors knew that Spc. Anthony Vanderpool was mentally unbalanced. He had been admitted to the Bronx and Manhattan Veterans hospitals for major depressive disorder, dizziness, spells, auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideation, according to his V.A. records.

And this was before he even went to Iraq.

"I have a lot of anger. I never should have gone, " said Vanderpool, a Army National Guardsmen with 16 years prior service in the Army, Army reserves, Navy, Navy reserves and Air Force. "They didn't care. They wanted me because I was infantry," he said.

Vanderpool spent 10 months in Iraq on meds, not sleeping, depressed, paranoid, suicidal until he finally "spun out of control," forcing his command to acknowledge that he was too sick to be in a war zone. Off he went to Ft. Polk, La., for five months of medical treatment, and in December 2005, he was honorably discharged due to a "personality disorder."

Since then, he has been living a marginal life in Bay Shore, N.Y., single, no children, unemployed, finding himself increasingly isolated and depressed, and vomiting almost daily. He has been hospitalized for attempted suicide, and a recent review of his medical records show that was prescribed a daily dose of Zoloft for depression, Seroquel and Buspirone for anxiety, Zolmitripitan for migraines and Omeprazole for acid reflux. He attends a Veterans Administration post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) outpatient program twice a week.

Vanderpool's story is not unique

"The DOD admits they are sending mentally unfit soldiers into combat in Iraq," said Steve Robinson of Veterans for America. "This is not supposed to happen; the military should not have deployed this veteran to the war; what were they thinking and what does it say about the overstretched military?"

In May, the Hartford Courant reported that service members with preexisting PTSD were being sent back to Iraq, and some of those afflicted had committed suicide.

The situation galvanized Sens. Boxer, Kennedy, Lieberman and Clinton to sponsor an amendment to the last Defense Appropriations Bill in June calling for more thorough mental health screening, evaluation and detailed guidelines on what precludes deployment to a combat zone.

But the final legislation, passed in mid-October, dropped an original provision that would have required screeners to take a mental health history and refer a service member to a specialist if the service member indicates a mental health issue prior to deployment.

Such a provision might have helped Spc. Vanderpool who said that when he was activated by the National Guard and then deployed to Iraq, he told his superiors that he had a history of psychological problems, but these issues were ignored or dismissed. Once in Iraq, they got worse.

"The military should treat combat stress and psychological injuries as medical conditions. Instead, the military treats our injured soldiers as if they lack moral fortitude and improperly sends them back into battle," said Robinson.

"They said I was malingering, that I was a baby, wah, wah, wah wah, " said Vanderpool of his treatment by 1st Sgt. Daniel J. Bien, of Delta Company 101 Cavalry, at Camp Liberty, Baghdad.

Interviews with Vanderpool and members of his guard unit paint a picture of a command that refused to admit anyone was physically or psychologically sick.

"He (Sgt. Bien) didn't believe anybody was hurt," said Vanderpool's former platoon mate, Spc. Danny Gomes.

Added Sgt. Dallas Eccleston, who saved Vanderpool's life during an ambush,"There were people developing problems over there and people not believing them." He went on to describe Sgt. Bien as "definitely a suck-it-up kind of guy."

Bien responded in an email that "soldiers with documented mental illness are not mobilized for war; rather, they are discharged from the Army."

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Nina Berman is a photographer and the author of Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq.

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