There is no better example of the soldier who is a vulnerable subject of the Warrior Transition’s broken and maleficent system than the Army Medic. As a group Medics are particularly bright, caring and conscientious. With very limited training they take on the responsibility of caring for their fellow soldiers who have become their family as well as battle buddies. These serious young Medics are at the front lines and are asked to care for injuries that would tax the skills of the most seasoned trauma surgeon. The Medic is not a certified EMT and does not have any preparation for the emotional trauma they will experience. A nurse and a physician are not at the front lines and their exposure to trauma is gradual with constant support from more experienced nurses or physicians who assume the responsibility for decisions and the outcome, whatever it may be. For the Medic, almost always, the first encounter they have with the horrific injuries of present day warfare is the their first combat mission and they are always the only person in their immediate unit with any form of training, however limited that training may be. The Medic feels an unbearable personal burden and exponential measure of anguish when there is a loss of life. They feel singularly responsible for the loss an extra measure of guilt seems to be an essential oppression the medic always carries. Their attachment to their unit and the individual soldiers is beyond our ability to conceive and makes the Medic the most vulnerable soldier of all. Yet, if the Medic is traumatized the first step is to separate from their unit, even if they are back home. And they are placed in the Army foster care system called the Warrior Transition Battalion.
Eddie remembers he wanted to be a soldier in the United States Army since he was a small child. His father and a number of other relatives had been in the military. He became estranged from his alcoholic father after his parents divorced in his teenage years, but he never lost his dream of being in the Army. He is intelligent and started out in college, but in 2003 he finally fulfilled his dream and enlisted. HE was directed, in part after being tested, into flight medic training, and Eddie was an honor graduate in every training course of his career. He felt he had found his calling, his career and in a way, a new family, though he remained close to his mother and his sisters. He progressed rapidly, made a mistake with a DUI, got busted and then worked his way back to E5, or Sergeant. From a primary base in Germany he had two deployments, first to Iraq from May to October 2007 and then to Afghanistan from June 2009 to June 2010. During the two deployments he had over 125 combat related missions. He remembers now, has vivid flashbacks daily and nightly nightmares, multiple traumatic events and it is his firm belief that he failed in his responsibilities. One soldier sustained a very high or proximal leg wound that involved the groin area and Eddie could not apply a tourniquet that wound stop the bleeding and no amount of pressure on the area helped. As Eddie tried in vain to save this soldier he remembers the soldier looking at him until his vision faded from comprehension and the soldier died. On another mission he was the lone medic for four severely wounded Marines and one of the Marines he could not help because he was literally in pieces and all he could do was try to gather all the pieces he could find and still provide what care he could to the other Marines who did survive. But the experience that haunts him the most is the mission where he was called to resuscitate a female soldier who was involved in an explosion and it seemed she had inhaled some toxic substance and was having trouble breathing. In the course of the evacuation as he tried to maintain her pulmonary function,he placed a hand on her forehead, and she looked at him with hopeless, desolate fear and she then lost consciousness, and he felt totally helpless as she seemed to slip away. He does not know for sure what happened to her after she reached a medical facility, but he has convinced himself she died. Despite his best efforts he was roundly criticized for his care and more than any other case he feels shame. It is possible to track down this female soldier and find out if she survived, but he does not want to know.; whatever the truth Eddies is terrified of learning what happened to the soldier. It is important to add that Eddie did not receive any counseling or validation at the time of these events, or after any other combat missions. And Eddie still has to face his greatest recovery challenge, over a year of suspended animation and isolation in the WTB; to be treated, at best, as a wayward child; and at its most derisive and mocking manner, treated as weak and useless “head cases” by the “professional cadre” of the WTB. I saw Eddie after he was abandoned to Bravo Company of the WTB.
After his second deployment Eddie returned to Germany where he was seen in November of 2010 for anxiety symptoms, nightrmares, hypervigilance and heightened startle response, avoidant symptoms, difficulty concentrating, and feeling sad, helpless and hopeless. However, no treatment plan was developed since he was soon to leave Germany for home. It seems in transit across the Atlantic the US Army forgot about Eddie all together and he was taken off the rolls, did not get paid and for a few days he was not considered to be part of the US ARMY. This alone created a profound depression and paranoid state for Eddie. It took a US Congressman, contacted by Eddie’s mother, to exert the pressure necessary to get that SNAFU fixed. In the soldier’s lexicon SNAFU stands for: Situation Normal All F… up. But wait, as Eddie is still hung out to dry as Eddie’s stay in the WTB unfolds. Initially imagine this: A young Captain, Army Reserve, assigned to the WTB at Fort Gordon, who has never been deployed, presumes he knows what is best for Eddie and makes him a hey-boy and gofer and expects Eddie to like it.