Killing by elite soldiers hits home

And in the base's most recent homi-cide, Joan Shannon was arrested last Tuesday for killing her husband, Special Forces Major David Shannon, with the help of her 15-year-old daughter.

The Pentagon points out that the vast majority of military families live normal, happy lives, even during war. Still, for the past 37 years, the Army has deployed chaplains to identify soldiers having trouble at home. Today, 1,100 counselors at 97 installations worldwide help soldiers adjust to postdeployment changes – such as a new baby or even a wife's new haircut.

"What people have to understand about soldiering is that it's fundamentally a people business, and there are human dimensions of people that you don't have 100 percent control over," says Ms. Johnson.

But Army culture, especially at the elite level, makes it hard for soldiers and their families to seek help, as home problems can be seen as a sign of weakness – and can hold up valuable promotions. Private counseling is not covered by Army insurance, and some soldiers reportedly sneak into psychiatrists' offices to get help.

"People who rise up in [Army] leadership are people selected by their not bucking the culture," says Catherine Lutz, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has studied the base's culture. "There's tremendous confidence and can-do-it-ness that goes with that. But it also promotes a certain view of masculinity as invulnerable, that it doesn't ask for help, and it has control over everything in the environment."

And while the military has issued several orders of "zero tolerance" against domestic violence – including one that followed six domestic killings in six months by officers at Ft. Campbell, Ky., in 1997 – civilian privacy laws designed to protect victims who report abuse don't apply to military families. "In the military," says Christine Hansen, director of the Miles Foundation, which helps battered military spouses, "victim safety is not paramount as it is in civilian life."

Another problem is that 70 percent of the 45,000 soldiers stationed at Ft. Bragg live in seven surrounding counties, where civilian authorities are not required to report spousal-abuse incidents to military authorities. Homicide Det. Sam Pennica says spousal and child abuse are commonplace in the area.

Anita, whose husband, Mike, was an Apache pilot in the Gulf War, has seen first-hand how war can exacerbate relationship strains. "I can't understand murdering the mother of your children, but ... I do know that it's hard for many of these men to reconcile God's plan after they see so much killing," she says.

"And that can have an impact on them when they return home."

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