The other battle: coming home

The skating show at Wild Adventures amusement park in Valdosta, Ga., was supposed to be a special homecoming treat for his kids. But for Capt. Bryan Batson, it conjured such vivid images of men from his battalion killed in Iraq that he broke down in tears.

"It was surreal," says the rural Texan, recalling his reaction to the handsome skaters, who wore green camouflage leotards and waved American flags as they glided over the ice to strident, ultrapatriotic music. Then he heard the lyrics, "My Daddy served in the Army, where he lost his right eye...."

Instantly, Captain Batson thought of his comrade, 2nd Lt. Jeffrey Kaylor. Lieutenant Kaylor was blowing up a cache of enemy air-defense munitions southwest of Baghdad on April 7 when a single piece of shrapnel struck him just under the right eye, killing him. "It was the only wound on his body," Batson says.

Feelings of guilt, anger, and frustration nag Batson these days as he attempts to settle back into life at Fort Stewart. Awaiting screening at a base clinic, he speaks repeatedly of his inability to save mortally wounded fellow soldiers.

Just after midnight on April 3, Batson was sorting out pork-free MREs for Iraqi war prisoners when the ground shook with a tremendous "boom."

"We knew it was way too loud to be enemy artillery," he said. A US pilot had apparently dropped a 500-lb. bomb less than 500 yards from his unit's position north of the city of Karbala, demolishing a Humvee and two other vehicles. Batson rushed to aid the wounded, carrying one soldier away on a litter.

That soldier and two others didn't survive, a tragic loss he still thinks about.

"I've trained all my adult life to close with and destroy the enemy, and here were my guys, and my skills could do nothing for them," Batson says softly. "I felt so helpless."

It's too early to tell how many of the tens of thousands of US ground troops like Batson who were exposed to war's horrors in Iraq will carry mental burdens from the experience. Already, at Fort Stewart, returning soldiers are getting help for a range of symptoms.

"The referrals have been for mental-health issues, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, that kind of thing," says Rose Mullice, assistant chief of social work service at the base hospital.

Younger soldiers, those engaged in frontline combat, as well as medics and mortuary affairs personnel are more vulnerable to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), experts say. Affected troops can relive events involuntarily, feel detached from their surroundings, or be overly anxious. Apart from classic combat stress, time in a war zone increases troops' risk of other problems, from aggression and substance abuse to shutting down socially.

"War is a terrible breach of innocence," says Brett Litz, associate director of the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder under the Department of Veterans Affairs. "It's about belief, it's about morality, it's about right and wrong. For some, it can be maturing. For others, it has a scarring influence - on how you feel about your future, your world, your relations with people."

At Fort Stewart, soldiers like those from the 1-39 Artillery Battalion, which fired missiles and rockets that killed hundreds of Iraqis, are wrestling with whether they should keep silent about their actions - in effect isolating themselves - or take the risk of confiding in people outside their unit.

"Soldiers have come up to me and said: 'I'm worried what my family will think of me when they find out what happened over there,' " says Susan Wilder, deployment manager for the fort's Army Community Service. She advises spouses not to probe soldiers for information, but simply to listen.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6