Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 18, 2004
NAJAF, Iraq — Tucked behind a gleaming machine gun, Sgt. Joseph Hall
grins at his two companions in the Humvee.
"I want to know if I killed
that guy yesterday," Hall says. "I saw blood spurt from his leg, but I want to
be sure I killed him."
The vehicle goes silent as the driver, Spc.
Joshua Dubois, swerves around asphalt previously uprooted by a blast.
"I'm confused about how I should feel about killing," says Dubois, who has a
toddler back home. "The first time I shot someone, it was the most exhilarating
thing I'd ever felt."
Dubois turns back to the road. "We talk about
killing all the time," he says. "I never used to talk this way. I'm not proud
of it, but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I will be like when I get
home."
The men aren't Special Forces soldiers. They're just ordinary
troops with the Army's 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment serving their 14th month in
Iraq, much of it in daily battles. In 20 minutes, they will come under
attack.
Many GIs and Army psychiatrists say these constant
conversations about death help troops come to grips with the trauma of combat.
But mental health professionals within and outside the military point to the
chatter as evidence of preventable anguish.
Soldiers are untrained,
experts say, for the trauma of killing. Forty years after lessons learned about
combat stress in Vietnam, experts charge that avoidable psychological damage
goes unchecked because military officials don't include emotional preparation in
basic training.
Troops, returning home with untreated and
little-understood mental health issues, put themselves and their families at
risk for suicide and domestic violence, experts say. Twenty-three U.S. troops
in Iraq took their lives last year, according to the Defense Department —
an unusually high number, one official acknowledged.
On patrol,
however, all that is available is talk.
"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,"
Hall says. "It's like it pounds at my brain. I'll figure out how to deal with
it when I get home."
Home is the wrong place for soldiers to deal with
combat experiences, some experts say.
"It's complete negligence," says
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a retired psychology instructor at West Point who
trains law enforcement officers and special operations soldiers.
"The
military could train soldiers to talk about killing as easily as they train them
to pull the trigger. But commanders are in denial. Nobody wants to accept the
blame for a soldier who comes home a wreck for doing what his country asked him
to do," he said.
The emotional and psychological ramifications of
killing are mostly unstudied by the military, defense officials acknowledge.
"The idea and experience of killing another person is not addressed in
military training," says Col. Thomas Burke, director of mental health policy
for the Defense Department. "Training's intent is to re-create battle, to make
it an automatic behavior among soldiers."
He defends the approach,
saying that if troops think too much about emotional issues in combat
situations, it could undermine their effectiveness in battle.
Other
military representatives, including officers overseeing combat stress control
programs, did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.
Much of
the military's research on killing and battle stress began after World War II,
when studies revealed that only a small number of troops — as few as 15%
— fired at their adversaries on the battlefield.
Military studies
suggested that troops were unexpectedly reluctant to kill. Military training
methods changed, Grossman and others say, to make killing a more automatic
behavior.
Bull's-eye targets used in basic training were replaced with
human-shaped objects. Battlefield conditions were reproduced more accurately,
Burke says. The goal of these and other modifications was to help soldiers
react more automatically.
The changes were effective. In the Vietnam
War, 95% of combat troops shot at hostile fighters, according to military
studies.
Veterans of the Vietnam War also suffered some of the highest
levels of psychological damage — possibly as many as 50% of combat forces
suffered mental injury, says Rachel MacNair, an expert on veteran psychology.
Most notable among the injuries was post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition
contributing to violent outbursts years after soldiers leave battlefields.
"The more soldiers ignore their emotions and behave like trained machines
rather than thinking people, the more you invite PTSD," says Dr. David Spiegel
with the Stanford School of Medicine.
Military officials say there have
been changes in treating psychological trauma since Vietnam.
Foremost
among them is the creation of combat stress-control teams — mental health
professionals in Iraq who speak with troops immediately after traumatic events,
such as a U.S. casualty.
Military psychologists say immediate
intervention is important in avoiding mental distress.
"We get them to
voice what they are feeling, to realize they're not the odd man out, not to
blame themselves," says Capt. Robert Cardona, a psychiatrist with a combat
stress-control team based in southern Iraq.
But the demands of the
military's mission and a soldier's mental health are sometimes at odds.
"Our primary goal is to keep soldiers functional, so they can continue to
fight," Cardona says. "Everything else, including feeling well, is second to
that."
Mental health technicians are available for troops who request
help, Cardona says, but stress teams aren't deployed to bases just because U.S.
forces kill hostile fighters. He says about half of the soldiers seeking help
are traumatized because they killed someone.
"Killing unleashes
emotions few people are prepared to deal with," Cardona says. "We help soldiers
put those emotions and experiences away, so they can go into battle the next
day. We set the expectation that shock is temporary, and that they will return
to duty."
He's familiar with the death fixation in the soldiers'
conversations.
"When they talk, they're trying to prove to themselves
and each other that what happens doesn't matter," he says. "There's a posturing
going on, and sometimes soldiers themselves don't know how much they are
affected by what they see. They start to believe what they tell each
other."
*
Talk Turns to Killing
The men of the
2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment's Alpha and Charlie companies are resting and
playing cards in the shade of a staircase here, and the talk turns to
killing.
"I enjoy killing Iraqis," says Staff Sgt. William Deaton, 30,
who killed a hostile fighter the night before. Deaton has lost a good friend in
Iraq. "I just feel rage, hate when I'm out there. I feel like I carry it all
the time. We talk about it. We all feel the same way."
Sgt.
Cleveland T. Rogers, 25, avoids dwelling on his actions.
"The other
day an Iraqi guy was hit real bad, he was gonna die within an hour, but he was
still alive and he started saying, 'Baby, baby,' telling me he has a kid,"
Rogers says. "I mentioned it to my guys after the mission. It doesn't bother
me. It can't bother me. If it was the other way around, I'm sure it wouldn't
bother him."
Spc. Nathan Borlee tries to keep a lid on what he's
feeling.
"I feel like I'd lose control if I think about it too much, so
I don't," the 23-year-old says. "Usually everybody comes back and just gives
everybody a hug. You kind of get overwhelmed by the feelings."
Without
the proper training, experts say, these conversations may contribute to mental
injuries.
Grossman says training troops to have therapeutic discussions
about killing is "not that hard." His curriculum, used by law enforcement
officers and in the wake of traumas such as school shootings, focuses on mental
and physical techniques to consciously manage anxiety and other emotional
reactions to killing.
"To make killing instinctual, rather than
conscious, is inviting pathological, destructive behavior," Grossman says. "We
have to give soldiers a vocabulary to talk through emotions and teach them not
to be embarrassed by troubling feelings."
Grossman says his suggestions
have been overlooked by military commanders who are uncomfortable with the
emotionally destructive aspects of military service.
"The military goes
for long periods without having to kill anyone," he says. "Generals don't spend
a lot of time dealing with the parts that come after battle."
Others
say today's soldiers are fundamentally different from previous generations.
"These guys grew up with video games," says Maj. John Hamilton, 50, an
Army chaplain stationed in southern Iraq, where he counsels troops. "They've
seen thousands of people die on TV. They're already numb. It scares me that
some take delight in combat.
"Others just become immediately scared,
have nightmares. But that reaction is more frowned upon."
*
Duty vs. Ethics
Back in the Humvee, Hall and Dubois approach an
abandoned elementary school that commanders say is hiding mortars and hostile
fighters. Suddenly, the ground is punctuated by the yellow bursts of improvised
explosive devices.
Hall begins firing his .50-caliber machine gun, the
phosphorus on each fifth bullet trailing long, red streaks.
The
constantly squawking radio pauses briefly and a calm, transmitted voice fills
the truck.
"Enemy contact," the radio broadcasts. "Kill 'em, kill
'em."
Ahead, a tank pushes a hole through the school's wall. Staff
Sgt. Robert McBride, 35, enters a classroom and sees a group of six Iraqis with
guns, he later recounts. He throws a grenade. The blast cuts one Iraqi in
half, and the rest lie dying from abrasions and burns on their bodies. The
soldiers collect dozens of mortar rounds and return to their vehicles. McBride
looks at the hostile fighters once more.
"It did not bother me at all
to see those bodies up close," McBride says later. "I'm a warrior. You're
either born to this or you're not.
"My soldiers, they are all warriors.
They have no problems. I don't let them have problems. There is no place in
this Army for men who aren't warriors."
The men's commander, however,
worries about them.
"During the heat of the battle the adrenaline is
such you don't really think about it," says Capt. Brandon Payne, 28. "Once
that adrenaline wears off, though, it gets tough. Some kids, it rolls right off
their backs. Some, it's like they break down a little more each day."
Payne is as conflicted as his troops about making sense of war. Reconciling
duty with ethics, he says, seems more complicated in Iraq.
"I'm a
Christian. I feel I'm saving my soldiers' lives by destroying as many enemy as
I can. But at the end of each day, I pray to God. I worry about my soul," he
says.
"Every time a door slams, I flinch. I'm hoping it will just go
away when I get home."