The Other Victims of Battlefield Stress; Defense Contractors’ Mental Health Neglected
by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica – February 26, 2010 1:48 am EST
On the one-year anniversary of her husband’s suicide, Barb Dill breaks down at her husband’s tombstone. Wade Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, took a contractor job in Iraq. Three weeks after he returned home for good, he committed suicide (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / Redding, CA / July 16, 2007).
REDDING, Calif. — Wade Dill does not figure into the toll of war dead. An exterminator, Dill took a job in Iraq for a company contracted to do pest control on military bases. There, he found himself killing disease-carrying flies and rabid dogs, dodging mortars and huddling in bomb shelters.
Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, was a different man when he came back for visits here, his family said: moody, isolated, morose. He screamed at his wife and daughter. His weight dropped. Dark circles haunted his dark brown eyes.
Three weeks after he returned home for good, Dill booked a room in an anonymous three-story motel alongside Interstate 5. There, on July 16, 2006, he shot himself in the head with a 9 mm handgun. He left a suicide note for his wife and a picture for his daughter, then 16. The caption read: “I did exist and I loved you.”
More than three years later, Dill’s loved ones are still reeling, their pain compounded by a drawn-out battle with an insurance company over death benefits from the suicide. Barb Dill, 47, nearly lost the family’s home to foreclosure. “We’re circling the drain,” she said.
While suicide among soldiers has been a focus of Congress and the public, relatively little attention has been paid to the mental health of tens of thousands of civilian contractors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. When they make the news at all, contractors are usually in the middle of scandal, depicted as cowboys, wastrels or worse.
No agency tracks how many civilian workers have killed themselves after returning from the war zones. A small study in 2007 found that 24 percent of contract employees from DynCorp, a defense contractor, showed signs of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, after returning home. The figure is roughly equivalent to those found in studies of returning soldiers.
If the pattern holds true on a broad scale, thousands of such workers may be suffering from mental trauma, said Paul Brand, the CEO of Mission Critical Psychological Services, a firm that provides counseling to war zone civilians. More than 200,000 civilians work in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the most recent figures.
“There are many people falling through the cracks, and there are few mechanisms in place to support these individuals,” said Brand, who conducted the study while working at DynCorp.”There’s a moral obligation that’s being overlooked. Can the government really send people to a war zone and neglect their responsibility to attend to their emotional needs after the fact?”
The survivors of civilians who have committed suicide have found themselves confused, frustrated and alone in their grief.
“If I was in the military, I’d at least have someone to talk to,” said Melissa Finkenbinder, 42, whose husband, Kert, a mechanic, killed himself after returning from Iraq. “Contractors don’t have anything. Their families don’t have anything.”
Some families of civilian contractors who have committed suicide have tried to battle for help through an outdated government system designed to provide health insurance and death benefits to civilian contractors injured or killed on the job.
Under the system, required by a law known as the Defense Base Act, defense firms must purchase workers’ compensation insurance for their employees in war zones. It is highly specialized and expensive insurance, dominated by the troubled giant AIG and a handful of other companies. The cost of it is paid by taxpayers as part of the contract price.
But the law, which is designed to provide coverage for accidental death and injury, blocks payment of death benefits in the case of almost all suicides. Cases linked to mental incapacity are the lone exception, judges have ruled.
A joint investigation last year by ProPublica, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that contract workers must frequently battle carriers for basic medical coverage. While Congress has promised reforms, there has been no discussion of changing the law when it comes to suicides involving civilian defense workers.
The military, by contrast, allows survivors to receive benefits in cases in which a soldier’s suicide can be linked to depression caused by battlefield stress.
Hundreds of soldiers have committed suicide since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, according to studies by the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In response, the Defense Department has become more active in trying to prevent suicide than its hired contractors, military experts said.
The military is “aggressively trying to reach people and do intervention beforehand and set up suicide awareness programs,” said Ian de Planque, a benefits expert at the American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans group. “Awareness of it has increased. I don’t know that it’s transferred over to the civilian sector at this point.”
Birgitt Eysselinck has spent years trying to prove that her husband’s death in Iraq was related to stress from his job with a company specializing in the removal of land mines and explosive ordnance. So far, courts have sided with the insurance firm, Chicago-based CNA, in denying Eysselinck’s claim. (CNA declined to comment, citing privacy reasons.)
Eysselinck, 44, said that neither federal judges nor insurance adjusters understand that civilian contractors face many of the same risks in Iraq and Afghanistan that soldiers do. Her husband, Tim Eysselinck, endured mortar attacks and frequently traveled across Iraq’s dangerous highways, she said.
“There is a huge percentage of contractors who are silently suffering,” Eysselinck said. “That obviously puts them and their families at risk. Communities are bearing the brunt of this, especially the families.”
* * *
Wade Dill was working at a local pest control company when he decided to take a job with KBR in Iraq in late 2004. The money was good – almost $11,000 a month for handling extermination and hazardous material disposal, more than double his normal salary.
“He said this was our opportunity,” Barb Dill said. “He could start a college fund for our daughter, pay off the mortgage and have a nice retirement. He told me at his age, 41, he didn’t know if he had enough years left in him to give us what he wanted.”
Wade started that December, working on bases in central and northern Iraq. Violence was ever present. A base near Mosul was shelled frequently. He told Barb that a mortar landed close enough to temporarily deafen him. Once, he called her sobbing.
“My husband never cried, ever,” she said. “Marines don’t cry. A young man, a soldier, had put a pistol to his head and blown his brains out. And Wade had to go in and clean up after they removed the body – he had to clean up brain matter and blood. It really upset him.”
Barb Dill noticed a change in her husband when he returned home for a visit in December 2005. The couple had been high school sweethearts, married for 15 years. They had troubles, but had always worked them out. Now, he seemed moody and often angry, lashing out at her and their daughter, Sara.
“He would say hateful things to me and our daughter – things he had never said before.” Dill said. “This was a man that loved his little girl and his wife. He always called us his girls.”
When Wade returned for another visit in June 2006, he abruptly quit his job and began acting erratically, Dill said. He ripped the wiring out of appliances, smashed mirrors and poured lighter fluid on their furniture.
After a few weeks, Wade took a room at a local motel. On July 15, he asked Barb to come see him. Their conversation spiraled into a confrontation. Frightened and angry, Barb sped off in her car. The next day, the Shasta County coroner’s office called to tell her that Wade’s body had been found in the room.
“He told me that he was sick and needed help,” Dill said. “I told him to get help and then we would talk. The last time I saw him was in my rearview mirror.”
Dill soon found herself in financial difficulty. Her husband had always taken care of the bills. He had spent lavishly with his higher salary, buying two BMWs during trips home. Now, Dill discovered the couple was $300,000 in debt on their mortgage and car loans.
She plunged into depression, struggling to cope with her daughter’s grief and the sense that she had failed her husband in his time of need. She sold the cars and nearly lost her home after falling behind on mortgage payments.
She suffered mostly by herself. Except for a handful of Web sites, no support groups exist for widows of civilian contractors. The federal government offers no counseling for civilians returning from work in war zones.
Dill said that she felt abandoned by everyone: her husband’s employer, the insurance company and especially the federal government, which oversees the Defense Base Act system through the Labor Department.
“Shouldn’t our government be responsible for the companies they hire?” Dill said. “Shouldn’t our government take care of its own people, who are doing jobs our government, ultimately, wanted them to do?”
* * *
Survivors of civilian contractors whose death is related to their work in Iraq have the right to apply for compensation benefits that pay up to $63,000 a year for life.
Dill applied, asserting that her husband’s PTSD made him an exception to the rule against payments in suicide cases. Her claim was denied by AIG, KBR’s insurance provider.
She protested, sending her claim into a dispute resolution system run by the Labor Department. Her case is still grinding its way through the system, which can take years to produce a final result.
Experts hired by the family and the insurance company differed on what led to Wade Dill’s suicide.
A psychiatrist hired by her attorney found that job stress in Iraq was one of the factors that drove Wade to suicide: “The bottom line is that the combination of physical separation and work-related stress resulted in increasingly emotional distance, greater distortion of the relationship, increasing emotional intensity, and a pattern of increasing erratic behaviors that culminated in suicide,” wrote Charles Seaman, an expert in PTSD.
A Labor Department examiner recommended that AIG pay the claim, but the company refused. AIG and KBR declined comment about the case. In court filings, AIG has argued that the Defense Base Act does not cover suicides.
AIG attorneys also have said that Wade Dill’s actions were related to marital and family problems. A psychiatrist hired by AIG testified at a hearing in San Francisco in January that he had performed a “psychological autopsy” on Wade Dill based on interviews with his family and court documents.
The psychiatrist, Andrew D. Whyman, said his evaluation led him to conclude that Dill suffered from depression and that his suicide was unrelated to the violence he witnessed in Iraq.
“Take out the Iraq experience, (the suicide) would have happened,” Whyman testified. “He had a choice. … He could have chosen not to do that.”
Barb Dill insists her husband came back from Iraq a changed man.
“No matter how strained our relationship could get at times, we always pulled out of it with no problem,” Dill said. “Iraq changed all that.”
Now, she said, she is trying to hold her life together. A final decision in her case is not expected for months.
“We’re just slowly sinking,” she said. “It’s hard to be strong.”
Watch a preview of ‘Disposable Army,’ a documentary currently being produced by Mark Crupi, which contains interviews with Barb Dill and T. Christian Miller.
Disposable Army: Read the complete coverage of injured defense contractors and their struggles to receive promised medical care.
Write to T. Christian Miller at T.Christian.Miller@propublica.org.
I worked for 3 different companies when I was driving in Kuwait and Iraq. I enjoied working for all three. But I have to say that out of the 3, the one that treated me the best was IAP. With PWC (Agility) being tossed out on their tails due to their overcharging and misconduct on contracts in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan, IAP is looking for 35 drivers to run the mail mission in Kuwait and lower Iraq. I have been wanting to go back overseas to drive ever since I cam home in 2006 to do the book promotion. Due to the shattering of both of my wrists last year, that is a desire that will not be fulfilled. So since I get asked the question, “Who is hiring over there?” all the time, I am passing this information along. They are going to be looking for this to happen real quick. Even though they are looking for drivers that have already “been there and done that”, it would not hurt to those that have not to go ahead and apply. You never know what could happen.
Here is the listing and job description on the IAP web site.
Truck Driver, Heavy Lift
Requisition ID: 9820
Full / Part Time: Full-time
Employment Type: Regular
# of Openings: 35
Purpose: Provide Heavy Lift transportation for U.S. Mail as well as Logistical support for Middle East AOR (Kuwait / Iraq)
Description: Semi-Trailer TRUCK DRIVERs are required for providing U.S. military mail delivery services in Kuwait and Southern Iraq. Driver may load and unload truck, make minor mechanical repairs, and keep truck in good working order. Drivers may travel distances that will not allow them to return to the departure point in the same workday. Must be able to drive standard shift or semi-automatic shift vehicles. Must be physically capable of working 14 hour days in extreme heat conditions. Drivers are required to enter a probable hostile environment on a regular basis and must be fully aware and prepared to undertake these mission tasks upon employment hire.
Duties Will Include:
1. Punctual delivery of U.S. military mail to their respective locations
2. Collection of military mail from airhead
3. Completion of all official U.S. military mail documentation
4. Completion of IAPWS company documentation
5. Vehicle distribution Centre duties
6. Vehicle recovery and replacement duties
7. Conforming to military and IAPWS HSE policies
8. Undertaking vehicle mission readiness pre-vehicle checks and trailer checks
9. Conveyance of vehicles and trailers for service or repair
10. Undertake all operational duties in relation to the U.S. military mail mission
Knowledge: Considerable knowledge of the job. Complete acquaintance with and understanding of the general and detailed aspects of the job, and their practical applications to problems and situations ordinarily encountered.
Minimum Education and Experience: High School Diploma; 10 years minimum driving experience.
Requirements:
Minimum:
1. Must be U.S. Citizen
2. Must have valid U.S. Passport (with at least one year remaining before expiration)
3. Must have current and valid Class A Commercial Drivers License
4. Must provide proof of current DOT compliant Physical Examination (within last 6 months).
Desired:
1. Previous overseas Heavy lift trucking experience
2. Active security clearance
3. Vehicle maintenance experience
I have know T. Christian Miller for several years now and worked with him on several stories back in 2006/2007. I am happy to see that he has not given up on the civilian contractors that are forgotten. The following is a story if his that came out last month. Thank you Mr. Miller, it means a lot to all of us that you are still making sure that the American public is aware that there are civilians serving their country as well.
Honoring Veterans of the Disposable Army
by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica – November 11, 2009 4:14 pm EST
Today we honor the veterans who have served in the country’s armed forces. Nobody seriously questions whether they deserve such recognition. The men and women who defended this country and fought its wars made immeasurable sacrifices.
I have spent much of the last year writing about another group of people who suffered losses on behalf of U.S. interests abroad: the civilian contractors injured or killed while doing their jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They are not, of course, soldiers. They could quit their jobs and go home any time they wanted. Many were paid far higher wages than their military counterparts. They knew they were signing up to take a specific job in a dangerous part of the world.
And yet, neither are the contractors working in Afghanistan and Iraq ordinary laborers. Civilians compose half the manpower in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have seen and experienced the full horror of war. More than a thousand have been killed. Thousands more have suffereddebilitating physical and mental injuries. And yet, the Pentagon does not even know how many have died, nor how many are actually working (PDF).
I have come to see the civilian contractors as a new kind of class in the demography of war. They are quasi-veterans: civilians who have experienced war much as soldiers do. There are tens of thousands of them. And while it’s hard to argue that they deserve ticker tape parades and Medals of Honor, it’s also hard to believe that they should be sent home with little more than a pay stub and a patchy health care system that doesn’t even address basic medical needs.
I received a letter from a former KBR contractor which crystallized the strange position of those who work in a war zone. D.A. Corson, who worked at a variety of companies in Iraq until 2008, wrote the following, which I thought worth sharing:
READ THE REST HERE
Back in the early part of 2008 I made a post, Sexual Harassment & Assault in Iraq: Tracy Barker’s Story. Through arbatration, Tracy was awarded nearly $3 million. According to Tracy’s web site, and to no ones surprise, KBR is refusing to pay the settlement.
The site states:
In a highly publicized corporate arbitration case involving an employee of an American defense contractor conducting business overseas, Tracy Barker, and the employer KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton; Court records filed on November 18, 2009 show the corporation suffered a judgment against it of $2,934,376.60 and now refuses to pay the face amount of the judgment and is seeking to modify the award and limit her pain and suffering losses to $300,000.00.
KBR moved the District Court in Houston to force Ms. Barker to litigate her case before an arbitrator and agreed to be bound by the result when her original case was filed in 2007. The case will return to the docket of the federal court in Houston for further litigation after the arbitrator considers KBR’s motion which is being opposed by Barker’s attorney.
The following is from the Associated Press.
Nov 19, 5:16 PM EST
Woman awarded $3M in assault claim against KBR
By JUAN A. LOZANO
Associated Press Writer
HOUSTON (AP) — A woman who claimed she was raped in 2005 while working in Iraq for a former Halliburton Co. subsidiary has been awarded nearly $3 million by an arbitrator to settle her case.
Tracy Barker had sued U.S. contractor KBR Inc., its former parent company Halliburton and several affiliates in May 2007, claiming she was sexually attacked by a State Department employee while working as a civilian contractor in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
A federal judge in Houston had dismissed Barker’s lawsuit in January 2008, ruling she had to abide by an employment agreement she signed that said any claims she made against the companies would have to be settled through arbitration and not the courts.
Court records filed this week show Barker was awarded a judgment of $2.93 million to settle her arbitration claim against KBR.
The Associated Press doesn’t usually identify those who report they were sexually assaulted, but Barker made her identity public in her lawsuit.
“It took me a long time to get here. I’m happy about the award,” Barker, 38, who lives in Yuma, Ariz., told the AP.
In a statement, Houston-based KBR said Thursday it disagreed with the interim ruling from the arbitrator and it has filed a motion to modify the award.
“However, the decision validates what KBR has maintained all along; that the arbitration process is truly neutral and works in the best interest of the parties involved,” the statement said.
Barker said she was upset KBR is trying to modify the award.
“They are still dragging it out,” she said. “They didn’t win and now they want to amend the award. You can’t with binding arbitration. How is that fair?”
In her lawsuit, Barker had claimed while working in the companies’ procurement department in Baghdad, she was housed in mostly male barracks and consistently subjected to sexually explicit comments and verbal and physical threats of abuse. Barker claimed she and other employees complained to the companies but they did nothing and instead retaliated against her.
Barker was later transferred to Basra, where she claimed that in June 2005, she was raped in her room by the State Department employee, who she also sued. That case was transferred to federal court in Virginia, where it was formally settled last week. Details of the settlement were not made public.
U.S. District Judge Gray Miller, in dismissing the lawsuit against KBR, said that until Congress tells courts that binding contracts to arbitrate do not include sexual harassment claims, Barker’s claims had to be arbitrated.
Last month, the Senate approved a measure prohibiting the Defense Department from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve sexual assault allegations and other claims through arbitration.
The amendment was attached to a larger defense spending bill. A vote on the full bill was expected later.
Miller did not dismiss claims by Barker’s husband, Galen Barker, that he had experienced loss of consortium – diminished care, companionship or affection – because of what his wife had experienced. The Barkers’ attorney asked Miller this week to put those claims back on his docket.
In September, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a similar lawsuit filed by another ex-contract worker, Jamie Leigh Jones, could go to court in Houston instead of arbitration.
Jones filed a federal lawsuit in 2007 claiming she was raped by Halliburton and KBR firefighters while working at Camp Hope, Baghdad, in 2005.
Jones has also made her identity public in her lawsuit and her face and name have been broadcast in media reports and on her own Web site.
In February 2008 Tracy did an interview with The People Speak Radio detailing what she suffered in Iraq and how the process was going at that time. As with many of these cases dealing with civilian contractors working for some of the more uncouth contracting companies, this has been a long drawn out deal. In Tracy’s interview with The People Speak Radio, she stated that she and Jana Crowder, now former owner of the web site “American Contractors in Iraq“, had created the War Zone Workers foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to helping United States citizens and legal residents working abroad for federal contractors, corporations, or government entities secure benefits under existing laws designed for their protection and to provide resources so that contractors can obtain immediate medical and mental healthcare upon their return home.
Even though I am mentioned as being a founder with this foundation, I have not heard anything more about it. I have searched Tracy’s web site and the internet and can find nothing about this foundation either. The web address that she mentions in her interview goes no where. I am sure that the length of time it has take to get this case settled the idea has gone by the wayside. Maybe once the courts are forced to abide by the arbitrators ruling, Tracy will be able to get this great idea off the ground.
April 8th & 9th, 2004 a bloody day for all in Iraq.
The days preceding the 8th & 9th were not easy days. Things were heating up all over Iraq. On April 7th, I took a convoy through Baghdad. We had problems on Sword, blockage, IED’s planted on the frontage road, ect… Then on April 8th & 9th the shit hit the fan.
I made this post on April 9th.
I know everyone has been watching the news, and I am sure there are some concerns. I still have not seen the news. I have been real busy to not be busy and have not had the chance to watch it. I hear what is going on up north and on my way down a few days ago, experienced a bit of it. I want to be truthful with everyone, but I don’t want to cause undue fear. Yes it is getting hotter in Iraq. And if you will remember, I believe I told everyone that it was going to get that way several months ago. I wont lie to ya’ll, our convoys are getting hit more often now. People are getting hurt, and some even killed. A few days ago, I heard a rumor that a convoy was hit and hit hard. I had several friends up there and was as worried about them as I am sure ya’ll are about me. I found out it was a Turkish convoy and they had done something that they should not have done. It doesn’t lessen the loss for their families, but understand, I will not leave a camp without escort. Yesterday, 3 convoys were hit. One was a KBR flatbed convoy from Arifjan.
Then on April 11th, I made this post.
I just wanted to let everyone know what we are being told here. We are back at start up status. That means that we are at the same status that they were at when all this started. We are at war again and are treating as such. I am not getting all the information that we, the drivers want at this time. I can say that as most of you know, there has been a KBR tanker driver kidnapped. There have been some KBR drivers killed and some are still missing. I have not heard from several of my friends that I know were up north. You would think with us sitting right here in the middle of it all that we would know more than the news, but it is not always that way. Drivers are quitting and going home at a very rapid pace. I can not and will not condemn them for doing that. I just know that I am going to stay. I can’t tell you how I will react or what I will do if one of my convoys is ever hit. That may be enough for me to come home and then it may not. I ask of everyone there in the stats to just pray for our guys and gals over here. We have lots of new people over here that are not familiar with he area and we have lots of people that were supposed to be going home in the next few days that are not going to be. MY friend Keith is one of them. He was due to fly out on the 14th. They recalled his unit and now after being here a year, he doesn’t know how much longer he will have to stay.
Then on April 12th, all KBR employees received this in their email.
TO: All Halliburton employees
FROM: Dave Lesar, chairman, president and CEO
SUBJECT: KBR casualties in Iraq
Our KBR colleagues in Iraq have suffered casualties in the renewed fighting over the past week. Several of our truck convoys were attacked during their work delivering fuel, food and supplies for the U.S. Army and the Iraqi people. I am sorry to report that two members of the Halliburton family were killed. At this time there are six more employees missing, and one, Thomas (Tommy) Hamill, was captured and is being held hostage. Eighteen others were wounded.
This is a grueling and difficult development, and we are working diligently to assist the families and the military in any way we can.
KBR employees and subcontractors have all made courageous decisions to work in Iraq. Daily, they risk their personal security to serve the troops and deliver much-needed services to the Iraqi people.
We are in constant communication with the authorities in Iraq and the families of the lost, missing and captured employees. Out of concern for the safety of these individuals and the privacy of their families, we are not releasing their names at this time. I am sure you all join me in expressing our condolences to the families of those who were lost and in praying for the safety of Tommy Hamill and the six missing individuals, and for the recovery of the wounded. We are grateful and supportive of everyone who continues to assist with this effort.
This is a very trying time for them and for all our fellow employees in Iraq. We are working with the coalition authorities to provide for their safety and security. And we are firm in our resolve to stay and complete our mission to provide logistical support to the coalition troops, humanitarian and reconstruction aid to the Iraqi people, and help with rebuilding Iraq’s oil industry.
I am proud of the work KBR is doing in the Middle East. It is essential work, and KBR is the right group for the job. The KBR employees and subcontractors working there are showing great courage, as well as skill and professionalism. All of us stand behind them, and we send them our heartfelt thanks along with our concern for their safety.
I will keep you informed as we learn more about the seven missing and captured employees. Until then, let us keep them in our thoughts and prayers.
Excerpt from the book “Cindy in Iraq: A Civilian’s Year in the war Zone”
“The bloodshed continued in early April. Westerners were being kidnapped all over the country. Eighteen of our troops were killed in a single day, April 6. To days later, a convoy was attacked and a driver was killed. The following day, one on our fuel convoys was ambushed west of Baghdad. Seven of my colleagues at KBR were taken hostage along with a soldier. One of the KBR drivers, Tommy Hamill, was paraded in front of television cameras on Al Jazeera and threatened with murder if the U.S. didn’t immediately pull back from the offensive in Fallujah.” “The fighting continued in and around Fallujah, but the terrorists didn’t kill Tommy Hamill. They killed everybody else, though. A couple of weeks later, the bodies of four KBR drivers and SGT. Elmer Krause were found in shallow graves near the site of the ambush. The whereabouts of the two other KBR drivers, along with Hamill, were unknown.”
In the end, Tommy Hamill escaped on May 5th, and over time, another KBR driver’s body was found, but the whereabouts of one driver still remains unknown. The family’s of soldiers like Staff SGT Keith Matthew ‘Matt’ Maupin, had to wait over 4 years for the body of their Fallen Soldier, their son, to be returned home.
I ask that you, some time in your day today, to please take a moment and remember the Hero’s that we lost on those most bloody of days 5 years ago.
My prayers and tears, go out to them all!
I get many comments and emails about how to deal with a loved one coming home from the war zone. Some of them are simple and other really break my heart. It is so hard some times to answer their questions. Mostly because I have to allow myself to feel again what I felt when I came home and that isn’t easy to do. I think that I have dealt with those feeling just to find that I am not sure that I have when I am asked questions like I have in the last few weeks.
On a post that I made back in 2006, a lady recently made a comment that took me days to think about and respond to. She wrote back and I had to look deep inside myself again. This is not easy, as I have said. I am starting a new relationship and get worried that if he sees “that side” of me he will run away. But I realize that, “that side” of me is part of me and he needs to know about it like everything else. Then there are other things that come up and make me even more nervous.
I made one response and she came back with another. I hope that she does not mind that I am bringing this interaction to the forefront. I believe that it might help me, her and others to bring some light to it. Maybe some of ya’ll that have dealt with this can also offer some advice.
Below is my response to her last comment.
You are not rambling and it does not bother me for you to contact me. It helps to talk. It may not solve anything, but it helps to ease the stress. And if you can find someone that understands what you are going through, then you can see that you are not alone.
I am at a loss for words. I can’t imagine loosing a child, much less being the one that finds them. I had many fears of loosing my oldest son while he was in Iraq. Being there together could bring up many concerns, would they notify me if something happened to him, would I be in a convoy and roll up to see him lying there on the ground…. many horrible fears!
Read the book you got on PTSD, but remember that even though there are common symptoms, everyone acts out differently. It would be better if he would see a councilor but if he wont, see if you can get him to go to the VA. Since ya’ll are both former military, he might be more willing to talk to someone there than in the civilian world.
Many of my friends say that I am such a different person now, than I was before I went over there. In some ways that is good, and in some it is frustrating. Just yesterday morning I was scared that my boyfriend would think I was nuts when I asked him to please turn the light out in the truck. (I am riding with him for a few weeks while my wrists heal.) It was dark outside and he had the light on inside the truck. I felt exposed! The longer it was on, the more nervous I got. He was done looking at what he needed to look at and we were just sitting in line. I asked him to turn the light off. He looked at me and asked why. I really didn’t want to have to explain because I felt silly. We are in the United States after all! But I could not shake that feeling of someone watching me through a scope. I asked him to please turn it off because I was uncomfortable. He gave me another funny look and turned it off. He didn’t press me for anything more, but I knew he was wondering what was going on in my head. I was scared that if I told him he would think I was NUTS and decide that I was to much trouble and dump me. But I told him later, in my own time and he says that he understand. He is former military, but never saw combat.
Lately it seems like things are popping up that keep reminding me of Iraq. It has been a while since that has happened. Just when I think I have got it all behind me, it comes up and slaps me in the face. In the last couple of weeks, I have had several calls from people thinking about going over, I ran into a guy, twice in two days, that I worked with over there, and I have had a couple of people ask me about dealing with someone coming home. It brings everything to the font of the mind. One of the things I learned while over there is to shut that stuff down, put it in the back of my mind and not think about it. Ya run a mission and something bad happens. You deal with what ya have to deal with to take care of the wounded and get back to camp. Once there, ya know ya have to go back out again. For me, to be able to deal with that and not go crazy, you shut your feelings down….put them in a box, lock them up, and do your best to forget it. Unfortunately, that “skill” overflows into the personal life. When that happens, it causes problems because they don’t understand. Then when the feelings creep up on ya and slap ya in the face, you feel silly and scared that the one that love you will think you have totally lost your mind and that they will leave you. And sometimes, we will push those we love away so that they don’t see all that we have pent up inside. We don’t want to burden them. It is easier to run them off than to have them leave us because they think we are crazy.
Thing is you have to stay true to yourself and your feelings, but be aware of his. I know you say you know what is inside, but this is not the same man that left to go over there. The job he took is not a life long career, it was never meant to be. So don’t think that he is giving up a good paying job to work on the marriage. War, combat, comes to an end sooner or later and ya have to come home after it ends. Do NOT come down on yourself for that. A relationship takes 2 people. One being gone for a long time will always put stress on it. You have to get to know each other again, fall in love again. Treat it like the two of you have just met. He is going to be that different. Yes, you are going to see some of the man you fell in love with once in a while, but you will never get the person back, fully. He also has to be willing to help himself and not waller in the mud, but that does take time. If you fight, stand up for yourself, but be aware and don’t push it to far. There are times that it is better to walk away for a while and come back to it when the feelings are not so high and out of control. But he has to know that as well.
UPDATE: Here is the link to the post I made on about Tracy. This post is still being commented on.
Sexual Harassment & Assult in Iraq: Tracy Barker’s Story
I received the following email this evening. I have removed the womans email address so that she does not receive unwanted emails. But I wanted people to understand where I stand on this and leave it and me alone I will address issues in this email at the end of this post.
From: Denise Howland
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 7:14 PM
To: cindy.morgan@cindyiniraq.com
Subject: Your promotion of your book
Ms. Morgan,
I noticed that anywhere you can find Tracy K Barkers name you have to add a promotion to your book.
To me you are just like Jamie Jones, revictimizing a victim who is Tracy. I dont get why you continue to knock Tracy down at every chance you get in your bloggings. Though I would never expect or request to explain this to me because i dont care about your reasons, however you are no better then what Jamie Jones did to Tracy.
Karma can be a bitch. Tell me if you did not report what happened to you in Iraq why mention it now? It was your decision to ignore reporting this and talking about this and to write your book instead. This of course never makes sense to anyone I know.
Tracy is not stating she is the first victim she is saying she is the ONLY VICTIM married to a military man who was a victim and she reported this. Big deifference however you continue to insist on berating her.
Have you ever once thought that maybe just maybe if you would have reported this and made it public you could have spared other victims from going through what happened.
So the true question is could these victims have been spared? If the answer is yes then perhaps this is on your hands and you should write a sequel to that book of yours of how you could have prevented the women becioming victims.
Though I can almost guarantee this will not be the last time I see you promoting your book off the backs of a rape victim however the only one I have seen you rape a victim over and over again from your blogs of your promotion is Tracy.
Its amazing, you bring a victim down taking the attention away from a victim gaining justice for everything that happened to her because you are jealous, then promote your book with the words that you did not come forward which is all on you and no one elses fault but your own.
Why dont you do what other victims do for each other, support another victim, start a blog or better yet start a petition. Whatever the case may be which I am sure from reading your constant promoting styles your character is not to support but to revictimize Tracy (Victim) all over again.
You should look up revictimize and perhaps you will finally get it. Do you see tracy promoting herself to your website and blogs. You need to let go of your jealousy and contempt for Tracy who was a victim and continues to be a victim at the hands of everyone around her.
All I can say for you is you have some seious issues and weight on those shoulders of yours. It is not Tracys fault on the decisions you chose to handle what happened to you and though not one person should ever be subjected to a violation of the body I hope that you finally fnd peace in the depths of your soul and peace with the decision you made to not report the crime committed against you.
Good luck in finding a calm place in your life where you can stop bashing every blog with Tracy and perhaps promote yourself and book where it does not involve revictimizing a victim and promote your book in a good honest way as other authors or people who pay authors do.
Denise
Now, first off. I did report what happened to me. Yes, it took me around a month to do so, and only after the guy came back a second time, but I DID report it! I have also gone back over my post and comments and NO WHERE can I find that I have ever victimized Tracy Barker OR Jamie Jones. I HAVE however stated the fact that Tracy and Jamie are getting help. I HAVE said that I am NOT pursuing a lawsuit against Halliburton/KBR/SEII and nor will I. I HAVE NOT filed a DBA claim either on this matter and will not be doing that either!
I am sick and tired of being attacked and accused of “re-victimizing” either of these women. Tracy came to me and ASKED ME FOR HELP. I posted something that SHE WROTE HERSELF! When I mention my book in relation to this subject, it is because that is the only place I have talked about what happened that night and that is the ONLY place that I will talk about that night. Just recently I was contacted by a reporter about this very topic. I told her, like I told EVERY OTHER REPORTER, I will not talk about that night. I will talk about what happened after and the fact that we were not given keys to our villa’s or rooms, but nothing about that night. I will talk about how I was told to keep my mouth shut and not tell the other women, just like Jamie and Tracy. BUT, I will not talk about that night! I will not voice and have not voiced ANY opinions about what happened to other women!
So please, leave me alone! And if you are not going to respect my wishes on this, MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT! I am sick and tired of dealing with idiot people that do not do their research themselves to see what I have really said in a blog post. OR they are related to one or the other and are pissed that THEY did not get what THEY wanted out of their contact with me, becasue I wont put myself out there as a “rape victim” and cry “oh poor me”. Grow the hell up, move on with your life and allow them and me to heal! I DO NOT consider myself to be a “rape victim”, I am a “SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVOR“ and I refuse to be labeled any other way.
BTW Denise, I am posting this on all of the blogs that I have and write for so that everyone will get the message.
Before I get started on this post I want ya’ll to know that I DID look at this radio station and I DID know that I was headed into enemy territory. But unless we are willing to step out there and tell our stories to everyone, even those that don’t agree with us, how can we say that we have tried to do something to make a difference?!
As you know my son, Kenny, and I had an interview last night with “The People Speak Radio“. I started to not do it once I saw the “causes” that they say they support. But then I got to thinking. How can I say that I have made a difference if I am not willing to stand up and tell my story? So I agreed to do the interview.
When I talked to Mike, the producer we talked about why I went to Iraq, the fact that I am a two time abused wife, my son and I were there at the same time and so many more things. I told him little stories of my life so that he would get an idea of who I am and the story I wanted to tell. I told him that I wanted this to be an inspiring story. I told him of the abused women that have emailed and called and told me that my story helped them and now they are out of the abusive relationship. I told him of the contractors and soldiers that email and call just wanting someone, that can understand, to just listen. I told hom of the assault in Kuwait, well, only that it happened, I don’t talk about it. I told him many things. He went on about how well I could speak and that he would tell Basima to just let me talk. I asked him to ahve her call me before the show so we could go over the questions that she wanted to ask. I wanted to get a feel for where this was going to go. I didn’t want to get into any political debates!
I never got a call!
I told Kenny to go look at their web site and do a bit of research. He didn’t know who “Code Pink” was and I wanted him prepaired if he was going to do this with me. He called me back a few minuets later in disbelife after looing at “Code Pink’s” web site. I told him that I didn’t like the way this was going already. Though all the interviews I have done with the book and other things, I have never had a real reporter not want to call me themselves and talk to me. They always want to give me a run down of how things will go and what some of the questions would be. It makes things go much easier for us both. But it didn’t happen this time.
All the things Mike and I had talked about were barley touched on. Basima didn’t even mentin that I was the author of “Cindy in Iraq: A Civilains Year in the War Zone” throughout the whole interview. If I had not mentioned that I wrote a book, it would not have been mentioned at all.
Needless to say, I was not totally happy with the interview. I hope that my son and I did our family, friends, and you proud. I emailed Mike after the show and told him that it didn’t go as I expected. I told him that “I didn’t want to get into the political stuff. I just wanted Kenny and I to tell our story and let people make up their oun minds.” This is what I got back….
“If you want to support the troops,
demand their return from Iraq.”
- Sgt. Kelly Dougherty, Iraq veteran
Cynthia…
I support our troops and oppose the war.
We had on Kelly as a guest. She is
now national director of
http://www.IVAW.org which is the
Iraq Veterans Against War. She summed
it up best about what supporting the
troops means at this time. We don’t
need one more mother’s son dying or
being injured over there. The
consecutive repeated tours of duty
have taken their toll and the statistic
of 120+ Iraq vets committing suicide
every week when they return home is
tragic.
Your interview was fine. I think you
and Kenny presented a great view of
what it is like for families who have
actually been to Iraq and know what
it’s like to be there. And the fact
that you have differing points of
view gave the audience things to
think about.
Thanks again, don’t worry, we’ll
get the archive up as soon as possible.
Mike
This is what I wrote back…
Well, I wondered why no one called me to go over things before the interview. I had NEVER had an interview with a reporter, till now, that didn’t talk to me before. I feel a bit set up. I really believd that ya’ll wated an inspiring stroy of a woman that pulled herself out of a mess of a life to become a stronger woman. The fact that I went to Iraq is only PART of the story & ya’ll didn’t even bring it up.
This was his last email….
I’m sorry Basima didn’t call you she
just told me her computer was down
apparently she never got the message
to call you before the interview.
I’m sorry. We would never set anyone
up. You told at least a part of your
story in Iraq, perhaps at another time
we can have you back for a follow up
when your film comes out.
Mike
But you can read and listen and find out on your own. I hope we did ya’ll proud.
