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Battle-Hard G.I.'s Learn To Release Their Pain

Jun-14-2005 » Filed Under: General Military

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By Jonathan Finer, Washington Post

BAGHDAD -- When three Minnesota National Guardsmen died in a roadside bombing in February, their home towns grieved in the usual way. Flags flew at half-staff. Streets were renamed in honor of the fallen. And neighbors spoke of a war brought home in painful relief.

But the soldiers who were left behind -- a company of about 150 builders, farmers, policemen and students -- still had 10 months remaining on their year-long deployment. And haunted by the deaths of men some had known since childhood, they had to find a way to carry on. So before the unit even held a memorial service, the commanding officer called in the specialists: a combat stress control team from the Army's 55th Medical Company out of Indianapolis, whose slogan is "serving the best by controlling the stress."

A group of trained therapists, led by a lieutenant colonel who is also a clinical psychologist, debriefed each soldier individually, and encouraged them in group sessions to share their feelings about the incident and their memories of the dead.

"They showed us it's okay to actually talk about this, to not just clam up," said Capt. Troy Fink, 35, the commanding officer and only full-time soldier in Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 151st Field Artillery Regiment, which is based in Morris, Minn. "I've still got some guys who hurt pretty bad. I hurt some days. It's important to maintain that certain image in front of my soldiers, but sometimes we all need a release." [...]

Now, the U.S. military has intensified efforts to mitigate the impact of traumatic experiences on the mental health of its troops.

Combat stress control teams are deployed at six U.S. bases across Iraq, tasked with identifying front-line soldiers suffering from early symptoms of PTSD, a condition that causes a range of psychiatric and physical symptoms, from violent flashbacks to difficulty sleeping. The battalion's headquarters in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone serves as an oasis for overwhelmed fighters, who are pulled out of the field for three to seven days of counseling, classes on psychological disorders and relaxing by the pool at one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. [...]


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