Fallen warriors face obstacles getting back in action (12/5/04)

Fallen warriors face obstacles getting back in action (opinion)
By David Wood
david.wood@newhouse.com
December 5, 2004


Chuck Bartles took heart when President Bush pinned a Purple Heart to his chest this year, lauding him for courage and determination despite grievous wounds. Sgt. Bartles, then struggling to recover from having his right arm blown off in Iraq, felt even better when Bush made a stirring speech. Just because a soldier has lost a leg or an arm in combat, the president said, doesn't mean he's useless. "Today, if wounded service members want to remain in uniform and can do the job, the military tries to help them stay."

Easy words. Inaccurate words.

Bartles was wounded in October 2003 by a roadside bomb blast that killed a fellow soldier. A civil affairs specialist with a master's degree, fluency in Russian and a Bronze Star for heroism in battle, he's the kind of man the Army would want to keep. He sweated for months to qualify for duty. This summer, his Army doctors finally certified him fit. His commander wanted him back.

Jubilant, Bartles re-enlisted. The next day he got a form letter from the Army. "Your medical condition prevents satisfactory performance of duty," it said. The verdict: "permanent disability." Bartles, 26, is fighting that judgment. His reserve unit, the 418th Civil Affairs Battalion of Belton, Mo., returns to Iraq in April. "I am going with them, no doubt about that," Bartles vows.

Combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is producing a parade of soldiers, Marines and others -- about three a week -- who have suffered traumatic or surgical amputation of at least one limb. Many are driven by duty, professionalism or a burning devotion to their buddies to return to their jobs. New surgical techniques and high-tech artificial limbs have enabled surgeons, prosthetists and therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to bring them to higher levels of functioning than ever before.

But the Army is torn between its profound emotional commitment to these fallen warriors and its cold mission of providing fit, tough soldiers for war. And like much of society, it has been biased against amputees and other disabled people, according to current officers and retired military amputees. Now, it is trying to throw off those preconceptions while treating all soldiers fairly.

It is a battle. In a series of high-level meetings this fall, senior officers and federal officials were unable to write a clear new policy for helping amputees. "It was like pushing a noodle uphill," said Lt. Gen. Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel. In frustration, Hagenbeck, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, pledged to personally review the case of any military amputee who feels he has been treated unfairly.

But it may not be so easy. An amputee faces a two-step process to get back to duty. First, a medical evaluation board assesses how capable he is of resuming his duties. Later, a physical evaluation board decides whether he has demonstrated he can perform his particular job.

The board's job "is not to assist the soldier in furthering his career," said Dennis E. Brower, legal adviser to the Physical Disability Agency, which operates the board. "All job requirements are listed in Army regulations. All soldiers' cases are adjudicated exactly the same.

"Emotional responses," Brower said, "are not appropriate."

It was this board that turned down Bartles' application, despite his doctors' and commanding officer's enthusiastic recommendations, for approval to return to his job. While Bartles is appealing the decision, Army officials said they have no choice but to apply the existing regulations.

"We try to be consistent," said Brower, a former Army officer. "Say a severely burned individual comes to us and says, 'I am disfigured and can't run because my muscles are contracted, but I'd like to be a soldier, too, would you give me the same special treatment you are supposedly giving to the amputees?'

"We cannot be looking at people differently that one type of injury is more worthy than another."

Wood writes for Newhouse News Service.