| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq |
| 2007-08-19 |
| The Guardian is at it again Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up. When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by. The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan - a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad - hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq. Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad's international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust. Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began. They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it's like we've become no more than numbers now.' The first soldier starts in again. 'My husband was injured here. He hit an improvised explosive device. He already had a spinal injury. The blast shook out the plates. He's home now and has serious issues adapting. But I'm not allowed to go back home to see him. If I wanted to see him I'd have to take leave time (two weeks). And the army counts it.' A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. 'We're plodding through this,' he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. 'I don't know how much more plodding we've got left in us.' When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?' It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired. But the exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them. 'I counted it the other day,' says a major whose partner is also a soldier. 'We have been married for five years. We added up the days. Because of Iraq and Afghanistan we have been together for just seven months. Seven months ... We are in a bad place. I don't know whether this marriage can survive it.' The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'. Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen. Is this true? And it is not only the soldiers that are worn out. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the destruction, or wearing out, of 40 per cent of the US army's equipment, totalling at a recent count $212bn (£105bn). But it is in the soldiers themselves - and in the ordinary stories they tell - that the exhaustion of the US military is most obvious, coming amid warnings that soldiers serving multiple Iraq deployments, now amounting to several years, are 50 per cent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress. The army's exhaustion is reflected in problems such as the rate of desertion and unauthorised absences - a problem, it was revealed earlier this year, that had increased threefold on the period before the war in Afghanistan and had resulted in thousands of negative discharges. 'They are scraping to get people to go back and people are worn out,' said Thomas Grieger, a senior US navy psychiatrist, told the International Herald Tribune in April. 'Modern war is exhausting,' says Major Stacie Caswell, an occupational therapist with a combat stress unit attached to the military hospital in Mosul. Her unit runs long group sessions to help soldiers with emerging mental health and discipline problems: often they have seen friends killed and injured, or are having problems stemming from issues at home - responsible for 50 to 60 per cent of their cases. One of the most common problems in Iraq is sleep disorders. 'This is a different kind of war,' says Caswell. 'In World War II it was clear who the good guys and the bad guys were. You knew what you would go through on the battlefield.' Now she says the threat is all around. And soldiering has changed. 'Now we have so many things to do...' 'And the soldier in Vietnam,' interjects Sergeant John Valentine from the same unit, 'did not get to see the coverage from home that these soldiers do. We see what is going on at home on the political scene. They think the war is going to end. Then we have the frustration and confusion. That is fatiguing. Mentally tiring.' 'Not only that,' says Caswell, 'but because of the nature of what we do now, the number of tasks in comparison with previous generations - even as you are finishing your 15 months here you are immediately planning and training for your next tour.' Valentine adds: 'There is no decompression.' The consequence is a deep-seated problem of retention and recruitment that in turn, says Caswell, has led the US army to reduce its standards for joining the military, particularly over the issue of no longer looking too hard at any previous history of mental illness. 'It is a question of honesty, and we are not investigating too deeply or we are issuing waivers. The consequence is that we are seeing people who do not have the same coping skills when they get here, and this can be difficult. 'We are also seeing older soldiers coming in - up to 41 years old - and that is causing its own problems. They have difficulty dealing with the physical impact of the war and also interacting with the younger men.' Valentine says: 'We are not only watering down the quality of the soldiers but the leadership too. The good leaders get out. I've seen it. And right now we are on the down slope.' |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #15 Congrats NGuard! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-08-19 23:37 |
| #14 Somewhat OT... Went through a quick-cooker program in another field, back in the old country. There was a lack of contract programmers (1980, a first sign that paracapitalistics tendencies started to appear in the economy afer the 1968 experiment was squashed by Rusin invasion), so the company tha neded them invited about 300 people that were working already in puters--operators and such. After giving us IBM aptitude tests, 300 shrunk to 60. A 3-months program that contained 4 years of Tech U followed. Just puters and programming, no poli-sci, marxism-wankism. 7:00 to 20:00, with 15 minute break for a lunch. Sunday off. 15 people finished (the rest dropped out) and after final exams (design 4 different programs in 4 lingos and perform a viva voce defense, with a proof), 6 new programmers were hatched, me one of them. Not that I was somehow a rather bright lad, I was just focused, and the job promised degree of flexibility unheard off at the time behind Iron Curtain. But the main reason I wanted to go through the program was that I already had my escape form behind th Iron Curtain on a drawing board n thought tht new kill set may prove to be rather handy at my final destination. I had several contingencies... the fun part was that one of the programs for my final exam, written in Fortran, calculated the size and shape (including stripes) of a hot air baloon, for a load of 240kg, elevation of 700m and distance of 60 km. The examiners got curious where I got the idea, I mumbled something about just usual type of curiosity that was my trait and that I saw something on TV wich gave me the inspiration. ;-) Not sure I would be keen to repeat that kind of load and experience, but I was still a kid (late 20's) thus not as rusty as I am now. Of course, the learning never stopped, but it goes on at much slower and relaxed pace. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-19 23:34 |
| #13 N Guard -- it's voices like yours that I kept waiting for in reply to this article. Thank you --- 60 day wonder in my mind, WOW -- congrats, you deserve these congrats for your achievement, cause it is surely your achievement. Job well done... and thank you. At least once a day, kinda nod your head sideways and down, and feel a little presence on your left shoulder. (I like hiding on that left shoulder.) Kinda smile and know, that presence you feel, is not only me, I'll be there everyday, rooting you on, but all your unknown friends at Rantburg and other Americans, wishing you well. Staying close to you, so you stay close with us. |
| Posted by: Sherry 2007-08-19 23:00 |
| #12 Congratulations, N Guard! With officers like you, we'll do just fine. My mother did three years of high school in six months like that; she said the promise of a diploma and sleep at the end kept her going. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-08-19 22:36 |
| #11 WRT to the officer shortage, it is real. But not for the reasons that the useful idiots are implying. Having just graduated OCS myself, it is because making it into the officer ranks is hard. According to my classmates who have at least one deployment prior to OCS, OCS was more stressful than being shot at. I found this to be true also. The washout rate in my class was 43%. Of course, I went thru the accelerated program. Would you beleive I am a 60 day wonder. They cut out non-essentials like weekends off, sleeping and eating. |
| Posted by: N Guard 2007-08-19 22:06 |
| #10 As of 2000, Academy grads made up 17% of new officers and officers and 55% came from ROTC. Overall, 16.7% of all active duty army officers are USMA grads and 59.7 of were commissioned via ROTC. Don't know what the proportions are for the reserves and guard. Source: defenselink.mil |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-08-19 20:24 |
| #9 Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen. Unless things have changed drastically in the last dozen or so years, most new lieutenant get their commission from other than West Point. Most officers use to come from the ROTC programs. As for the 3,000 shortfall. Let's remember that Congress only got around to authorizing an [temporary] additional 20,000 troops from a pre-war standing of around 480,000. That means you're going to be short on officers for time being till the system can catch up, not only for the direct fills but for the factors of normal turnover. Another game of Three Card Monty with facts. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-08-19 18:52 |
| #8 A really big question, and one not as obvious as it might seem, is "What are the troops *doing* in Iraq?" Everybody assumes that *all* military personnel are fighting; then, when they think about it, they realize that the vast majority involved in combat operations are actually *supporting* those relative few who are doing the actual fighting. A lot of those support jobs are not high stress. However, we need to realize that their are a LOT of military personnel in Iraq who are not directly involved in doing either fighting *or* direct support for the fighters. They are doing other things. And the big question is "What other things?" For example, the US military is deeply involved in construction projects of all kinds in Iraq, several thousand of them in progress right now. They are also very engaged in "external security". For example, manning Patriot anti-missile batteries against Iran. Then you have IA and police trainers. Administrative liaisons all over the place, to coordinate with the Iraqi government and US State Department and other non-military organizations. But the numbers of such personnel really start to add up. And it doesn't even count those who are not in Iraq proper, but in the region and the Navy. In truth, this doesn't diminish the fatigue or stress of combat and many combat support personnel. But it does show that the numbers of those affected may be far less than the military as a whole. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-08-19 18:31 |
| #7 Great disinformation. Thanks to Kerry and al-G for letting al-Q know they are getting whipped by the least educated most under equipped Americans avaialble. But I am sure this will all turn around on a dime upon the coronation of Her Royal Thighness, Hilary! |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-08-19 16:47 |
| #6 Tired soldiers, wanting the damn war to end. I for one am stunned by this. |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2007-08-19 16:35 |
| #5 The solution is Tea Time at 11 and 4 each and every day, no matter what. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-08-19 16:31 |
| #4 And even with the fatigued soldiers and worn-out equipment, we are push Al-Q out of any safe havens they have in Iraq. What amazes me is that the Media finds it news that soldiers are tired after combat missions. Well, duh!!! Combat is extremely stressful and tiring; hell, just patrolling in all that gear in the summer temperature of Iraq is exhausting. And as for the wear and tear on the equipment, that is why you buy it - to use it. Of course, the fact that the US is also replacing entire series of equipment with new and different equipment {HUMMERs with MRAPs} while at the same time destroying the enemy is carefully glossed over. I also notice that none of the supposed bitching soldiers in the one paragraph are named : how do we know if they actually said what Al-Grauniad purports or if they even exist? There is NO way to fact check the article when the writer carefully avoids using names - guess the TNR debacle is having an impact. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2007-08-19 16:23 |
| #3 Did Webb or Murtha write this screed? |
| Posted by: Phinater Thraviger 2007-08-19 15:59 |
| #2 "Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready." Well DUH! Why would the Army have more 'combat-ready' units than they need for, well, COMBAT. This is USA standard. 1/3 deployed, 1/3 just back from deploying and 1/3 readying to deploy. |
| Posted by: Brett 2007-08-19 15:28 |
| #1 wishful thinking by the Grauniad |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-08-19 15:06 |