Jordan Hollender
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Private First Class Mark Siegel set out on his first patrol in Iraq with a bad feeling in the air. The Army road on which he and fellow soldiers in the Fort Lewis–based 4th Stryker Brigade were traveling had two known hot spots for Improvised Explosive Devices. Others on the team had patrolled the road many times before without incident, but they couldn't help worrying that their luck was running out.
Their convoy of four eight-wheel-drive combat vehicles, called strykers, drove through the forestlands of the north, a topography different from the desert that covers much of Iraq. With Siegel riding in the rear of the lead stryker, making sure nobody approached from behind, they warily passed the first IED hot spot. Nothing. As they approached the second, they paused. "We moved forward about an inch and boom," Siegel recalls. As the IED hit, he closed his eyes. "When I opened them, it was all smoky. I looked around and saw fire. I remember hearing someone scream, 'Climb out through the air guard hatch.'" That's the opening at the top of the stryker.
He did and took a breath, reassuring himself that he was alive. The team leader was not so lucky. Siegel had caught a glimpse of him engulfed by flames in the stryker, "burning like a candle." Siegel says he himself suffered a concussion, smoke-inhalation burns, and other injuries. He was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well, he says.
Shortly after the incident, the Army transported him back to Fort Lewis, where on May 28 he became one of approximately 20,000 Iraq War veterans so far to receive a Purple Heart.
Less than a month later, Siegel was escorted off the same Army base and instructed to sign a document stipulating that he could not return. He had been kicked out—or in military parlance, "administratively separated"—due to a urinalysis that revealed the presence of cocaine. As a result, he lost a host of benefits he might have otherwise received, including military-provided health care, disability pay, and eligibility for the GI Bill.
Siegel is one of numerous combat veterans being penalized after turning to drugs and alcohol or acting out in other ways. The Army and Navy discharged 3,300 people for drug use alone in the 2007 fiscal year (which ended September 2007) . (The two military branches did not supply figures for how many of those people had served in Iraq or Afghanistan.) Fort Lewis released nearly 200 soldiers for drug use in the first 10 months of the 2008 fiscal year—almost twice the number that it did in 2003, the year the Iraq War began.
The military's approach troubles many people inside and outside the Armed Forces. They maintain that soldiers who are having trouble coping with their wartime experiences—often because of medical conditions like PTSD and traumatic brain injury—are being disciplined rather than helped.
"Nobody's saying [substance-abusing soldiers] should stay in," says Bart Stichman, co-director of the Washington, D.C.–based National Veterans Legal Services Program, which recently started an initiative to aid combat veterans facing misconduct discharges. "The question is: What kind of benefits should they have?" Stichman and others assert that the military should ensure that physically and mentally damaged soldiers are set up with medical care and other assistance.
"If you've honorably served in the war, then we owe you the assistance you need when you come home," adds Steve Robinson, a longtime veterans' activist who currently works for a Colorado-based organization called ONE Freedom that provides training on post-deployment adjustment.
Colby Vokey, a retired lieutenant colonel who until recently supervised the Marine Corps' defense attorneys (kind of like public defenders in the civilian world) along the West Coast, puts it this way: "We send the soldier to Iraq. We break him. We have an obligation, at least, to fix him."
Siegel grew up in New York City. He wrote short stories and poetry and learned to play the flute, saxophone, trumpet, and guitar, among other instruments. After high school, he got a degree in computer networking and security from a vocational school. He then bounced around various tech-support jobs and had a falling-out with his parents. "I wasn't doing anything with my life," he says.
So at 22 he joined the Army. "It felt like I was getting my life back on track," he says.
He made a good impression upon arriving in Iraq in October 2007. "When Mark first got there, he was a good soldier," recalls Shenandoah Reynolds, a 30-year-old sergeant in the 4th Brigade who served alongside Siegel both in Iraq and at Fort Lewis. "He was gung-ho. He did everything right. He showed the proper respect and acted accordingly."
A month later came the stryker explosion. Siegel says he struggled over the next couple of months as he continued his Iraq deployment. "Because I had banged up my knee, it was hard for me to keep up with my duties," he recalls. Plus he was obsessed with the notion that he was going to die. In January the Army transported him for medical care to Landstuhl, Germany, where he was judged sick enough to send home. Back at Fort Lewis, he says he received a diagnosis of TBI and PTSD. (Fort Lewis spokesperson Joseph Piek says he cannot discuss Siegel's medical information for privacy reasons. He did confirm the stryker incident, Siegel's Purple Heart, and details of his military service in Iraq, which Piek described as "honorable.")
