Sgt. Chris Peden

As if the VA didn’t have their own PR problems trying to explain away their backlog, now the military is facing the identical same predicament. What’s more, the military’s medical discharge backlog is now colliding with the VA’s. Déjà vu has never been so glaring as it now is here. The Tacoma News Tribune, my local fishwrap, decided to take an in-depth gander at it and comes away with an imperfect grasp. They failed to follow the trail of breadcrumbs to the Seattle VA. It’s eerily reminiscent of what we encounter in our claims filings-but only after we leave the service.

One thing we observe as we wend our way through the VA House of Mirrors is the inexplicably long, drawn out adjudication procedures. 385 days is nothing any more. I know the VA advertises far less in their jaunts up to Capitol Hill but we know better than to listen to Gen. Allison Hickey sing the Beatles’ “It’s getting better all the time” again and again. After three years, it’s redundant and untrue.

So I was not the least surprised to read the article this morning and observe the military is employing the same pigeon-holing technique as their counterparts at VA to create ever-larger inboxes to accommodate the overflow. What does surprise me is that the Army is recalcitrant about 86’ing all the PTSD deadwood during this latest round of Reduction in Forces (RIF). In fact, Medical Evaluation Boards (MEBs) have always been the first vehicle employed to begin the RIF. The Army hates to pay anyone who sits on their duff unless they’re incarcerated. Well, excluding generals at any rate.

As the article points out, Sgt. Chris Peden is suffering a serious bent brain. Unlike the recently deceased shootist in the morgue down at Fort Hood, Peden’s is a legitimate combat injury incurred in a hostile environment. The Army is fully cognizant of this yet they continue to play with fire and shuffle him to and fro in an endless Monopoly game from  Portland back to Fort Lewis.

It seems the Army has also caught Abbreviation Fever and has begun creating cute-sounding names for dysfunctional entities in which to house all these folks. The Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES) is a case in point. The Army itself states that the IDES process is supposed to take 295 days from the time the Army begins considering a soldier for an early medical retirement to the day that soldier starts receiving VA benefits. Think about that. Two hundred ninety five days. The Air Force inducted me, gave me basic training, advanced training and had me in situ in a theatre of war-all in the record time of two hundred thirty days. Fully clothed. In 1970. At the end upon my return, they invested ninety (90) days divesting themselves of me claiming I had irredeemable personality disorders. How is it these folks can stand proud and be complaisant about a 295-day termination process that often segues into three years as in Sgt. Peden’s circumstances? I doubt he’s alone.

With the advent of computers and satellites, it would seem that record could be exceed by a magnitude of 10. Yet here we read of an endless parade of Medical Evaluation Boards (MEBs) investigation, medical and psychiatric exams, committing Sgt. Peden to a  VA inpatient ward at the Portland VAMC and several other parking places while they cut bait instead of fishing. All this to see if Sgt. Peden is salvageable.

I don’t profess to having any medical training nor do I aspire to. I do have an innate sense of what is right and wrong about others around me. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to ascertain when someone is a half a bubble off after a combat deployment. Or two. Or three. Throw in some SFWs and a few buddies who are room temperature and you suddenly aren’t going to Be All You Can Be. Why try to salvage this individual or even go through the motions of trying to repair what’s broken? I suppose you could make a case for repair/reinsert were it some critical MOS but Sgt. Peden is irreparably damaged by his own metrics and not a candidate for investing a lot of energy in cross-training to a less-stressful job. In fact, having attempted suicide already, he has voted with his actions. That ought to be pretty damning evidence against any repair order.

Now, as to why any military organization would need three long years to outprocess you and get your VA benefits on line needs investigation. What I strongly believe is that Sgt. Peden could be out on the street with the wife-san and trying to glue his brains and life back together in as little as a month to six weeks. If you could out-process from CONUS and travel to Afstan in that period of time and be boots on the ground shooting, why would it take a timeline like that below to reverse the process?

October 2012– fellow soldiers notice Sgt. Peden isn’t “all there”.  They ship him back to Ft. Lewis. Followed by:

1) temporary posting him to the Warrior Transition Battalion which is the Army’s way of putting you on medical waivers. Then, suddenly…

2) running short of NCOs and assigning him back to his original unit (A Co., 4th Batt., 23rd Inf. Rgmt.) as a “supervisor”.

3) February 2013– shipping him off to the Portland VAMC psyche ward for unstable individuals who are at risk for hurting themselves (or others) for a month.

4) April 2013– reassignment to 23rd Inf. Regiment again (current) and  continued refusal to reassign him to the Warrior Transition Battalion.

And then they wonder why some of us go bug-fucky.

The Army insists the MEB process is necessary to discover if a soldier is recyclable. This overlooks the present circumstances of a major RIF in progress as well as Sgt. Peden’s prognosis. By his own admission, all the King’s men and all the King’s horses are not going to get this Humpty Dumpty back in the saddle. So why the interminable delay with little or no mental/medical intervention? With over 22 soldiers or Veterans sucking on lead lollipops every day across the fruited plain, why delay a day or a week longer than necessary to get him into the hands of the VA and some good help? Granted, I’m being facetious using VA and good help in the same sentence but let’s assume that is the preferred alternative to what he is now experiencing.

The problem is glaringly obvious. There is no place for Sgt. Peden at VA yet. He has to take a number as they all do. Were the Army, Air Force and the Navy to suddenly divest themselves of all their unwanted, damaged personnel baggage, the VHA would sink under the load. There simply is no room for the Sgt. Pedens’ of the military services yet. It has to be accomplished gradually-often on a triage basis- in order not to tip the boat. We observed something similar after the Vietnam Misunderstanding. Thousands of Vets were cut loose and left to their own devices. They, in turn, became homeless and hopelessly addicted to drugs with the complicit knowledge of the VA and no one did a thing about it for decades. They also started taking their own lives but again,  no one complained. That era is mercifully over and we consider it a dark chapter best left to  dim memory. With the social media sites available now, nothing of this magnitude can escape inspection.

With this sure knowledge that simply opening the front gates and turning all the defective soldiers loose to fend for themselves a la post-Vietnam is not an option, the Army and the other services are forced to babysit them and release them in controlled numbers so as not to create a lump in the VA python. The saddest part of this is that future Veterans like Sgt, Peden could begin the healing process far sooner and more successfully if they were able to put as many miles as possible between them and the base they are artificially incarcerated in.

Sgt. Peden began this odyssey in late 2011. It is now spring of 2014. Most of us would consider this ample time to inspect, detect and reject Peden in the artful words of Arlo Guthrie. Nevertheless, here’s the projected timeline according to the article:

Peden is nearing the end of his disability process. This month, he received his final ratings from the VA and the Army. He expects to be able to start taking leave from his unit for good by about June, and he should finish the entire process by November at the latest.

Strikes me that he’s been playing Angry Birds and collecting E-5 pay for over two years and a few months and hopes to have this puppy in the bag by three. Anyone out there see a problem with this picture? Sound like delay, deny, until we die? I see it as a typical punishment for attempting to squirrel out of a commitment to serve. Either that or the babysitting/triage theorem is more on point. Either way, it’s certainly an unceremonious way to treat a warrior whose only desire is to go home and reintegrate with society. Considering the military frowns on those who lollygag and malinger, we would expect them to expedite this process to reduce payroll and preserve every dime possible for other military endeavors. Since Sgt. Peden doesn’t fall into the gold brick category, the insult is all the more egregious.

And we, as Veterans, thought we were getting the run around. Shoo, doggies. At least most of us get a denial in less than sixteen months. Too bad you can’t file a Writ of Mandamus in the Army.