A soldier from Los Angeles blamed the combination of dangerous deployments and the gloom and gray that units encounter when they return to this sprawling military base in the often cloudy Pacific Northwest. A private from Michigan said it was not the weather, just the war. He said he was getting out of the Army for good next week, after being demoted, and that he planned to spend the foreseeable future smoking dope in Amsterdam. Another soldier said his superiors challenged his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder; his case was one of hundreds that have been challenged. |
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Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a Managing Editor for OpEd News, and a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.