Posted on 05/03/2005 3:10:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
American soldiers, having survived the day-to-day danger, fatigue and peril of their recent combat assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan, are dying in alarming numbers back home – in motor vehicle accidents.
"We absolutely have a problem," says J.T. Coleman, spokesman for the Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker in Alabama, which is tracking the trend, told USA Today. "The kids come back and they want to live life to its fullest, to its wildest. They get a little bit of time to let their hair down, and they let their hair all the way down and do everything to excess. They drink to excess. They eat to excess. They party to excess."
From October 2003 to September 2004, when troops began returning in large numbers from Iraq, 132 GIs died in vehicle accidents, a 28 percent increase from the previous year. Two-thirds of them were veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan.
Since then, crashes have claimed the lives of another 80 soldiers in seven months, up 23 percent over the same period a year earlier, and 80 percent were veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan.
And the figures don’t include GIs who recently left the service or soldiers who have been deactivated from the Army Reserve or National Guard.
Army brass fear that a safe return from a combat zone has left many soldiers feeling invincible. So they drive too fast, sometimes under the influence of alcohol, and lose control of their cars, trucks, motorcycles and ATVs.
Robert Tripp, whose son Robert Jr. died in a crash in Lake Jackson, Texas, just three days after he returned from Iraq, said, "He thought that nothing could hurt him now."
And Staff Sgt. Gregory Dickerson, a veteran of Iraq, said, "The war changes you." And going fast is "like a drug – the newest crack out there."
Vincent Withers, 27 and a veteran of Iraq, is the subject of one tragic example related by USA Today.
"Behind the wheel of a borrowed Pontiac Trans Am last June, police say, he told a passenger at a stop light just outside Fort Bragg: ‘Let's see what this thing can do before we hit the top of the hill.’
The Trans Am reached 90 mph before Withers swerved to avoid another car, hit the median and launched the Trans Am into an oncoming car, police say. Withers and the driver of the other car, a father of two, were killed," said the paper.
The surge in traffic fatalities among soldiers has prompted the Army to take action. Brig. Gen. Joseph Smith, commander of the Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker in Alabama, has enlisted epidemiologists to study the link between traffic fatalities and the war.
Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who works with the Army, confirmed that soldiers often return home with a feeling of invincibility. He said their attitude frequently is: "I’m 20 years old. I’ve lived through firefights. Nothing can touch me."
The Readiness Center has created a computer program that identifies travel risks for soldiers, an advanced driver course for GIs and a safe-driving ad campaign.
To warn soldiers of the dangers they face on the road, the Army erected billboards outside the entrance to Fort Hood in Texas. On the billboard, lights flash red or amber if a soldier has died in a vehicle accident and green if there have been no fatalities in 30 days.
The green lights haven’t flashed since January.
But its not as if the soldiers don’t know what they’re doing. "The war changes you," said Staff Sgt. Gregory Dickerson, 31, a soldier with the 4th Infantry Division – a division set to go back to Iraq later this year. "Every day I was in Iraq, I had a chance of dying – 365 days. Now, when I make it home ... you want to live."
80 of them?
Seems to me that far more than that die every month in traffic accidents in that age group given the same sample size.
Be careful out there. We love you guys!
Why, I'll bet there are Vietnam-era vets who were never in Vietnam who are still living it up like this.
The green lights haven’t flashed since January.
At Fort Knox they have a car on display in front of the Commissary that had been involved in a drunk-driving accident. It's so torn up you can hardly tell it's a car, much less what type.
It says 80 % (percent)
Well... a year earlier, ~more~ of them were in Afghanistan and Iraq and they weren't back here driving around in cars.
See it every week at Fort Hood. It's not a new phenomenon, though, just a sad and tragic one.
Not sure what your point is?
This apparently disproportionate loss of life through traffic accidents, has affected soldiers from the time of the Second World War. Often weary, but determined to make the most of any furlough time they had, GIs would drive straight through, 24 hours and more at a stretch.
Sometimes they got through unscathed.
But when the problem is compounded with the use of alcohol, the traffic accidents rise exponentially.
31W. Do they still call it "The Dixie Dieway?"
Only that it's an old story. GIs do this stuff. They did it during Vietnam and they're still doing it today. Doesn't mean I don't feel sympathy for them. Just that it's an old, old story.
You think that is sad. I know a woman at work whose son just got out of the Marine Corps after seven months in Iraq and has signed up with a security company to go back to Iraq for six months for $100k. His mom is about to lose her mind.
Yes, it is an old, old story.
It's only going to get worse. The Army missed their recruiting goal by another 6000 in April.
The simplest solution would be to place a Multi-Service Out Processing Center in Germany or England.
When soldiers rotate out, they are off-loaded at the Out Processing Center and given a week to vent anger and de-compress while attending familiarization classes and checking off blocks in their paperwork. Families could even fly "Space A" to the Center(s) on the taxpayers' dime.
Considering the money invested in these troops and their potential for future re-utilization. I'm surprised that something like this isn't already in effect.
Jack.
This isn't news to me. Two high school classmates went to Vietnam (infantrymen) and came back safe, sound, and un-wounded. They were both dead within a year from auto accidents. Actually one car, the other motorcycle. Both were on the receiving end of the accident.
Its going to happen again as it has happened before.
Approx. 25 plus percent of military fatalities in Iraq are due to non-combat causes, accidents, et cetera; an accident-related fatality RATE on a per capita basis probably not unlike the accident-related fatality rate among milpers stationed in the States, in training status of whatever.
Not news to me either. Had a friend make it through his tour in Nam where he survived several heavy firefights. We both came back to the same base. A month later while on leave and while booking it on his new motorcycle, he tried to pass a car on the right side of the road. He ran into a bridge and was killed. A horrible waste of a life.
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