ANCHOR INTRO:
Colorado Springs Gazette journalist David Philipps was announced last week as the 2014 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting, for his series “Other than Honorable.”
It tells the story of U.S. soldiers returning from combat who are then discharged for so-called misconduct, or relatively minor violations.
The discharge leaves the soldiers WITHOUT medical benefits, even though many of them are suffering from traumatic physical AND mental conditions that are often the cause of their misconduct.
Correspondent Mary MacCarthy met up with David Philipps in Denver, and starting by asking him about this fundamental injustice these former soldiers are facing:
IN: "Thousands of soldiers…"
OUT: "That's the coolest thing."
DUR: 4'33"
GENERIC: http://www.fsnradionews.com/feeds/0224PulitzerInterview-MM-pkg-generic.mp3
SCRIPT:
SOT David Philipps, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
"Thousands of soldiers are coming back with either a traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder or both, and they’re injuries that can’t be seen. And oftentimes the symptoms of them like like exactly like misconduct. And so the army treats it like misconduct because the army doesn’t have the science yet to really tell the difference. And so they say, ’this soldier’s not badly injured, this soldier’s just bad.’ And they punish that soldier. By kicking them out of the army for misconduct. Now, the real tragedy of that is that when they’re kicked out, if they’re given an other-than-honorable discharge, they are separated from their veterans benefits forever. And so that basically means the soldiers, the veterans who need these benefits the most, don’t get them.”
Question: “How much awareness is there in the U.S., that this is happening to returning soldiers who are among the most affected and worst injured in combat?
SOT David Philipps
“There’s growing awareness that it’s happening, but it’s taken years, and thousands and thousands of people going through this situation. In fact, there are Vietnam veterans who are right now suing the government, trying to get benefits because the same things happened to them. So it’s difficult, there seems to be growing awareness of it but it remains a very difficult battle for each individual soldier that this happened to to try to appeal to the VA and get some help.”
Question: David the soldiers you profiled were at Fort Carson Army Base in Colorado Springs. Is this an issue at Fort Carson, or across the United States?
SOT David Philipps
“It’s really hard for us to distinctly define how much this is happening. Because, just like in the army, we in the civilian world can’t definitively say who is injured and who is not. But when we look at the statistics, what we find is that every year since 2003 basically, more and more soldiers have been kicked out for misconduct, and that rise generally mirrors the rise in wounded. We’re having soldiers that are going back for repeated tours, oftentimes are hit by multiple bomb blasts, and so something’s gotta give. And what we know is that the medical avenue for getting these guys out is clogged. So the avenue of getting them out through misconduct becomes a much easier option.”
Question: There are so many soldiers returning from tours of duty who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and or traumatic brain injuries that I’ve heard military analysts refer to it as a TIDAL WAVE — something the military is just not prepared to deal with. So — treating these soldiers, or in some cases discharging them and NOT treating them, is it simply a question of dollars and cents, of how much the military budget can handle?
SOT David Philipps
“It’s a common perception that the army is kicking these guys out to save money, but that’s not what I found. These decisions are often made by junior officers, officers that are platoon or company level, people that have nothing to do with those budgets. What’s actually happening is more about their combat units. So when you have a soldier who’s no longer able to perform his duties, he, can’t show up on time, he maybe has an attitude problem, things that may be legitimately tied to his injuries. You can’t get a replacement for that guy until he is discharged out. Now, if you discharge him medically, that could take more than a year. And you might have to deploy in six months. But if you do it for misconduct, it might take weeks, or maybe a month. So, as a young commander, you can justify that, I have to get this guy out this way, because I need to have my unit cohesive and ready to go, or I endanger all of us. The problem is — I don’t think a lot of guys understand that when they do that, the long-term consequences in the veterans’ administration are.
Question: David your series in the Colorado Springs Gazette succeeded in drawing some attention to the plight of injured veterans discharged without benefits, and it even led to some of them eventually getting those benefits reinstated. Do you think that now, having won the Pulitzer, that will draw even more attention to this issue?
SOT David Philipps
“You know, I never thought I would say this, but the Pulitzer doesn’t even matter. The cooler thing that happened is that, right after I heard that we won the Pulitzer, I got a call from a combat vet who this had happened to in 2007. And he said, ‘ I found your series last fall.’ He lives in New York. ‘I found your series last fall, on-line, and I started reading it. And I thought that I was all alone.’ And he then very intense-ly got involved with veterans’ groups that wen to Washington DC with our statistics in hand, and started pushing for Congress to start doing things to start help guys out who this has happened to. And they did it. Right now there are bills pending, sponsored by a number of senators, that these veterans got started. Essentially, he said, I built the foundation for them to build all of this on. So to hear that, and to see these guys take it up and continue forward, that’s the coolest thing.”
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