The Empire 309

'Sergeant Fled Army, but Not the War in His Head

By Fernanda Santos

The New York Times

East Orange, New Jersey - The psychotherapist remembers the strapping young soldier, slouched in a chair in her office one morning last month, asking if God could be punishing him because he had once thought it would be exciting to fight in a war.
By then, the soldier, Sgt. Brad Gaskins, had been absent without leave for 14 months from his post at Fort Drum in northern New York State, waging a lonely battle against an enemy inside his head - memories of death and destruction that he said had besieged him since February 2006, when he returned from a second tour of combat in Iraq.
"I asked Sergeant Gaskins whether he thought about death," the psychotherapist, Rosemary Masters, said in an interview on Thursday. "He said that death seemed like a good alternative to the way he was existing."
On Tuesday, Sergeant Gaskins, 25, traveled almost 300 miles from his home here to the Different Drummer Internet Cafe near Fort Drum. He planned to surrender to military authorities, and his lawyer had notified commanders at the base. But before he could turn himself in, two officials from Fort Drum, accompanied by a pair of police officers from Watertown, showed up at the cafe and placed him under arrest.
Sergeant Gaskins has been hospitalized for his psychiatric problems and could be discharged from the Army for medical reasons. He could be court-martialed, which could land him in prison and prevent him from receiving veterans' benefits.
"I just put faith in God that everything is going to work out according to his plan," he said during a telephone interview on Thursday from a veterans' hospital in Syracuse, where he was taken after his arrest. (On Friday, he was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, said Benjamin Abel, a civilian spokesman at Fort Drum.)
"I just want it all to go away, and I want to get my life back," Sergeant Gaskins said.
He had always spoken with pride about his military service, his relatives said. He enlisted in the Army at 17, while still a senior at Orange High School, where he was starting quarterback for the Orange Tornadoes. He used to wear his olive-green dress uniform, lock arms with his paternal grandmother, Bernice Murray, and strut inside New Hope Baptist Church in Newark for Sunday services.
"He joined the military because he wanted to improve his life, to have a career," said Mrs. Murray. "He wanted to help his family and to serve his country, and we were all supportive."
No one knows for sure when Sergeant Gaskins's troubles started. He is, by all accounts, tough and reserved, and he said that he was reluctant to share his emotional distress because he feared his superiors would label him as weak - or, worse, as crazy. But after he returned home on leave in August 2006 and decided he would not go back to Fort Drum, his relatives began to notice signs that something was seriously wrong.
He started biting his nails compulsively, a new habit, one of his aunts said. He slept little, and often woke up screaming and drenched in sweat. He became reclusive, locking himself in a darkened room at his grandmother's apartment in Newark whenever her friends stopped by. His legs trembled as he watched images from Iraq on television. He yelled at his 2-year-old son for no apparent reason, his wife, Amber Gaskins, said. And once, she said, he placed a knife at her throat, as if he did not know who she was.'

Lees verder:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/nyregion/18awol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111807F.shtml