A Bamberg, Germany-based soldier has been charged with murder in the shooting deaths of five fellow servicemembers Monday at a combat stress control center at Camp Liberty, Iraq.
Sgt. John M. Russell of the 54th Engineer Battalion has been charged with five counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in the Baghdad shootings, The Associated Press reported. The dead included two officers from the 55th Medical Company, a Reserve unit from Indianapolis. The other three dead were enlisted personnel seeking treatment at the facility, AP reported.
No one else was wounded, according to Steve Davis, Europe Regional Medical Command spokesman.
The Department of Defense announced one of the victims’ names late Tuesday. Navy Commander Charles K. Springle, 52, of Wilmington, N.C., was killed in the incident, which is under investigation.
Russell, 44, of Sherman, Texas, was on his third deployment to Iraq, according to Lt. Col. Brian Tribus, Multi-National Corps—Iraq spokesman. He had also deployed twice before — to Kosovo and Bosnia. He entered the Army National Guard in 1988 and served until 1994. Russell became an active-duty soldier in 1994, records show.
Russell’s unit had deployed to Iraq in May 2008 for a 15-month tour, though the AP reported Tuesday that he was three weeks away from leaving Iraq when the attack occurred.
The alleged shooter fits the Army’s profile of troops who are more vulnerable to mental health problems while deployed.
Noncommissioned officers on their third and fourth deployments are more than twice as likely to have mental health problems as NCOs serving on their first deployment, according to the latest Army report on the mental health of deployed soldiers.
The findings are detailed in the Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team V report on the Iraq war, dated Feb. 14, 2008.
While there are no firm data publicly available to capture the current mental health status of deployed soldiers, a doctor at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany talked recently about troops suffering mental health issues.
Three days before the shooting, Stars and Stripes interviewed Dr. Daphne Brown, chief of the behavioral health division at Landstuhl, about the effects of multiple deployments on troops.
"When I’ve talked to some folks, for instance, who are super-sharp E-6s — they’re just the backbone of the Army — they’ll come in, and they’ll look at me. They’ll say, ‘I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve been having nightmares since my second deployment. I thought I could go back and I could do it again and it’s just worn me down. I just can’t take it anymore,’ " Brown said. "So they never fully healed from the damage done early on, and then they’re asked to go back. Then, you’re much more vulnerable to developing increased symptoms at that point."
The Army hospital in Landstuhl is the stopover treatment facility for injured troops coming from Iraq or Afghanistan on their way to the States.
According to the AP, which quoted an anonymous Pentagon source, Russell got into an altercation with the clinic staff and was escorted from the area by an armed guard. Later, Russell took his escort’s weapon, returned to the clinic and allegedly began shooting, killing five, the wire service reported. He was then taken into custody.
Few details were available Tuesday afternoon about a motive in the shootings. Brown declined to comment Tuesday on the incident.
In general, however, exposure to combat is not the sole factor driving mental health issues among troops, she said in the earlier interview. Being separated from families, family-related issues and a lack of a lengthy break between deployments play roles, Brown said. Many psychological disorders have a typical "life cycle," with depression lasting about six months, Brown said. Depression is probably the most common acute stress reaction, she said.
"If you get out of an adverse condition and you get back to a ‘normal’ situation, your symptoms begin to resolve," she said. "And then as soon as you’re feeling better, you begin to anticipate that you’re going back into the same situation. So there’s never really breathing room. That leaves people more tense. ... If you give someone three deployments over a 20-year career, you’re not going to have the same kind of stresses on them as you are with three deployments in a five-year period."
Many of the patients Landstuhl physicians currently treat for behavioral health issues are coming in more for relationship issues or at-home problems and less because of combat trauma, Brown said.
With the situation in Iraq much improved compared with two or three years ago, some troops are finding themselves with more down time and a slower operational tempo. The situation gives them more time to communicate with family members or loved ones via computer or telephone. When the combat situation was more tense, troops could compartmentalize any family-related issues, putting such relatively minor issues on the back burner while they dealt with the threat at hand.
"Now that they’re not in life-threatening situations on a regular basis and the tempo’s calmer, the threat is lower, they do stay focused on those [family] issues," Brown said. "And yet, the fact that they are so powerless to do anything to influence them probably has a major impact on folks."
At the same time, the suicide rate in the Army has reached alarming levels. Last year, the Army had 143 confirmed suicides, a record since the service began tracking the statistic in 1980. Through April, the Army reported 64 confirmed or potential active-duty suicides, compared with 39 confirmed suicides during the same period last year, the Associated Press reported.
As the U.S. military draws down in Iraq and undergoes a relatively smaller buildup in Afghanistan, troops should have more time off between deployments. When that happens, mental health issues among troops will occur occasionally but not as often as now, Brown said.
"People will have a chance to heal," she said. "They don’t have that now."
See related story:Alleged shooter’s father: "They pushed him too far."
