Staying in
Wounded soldiers may find it easier to prove they’refit for duty
By Kelly Kennedy
Staff writer
As Staff Sgt. Daniel Metzdorf began to heal after losing his right leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq, he focused on going home to Fort Bragg, N.C.
“That was the first thing I thought about,” he said. “Staying in the Army.”
But the process of staying in the military after his January 2004 injury proved almost as stressful as recovery from his physical injuries.
“I got turned down three times,” he said.
He tried to follow Army procedure by carefully completing a packet detailing his condition, his ability to do his job and his command’s desire to keep him on active duty.
“‘You only have one leg,’” he said, mocking the medical evaluation board process with his ever-present grin. He slammed his fist on the table: “Stamp! ‘Rejected!’”
He tried again.
“‘No new medical evidence,’” he said, quoting the board’s findings. “Stamp!
“Then I took my whole chain of command in front of the board,” he said.
“‘No!’” And his fist flew to the table again: “Stamp!”
Metzdorf’s struggle, as well as those faced by others wounded during the past three years, may ultimately affect more soldiers’ lives than any battle he could have fought in Iraq.
After hearing the stories — and seeing the successes — of soldiers who have asked, begged and even demanded a second chance at their careers, the Army has changed the regulation for troops who left a limb in a war zone.
As of June 27, Army Regulation 40-501 allows a little wiggle room — up to a year — for soldiers to recuperate and decide on their futures while on a temporary profile. No such profile existed for amputees before.
“A lot of this goes back to our warrior ethos: Never leave a fallen comrade behind,” said Col. Mary Carstensen, director of the Army’s Wounded Warrior Program. “If someone wants to stay in, we’re working very hard to make that possible.”
The dozen or so soldiers who have stayed in may provide the best morale boost the Army can offer. First, they had to fight their way back to health. Then they had to fight the government to continue the careers they love.
“We have really been trying to get the word out that this is an option for them,” Carstensen said.
A confusing process
To stay in, a soldier’s doctor has to determine that his medical condition does not fall below medical retention standards — even with an amputation, said Kevin Arata, spokesman for the Army’s Human Resources Command.
The problem, Metzdorf and others said, was that the procedure was not clear, and Army Regulation 40-501, which states that soldiers missing limbs are “medically unacceptable,” only confused matters more.
After a doctor finds a person not fit, the soldier then goes before a Physical Evaluation Board, which determines whether the person can perform his job. The board is supposed to have recommendations from the soldier’s unit, but often the unit and the injured service member lose contact after the soldier leaves the combat zone.
If a Physical Evaluation Board finds the service member unfit, the service member can fill out a Continuation on Active Duty waiver, which allows a person to stay in if he has been injured in combat, has been in for 15 or more years, or is in a shortage job field. So far, 14 soldiers have stayed in the Army on a COAD, Arata said.
But before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, almost no one was using those procedures, and counselors working with soldiers didn’t always know those options were available.
A Government Accountability Office report issued earlier this year said counselors’ caseloads are overwhelming, growing from a few hundred cases a year to a few thousand, and that the services don’t have good training systems in place for the counselors who help soldiers through the medical board process.
Carstensen said wounded soldiers and their families now sit down with career specialists to talk about a five-year plan that might include a new job classification, special medical care or the stability of staying in one unit long term.
“This is a huge decision,” Carstensen said. “This injury has affected their lives forever.”
Some soldiers have stayed in by simply not going through the medical board process.
“We don’t want people to hide,” she said. “My goal is to let everyone know there is this opportunity so we don’t miss someone who would like to stay.”
In the past, soldiers were handled on a case-by-case basis and awarded waivers if they were found able to continue in their jobs. That was how retired four-star Gen. Fred Franks was able to lead the armor and infantry divisions of 7th Corps during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Franks lost his left leg while fighting in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Retired Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki also stayed in after losing part of his foot in Vietnam.
But what was once a couple of cases has ballooned to a battalion’s worth, as 432 service members have come back from war with amputations as of June 1, and most of them aren’t high-ranking officers with high-ranking resources.
That doesn’t mean they’re quiet.
A soldier’s struggle
Metzdorf told the world he wanted to stay in. The Fort Bragg press handlers who arrange his interviews joke that his 15 minutes of fame have stretched into a millennium. But they gladly hand him over as a representative of the 82nd Airborne.
But even after dozens of television and newspaper stories, staying in still wasn’t easy.
“The hospital was like, ‘Take your disability and leave,’” Metzdorf said. “They were looking at it from a medical point of view.”
No one suggested he stay in, he said.
“They’ve got the same counselor processing 200 guys who want to get out with me wanting to stay in,” he said. “No one even knew how to do it.”
But Metzdorf pushed, calling his counselor every day, keeping in contact with his unit at Fort Bragg and retraining as a career counselor because he knew he couldn’t continue as an infantry soldier.
“Of course, I’m not going to be a good infantryman. I’ve got one leg,” he said. “You gotta be a bad sucka to be 11 Bravo, and I can’t even get in and out of a vehicle quickly.”
Finally, he got a phone call saying he could stay in after applying for a COAD. It requires signatures from the service member’s chain of command but not his doctor. It has been around since the 1960s.
“I was like, ‘You’re kidding me? That’s it?’” he said. “But I’m glad I went through it by the book. It makes the path a little wider for the next guy.”
After receiving his COAD, Metzdorf helped a buddy, Sgt. George Perez, also at Fort Bragg, fill out the same paperwork after Perez’s medical board turned him down for his below-the-knee amputation. Perez lost his leg after an improvised explosive device hit his vehicle in 2003.
Since receiving his COAD, Perez has deployed to Afghanistan and jumped out of airplanes with his unit. The next step? He wants to go to advanced airborne school.
“The paperwork is stressful,” Perez said. “It felt like forever. But I like the military a lot.”
Carstensen said the COAD is the proper procedure for seriously wounded soldiers.
Another way in
Capt. David Rozelle, who heads the amputee clinic at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, also found an alternative way to stay in: His unit at Fort Carson, Colo., created a position for him. He went through the board process in January 2005 after losing his right foot in June 2003 to an anti-tank mine. After more than a year of physical therapy and several months of working with injured soldiers at Fort Carson, he requested a medical board, which approved him on his first attempt.
Still, he testified at a hearing that his first briefing after losing his foot was about his veteran’s benefits, not the possibility of staying in. Rozelle told commissioners that many soldiers want to find out how to get back to their units, and family members or hospital staff can let Veterans Affairs Department representatives know if and when soldiers want to hear about how to get out. Rozelle served a second tour in Iraq with his prosthetic leg.
Staff Sgt. Josh Olson also thought he was on his way out after he lost his right leg to a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in 2003. But then, while at Walter Reed, he saw an opening. The Army Marksmanship Team wanted a soldier with an amputation.
“I guess they wanted to get a jump on the Paralympics,” Olson joked. “I was like, ‘No way. You’re going to pay me to do this?’”
Olson came in eighth this month at the 2006 IPC Shooting World Championships in Switzerland.
“I didn’t know what options were out there,” said Olson, who raves about his teammates and the techniques he’s learned since moving to Fort Benning, Ga. “I would have settled for disability pay, but I wouldn’t have been happy. I love the Army.”
His medical board found him at 90 percent disability, but after his new unit asked for him, he said his board paperwork disappeared as though he had never gone through the process.
“I think they ask soldiers a little too early if they want to stay in,” Olson said. “They asked me while I was still in the hospital bed. And the counselors know more about how to get you out than how to keep you in.”
But even before the new process had been established, the counselors, he said, worked hard to find out the answers to his questions. Carstensen said soldiers who have already gone through the process have improved it for those who have yet to face the paperwork.
“Every soldier that came forward and said, ‘I want to stay in’ has helped us evolve and develop policies that are pertinent to this group,” she said.
For more information about the Wounded Warrior Program, call (800) 237-1336 or visit www.aw2.army.mil.