It seems today is the day that the dam breaks on finding out about how we treat our soldiers who’ve returned from the battlefield, wounded in body and spirit. And the story isn’t pretty according to the Washington Post.

Let’s start with Jeremy Duncan.

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But wait, you say, Walter Reed Medical Center is the best we have. Yes, if one is a surgical patient being treated as an inpatient shortly after arrival from Germany but as Dana Priest of the Washington Post describes so plainly for us, there’s a whole lot more going on.

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of “Catch-22.” The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers’ families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

Now meet John Daniel Shannon...

Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, 43, came in on one of those buses in November 2004 and spent several weeks on the fifth floor of Walter Reed’s hospital. His eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round. His odyssey in the Other Walter Reed has lasted more than two years, but it began when someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room across post.

A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disoriented that he couldn’t even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright, he said. He asked anyone he found for directions. ... But he did not expect to be left alone by the Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then nothing.

“I thought, ‘Shouldn’t they contact me?’ ” he said. “I didn’t understand the paperwork. I’d start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments. I finally ran across someone who said: ‘I’m your case manager. Where have you been?’

“Well, I’ve been here! Jeez Louise, people, I’m your hospital patient!”

Like Shannon, many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange them. Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.

  <!-more-> Then there’s Jonathan Schulze... his story, as told by the Boston Globe, underscores what’s wrong.

It took two years of hell to convince him, but finally Jonathan Schulze was ready. On the morning of Jan. 11, Jonathan, an Iraq war veteran with two Purple Hearts, neatly packed his US Marine Corps duffel bag with his sharply creased clothes, a framed photo of his new baby girl, and a leather-bound Bible and headed out from the family farm for a 75-mile drive to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud, Minn.

Family and friends had convinced him at last that the devastating mental wounds he brought home from war, wounds that triggered severe depression, violent outbursts, and eventually an uncontrollable desire to kill himself, could not be drowned in alcohol or treated with the array of antianxiety drugs he’d been prescribed.

And so, with his father and stepmother at his side, he confessed to an intake counselor that he was suicidal. He wanted to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.

But, instead, he was told that the clinician who prescreened cases like his was unavailable. Go home and wait for a phone call tomorrow, the counselor said, as Marianne Schulze, his stepmother, describes it.

When a clinical social worker called the next day, Jonathan, 25, told again of his suicidal thoughts and other symptoms. And then, with his stepmother listening in, he learned that he was 26th on the waiting list for one of the 12 beds in the center’s ward for post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers.

Four days later, on Jan. 16, he wrapped a household extension cord around his neck, tied it to a beam in the basement, and hanged himself.

Then there’s Tyler Jennings introduced to many via an NPR report. NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling spent 5 months in extensive in-depth research on how the army treats PTSD. He focused in particular on the care given (or in many cases, denied) at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, CO. The special half-hour report on All Things Considered aired on December 4, 2006. Life got worse for those soldiers who participated.

There’s so much to read and listen to but, in particular, check out the story of Tyler Jennings. And listen to the follow-up report that Zwerdling made a couple of days later.

And then check the report Daniel Zwerdling made when it was discovered that the Army had decided to court martial Tyler Jennings, putting him at risk of a year in prison for having PTSD. Jennings’ Army-appointed lawyer indicated that he had done everything correctly to acquire care and had been denied by the system in place. The court-martial was averted after top Army medical people held private conferences at Fort Caron to determine the state of affairs.

JK has been paying attention. On November 14, 2006, “the Senate passed Senator John Kerry’s amendment, which provides $18 million in critical funding to the nation’s Veteran’s Administration (VA) Centers. Veteran Centers provide readjustment counseling and outreach services to any veteran who has served in a combat zone. Kerry’s additional funding will cut waiting lists and ensure that facilities are not forced to limit services as they respond to an increased workload caused by soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

On the floor of the Senate, JK said…

Mr. President, it is our obligation to do everything possible to ensure that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan can make the transition home successfully.

“Welcome home” must be more than something we say to our veterans. It must be measured in actions taken not just words spoken.

...The VA Vet Centers provide readjustment counseling and outreach services to all veterans who served in any combat zone. Our veterans earned these benefits through their service to country, and we must fulfill the nation’s commitment to them by providing the highest quality services possible.

... A recent report by the House Veterans Affairs Committee Democratic staff found that in nine months, between October 2005 and June 2006, the number of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who turned to Vet Centers for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) services doubled. The increased demand for services is beginning to affect access to quality care. In fact, one in four Vet Centers surveyed has been forced to limit services or establish waiting lists for critically needed services. After serving this nation and fighting for our country, our veterans should not have to fight for critical adjustment services.

In November of 2004, VA Secretary Nicholson approved a mental health strategic plan, acknowledging gaps in mental health services due to the surge in demand from veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress provided approximately $100 million to fund the VA Mental Health Strategic plan. However, a recent GAO report shows that the VA has diverted or failed to utilize money that was intended for staffing at Vet Centers and has not provided a full accounting of what has happened to the funding.

...The GAO is expected to issue a full report on these funding gaps later this year, but the preliminary results indicate a possible misuse of mental health dollars.

One-third of the veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan come to the VA with mental health concerns. We have seen the cases of PTSD rise sharply along with the need for readjustment care when veterans return home. It is imperative that our Vet Centers have enough trained professionals to offer quality mental health services. There are 207 Vet Centers across the country. They are currently unable to deal with the increasing demand for mental health services. Each of these centers needs additional funding to hire sufficient staff to deal with the recent influx of patients.

...Our soldiers have sacrificed greatly for their country, and we owe them the best care when they return. Many wounds of war are not visible, which makes it that much more important that Vet Centers have all the resources they need to serve those veterans who are suffering in any way.

JK continues to fight for the veterans of Massachusetts as well as all our nation’s veterans.