Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
San Antonio Express-News
March 16, 2009
Pg. 1
As this week’s anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq approaches, there are few answers in the stateside deaths of 14 Fort Hood soldiers in the past eight months.
By Scott Huddleston, Express-News
Jana Lee May planned to celebrate Christmas with her family two weeks before her son was to deploy to Iraq.
A wave of anxiety came over her after he drove in from Fort Hood to their home in Cuero.
“I wish you didn't have to go. What if something bad happens?”
“Everybody's got a number, Mom. Just tell everyone I went happy,” her son replied.
Pfc. Jordan May, a 26-year-old gunner, fell into a deep sleep that night and never woke up.
In the six years since the war in Iraq began, it's been standard practice to honor troops who die overseas as patriots. But for the families of May and other Fort Hood soldiers who died on post or close to home, there typically are no news reports and no flags lowered to half-staff.
The hidden demons that follow troops home — mental stress, depression and traumatic brain injury, to name a few — don't always go away. When left unresolved, they can lead to divorce, drug or alcohol abuse and suicide. And as the March 19 anniversary of the start of the war draws near, there are more questions than answers in the stateside deaths of May and 13 other Fort Hood troops in the past eight months.
The Army typically releases general details of how a soldier has died in Iraq, usually from small-arms fire, an explosive, an accident or an unspecified noncombat incident. But when a soldier dies at Fort Hood, friends and relatives often can only speculate about any role the war might have played.
Since her son's death Dec. 20, Jana May has pondered whether he died from natural causes or the stresses of combat training. According to the Army, he had just completed a “rigorous training regimen in preparation for deployment.”
“I'm just a grieving mom and I'd like to know,” she said.
For some families, several months have passed, and their grief is compounded by the mystery of not knowing.
“This information needs to come out,” said Tammy Cone, a family friend of Pfc. Travis Dowd, 22, of Tallahassee, Fla.
Dowd, a machine gunner who served in Iraq, was found dead in his room at Fort Hood on Aug. 12. His family has been given few details, said Cone, a close friend of Dowd's mother.
“It's been heartbreaking,” she said. “When your son or daughter commits to the Army, the Army commits to you.”
The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper ran front-page stories on the death and funeral of the popular former high school football player.
The other deaths involving Fort Hood, where about 53,000 soldiers work, have typically generated little more than a paid obituary.
Chris Grey, spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., said he sympathizes with the families. But the Army goes to great lengths to investigate each case, looking first for signs of foul play, he said. Army investigators conduct interviews and scour evidence, from death scenes to computer hard drives.
“Some law enforcement agencies don't go that far,” Grey said. “We not only want to know what transpired at the time of death, we also want to know what caused it.”
In the latest death, March 1, Lt. Col. Jeffrey White, 46, collapsed while singing with his wife and children during a Sunday service at Charity Baptist Church in Killeen. White, who had a distinguished 23-year Army career, had returned from Iraq a few weeks earlier.
Chuck Luther, an Iraq veteran and soldier advocate with Military Spouses of America, based in nearby Copperas Cove, said the deaths make up a “very unusual trend” that underscores the toll of the war. At a time when the Army and Marine Corps are reporting record numbers of suicides, he believes at least two of the 14 soldiers might have killed themselves.
The Army has spent the past month training troops in suicide prevention. But the tempo at Fort Hood, with the 4th Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division rotating in and out of Iraq since 2003, has put a huge strain on the force, Luther said.
He recalls seeing a change in Spc. Aaron Allmandinger, who died in a fire early Sept. 11 in a duplex on post.
Allmandinger, 22, had received the Army Commendation Medal for shooting off rounds that saved others in his unit in 2007.
“After that, he was never the same,” said Luther, who calls Allmandinger's death in a house fire “very questionable.”
“In my opinion, that was not an accidental fire,” he said. “He had survived a 45-minute gunbattle and kept his wits together. That soldier knew well enough to kick a window out.”
Allmandinger's wife and young daughter were out of town that day. The duplex was at least 25 to 30 years old and lacked fire insulation. A neighbor told his family it took 45 minutes for Fort Hood firefighters to arrive after he reported seeing flames in the carport.
Kristin Allmandinger said she was told her husband had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16, which is twice the legal limit for driving. But she thinks he should have been able to get out. His body was found near the carport door. There were four indoor smoke alarms, and the carport was across the house from their bedroom.
Unless he tried to fight the fire, it made no sense, she said.
“I feel that something is not right, and they're not telling us the whole story.”
Jordan May's family in Cuero also is frustrated.
May had marksmanship that earned him the nickname “Top Gun,” his mother said.
He joked with his Army buddies about the mythical chupacabra, after local sightings of a hairless blue dog caused a stir in his hometown. He gave his friends more than a dozen chupacabra T-shirts and wanted to have the blood-sucking beast painted on his Humvee.
As he prepared to deploy, he quit smoking and even called his old girlfriends to apologize for being rude, his mother said. If something happened in Iraq, he didn't want that on his soul.
Jana May had planned to get her son a PlayStation 2 for Christmas. The Mays had a tree up with his ornaments, in the shape of baseball players.
Jordan May came home tired about 9 p.m., after loading equipment at Fort Hood. He said he hadn't slept in 72 hours.
After playing Counter-Strike, a warlike video game, he dozed off about 1 a.m. He wasn't breathing when his sister tried to wake him the next morning.
Jana May, a surgical nurse, used the Heimlich maneuver on her son and performed CPR. He threw up and began breathing, then stopped. His mother, waiting for an ambulance, realized he might die.
“I kissed him on the forehead and I gave him permission to go on,” his mother said.
He was pronounced dead about an hour later.
Unlike May, Allmandinger lived long enough to make it to Iraq and back. Six months after his death, his wife is still in Killeen, looking for answers, despite pleas from relatives to return to their home state of Indiana. She carries his ashes in a small urn in her purse. Their daughter, Taylor, 4, is with her grandparents.
Kristin Allmandinger blames the war and the Army. She said her husband drank heavily, had insomnia and was constantly restless after his 15-month tour. He would go into their daughter's room at night to play with her — the only time he had between shifts to see her.
“Daddy, stop tickling me,” Taylor would whimper.
He told his wife he once had to shoot a 13-year-old Iraqi girl who had a bomb strapped to her body, and he couldn't blot it out of his mind. She called his unit. But she said his officers discouraged him from getting counseling, saying it would hurt his promotability.
“They told him he needed to keep his wife in check.”
The soldier's father, Terry Allmandinger, said he questions how the fire started.
He thinks his son might have gone to the carport because the front and back doors were rarely used. But he wants to put the lingering questions behind him.
“From my side, nothing seems to happen fast enough. It prevents us from having closure,” he said.
Jana May checks her mail about 2 p.m. each day, hoping to find an autopsy report that might cast light on her son's death. She's also waiting for his dog tags, patches and clothes to be shipped back. They made it to Iraq without him.
She wishes there had been a police escort for the funeral, held two days after Christmas, and a story in the local papers, like there had been for soldiers from nearby Victoria who died in Iraq.
A soldier should be remembered for how he lived, not how he died, she said.
“My son was fighting for freedom, too. He just hadn't gotten over there.”
March 16, 2009
Pg. 1
As this week’s anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq approaches, there are few answers in the stateside deaths of 14 Fort Hood soldiers in the past eight months.
By Scott Huddleston, Express-News
Jana Lee May planned to celebrate Christmas with her family two weeks before her son was to deploy to Iraq.
A wave of anxiety came over her after he drove in from Fort Hood to their home in Cuero.
“I wish you didn't have to go. What if something bad happens?”
“Everybody's got a number, Mom. Just tell everyone I went happy,” her son replied.
Pfc. Jordan May, a 26-year-old gunner, fell into a deep sleep that night and never woke up.
In the six years since the war in Iraq began, it's been standard practice to honor troops who die overseas as patriots. But for the families of May and other Fort Hood soldiers who died on post or close to home, there typically are no news reports and no flags lowered to half-staff.
The hidden demons that follow troops home — mental stress, depression and traumatic brain injury, to name a few — don't always go away. When left unresolved, they can lead to divorce, drug or alcohol abuse and suicide. And as the March 19 anniversary of the start of the war draws near, there are more questions than answers in the stateside deaths of May and 13 other Fort Hood troops in the past eight months.
The Army typically releases general details of how a soldier has died in Iraq, usually from small-arms fire, an explosive, an accident or an unspecified noncombat incident. But when a soldier dies at Fort Hood, friends and relatives often can only speculate about any role the war might have played.
Since her son's death Dec. 20, Jana May has pondered whether he died from natural causes or the stresses of combat training. According to the Army, he had just completed a “rigorous training regimen in preparation for deployment.”
“I'm just a grieving mom and I'd like to know,” she said.
For some families, several months have passed, and their grief is compounded by the mystery of not knowing.
“This information needs to come out,” said Tammy Cone, a family friend of Pfc. Travis Dowd, 22, of Tallahassee, Fla.
Dowd, a machine gunner who served in Iraq, was found dead in his room at Fort Hood on Aug. 12. His family has been given few details, said Cone, a close friend of Dowd's mother.
“It's been heartbreaking,” she said. “When your son or daughter commits to the Army, the Army commits to you.”
The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper ran front-page stories on the death and funeral of the popular former high school football player.
The other deaths involving Fort Hood, where about 53,000 soldiers work, have typically generated little more than a paid obituary.
Chris Grey, spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., said he sympathizes with the families. But the Army goes to great lengths to investigate each case, looking first for signs of foul play, he said. Army investigators conduct interviews and scour evidence, from death scenes to computer hard drives.
“Some law enforcement agencies don't go that far,” Grey said. “We not only want to know what transpired at the time of death, we also want to know what caused it.”
In the latest death, March 1, Lt. Col. Jeffrey White, 46, collapsed while singing with his wife and children during a Sunday service at Charity Baptist Church in Killeen. White, who had a distinguished 23-year Army career, had returned from Iraq a few weeks earlier.
Chuck Luther, an Iraq veteran and soldier advocate with Military Spouses of America, based in nearby Copperas Cove, said the deaths make up a “very unusual trend” that underscores the toll of the war. At a time when the Army and Marine Corps are reporting record numbers of suicides, he believes at least two of the 14 soldiers might have killed themselves.
The Army has spent the past month training troops in suicide prevention. But the tempo at Fort Hood, with the 4th Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division rotating in and out of Iraq since 2003, has put a huge strain on the force, Luther said.
He recalls seeing a change in Spc. Aaron Allmandinger, who died in a fire early Sept. 11 in a duplex on post.
Allmandinger, 22, had received the Army Commendation Medal for shooting off rounds that saved others in his unit in 2007.
“After that, he was never the same,” said Luther, who calls Allmandinger's death in a house fire “very questionable.”
“In my opinion, that was not an accidental fire,” he said. “He had survived a 45-minute gunbattle and kept his wits together. That soldier knew well enough to kick a window out.”
Allmandinger's wife and young daughter were out of town that day. The duplex was at least 25 to 30 years old and lacked fire insulation. A neighbor told his family it took 45 minutes for Fort Hood firefighters to arrive after he reported seeing flames in the carport.
Kristin Allmandinger said she was told her husband had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16, which is twice the legal limit for driving. But she thinks he should have been able to get out. His body was found near the carport door. There were four indoor smoke alarms, and the carport was across the house from their bedroom.
Unless he tried to fight the fire, it made no sense, she said.
“I feel that something is not right, and they're not telling us the whole story.”
Jordan May's family in Cuero also is frustrated.
May had marksmanship that earned him the nickname “Top Gun,” his mother said.
He joked with his Army buddies about the mythical chupacabra, after local sightings of a hairless blue dog caused a stir in his hometown. He gave his friends more than a dozen chupacabra T-shirts and wanted to have the blood-sucking beast painted on his Humvee.
As he prepared to deploy, he quit smoking and even called his old girlfriends to apologize for being rude, his mother said. If something happened in Iraq, he didn't want that on his soul.
Jana May had planned to get her son a PlayStation 2 for Christmas. The Mays had a tree up with his ornaments, in the shape of baseball players.
Jordan May came home tired about 9 p.m., after loading equipment at Fort Hood. He said he hadn't slept in 72 hours.
After playing Counter-Strike, a warlike video game, he dozed off about 1 a.m. He wasn't breathing when his sister tried to wake him the next morning.
Jana May, a surgical nurse, used the Heimlich maneuver on her son and performed CPR. He threw up and began breathing, then stopped. His mother, waiting for an ambulance, realized he might die.
“I kissed him on the forehead and I gave him permission to go on,” his mother said.
He was pronounced dead about an hour later.
Unlike May, Allmandinger lived long enough to make it to Iraq and back. Six months after his death, his wife is still in Killeen, looking for answers, despite pleas from relatives to return to their home state of Indiana. She carries his ashes in a small urn in her purse. Their daughter, Taylor, 4, is with her grandparents.
Kristin Allmandinger blames the war and the Army. She said her husband drank heavily, had insomnia and was constantly restless after his 15-month tour. He would go into their daughter's room at night to play with her — the only time he had between shifts to see her.
“Daddy, stop tickling me,” Taylor would whimper.
He told his wife he once had to shoot a 13-year-old Iraqi girl who had a bomb strapped to her body, and he couldn't blot it out of his mind. She called his unit. But she said his officers discouraged him from getting counseling, saying it would hurt his promotability.
“They told him he needed to keep his wife in check.”
The soldier's father, Terry Allmandinger, said he questions how the fire started.
He thinks his son might have gone to the carport because the front and back doors were rarely used. But he wants to put the lingering questions behind him.
“From my side, nothing seems to happen fast enough. It prevents us from having closure,” he said.
Jana May checks her mail about 2 p.m. each day, hoping to find an autopsy report that might cast light on her son's death. She's also waiting for his dog tags, patches and clothes to be shipped back. They made it to Iraq without him.
She wishes there had been a police escort for the funeral, held two days after Christmas, and a story in the local papers, like there had been for soldiers from nearby Victoria who died in Iraq.
A soldier should be remembered for how he lived, not how he died, she said.
“My son was fighting for freedom, too. He just hadn't gotten over there.”