Horror and Stresses of Iraq Duty led US Sergeant to Kill Comrades

Soldier's killing spree left five dead – adding to the grim total of murders by US veterans as the military is accused of failing its battle-scarred personnel

by Chris McGreal

Everyone - the father, the son, the army - agrees that three tours of Iraq drove ­Sergeant John Russell to the edge.

But what pushed him over, into shooting dead five of his comrades in an army that was his life for 16 years, is a matter of bitter dispute.

The military has suggested that ­Russell's work cannibalising and rebuilding robots used to set off roadside bombs brought him into regular contact with gruesome casualties, and that took a toll that exploded at Camp Liberty in ­Baghdad this week.

The army says it recognised signs of trauma in the 44-year-old sergeant, who was just a few weeks from leaving Iraq, and dispatched him for psychological assessment at a military stress centre in Baghdad. Russell got into a fight there, grabbed a gun and shot two doctors and three other soldiers dead.

That version of events has some of the familiar ring of accounts of traumatised soldiers driven to violence by violence. Ever since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, soldiers have been returning to the US and killing.

Veterans from the two wars have committed at least 120 murders beginning with a spate of killings of wives at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2002 and continuing with five murders at a military base in Colorado last year.

Alongside the killings has come a surge in domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction. Meanwhile suicides run at twice the rate of people outside the military. But back at his home in Sherman, Texas, Russell's family say it was not the combat but the army that drove the sergeant in an engineering unit over the edge. His father, Wilburn, 73, said the military was Russell's life and that amid the stresses of combat he had fallen out with his officers.

"I doubt very seriously if the truth is going to come out because of the circumstances. You see he faxed his wife the 6th of this month saying that he'd been threatened by a couple of officers, and it was the worst two days of his life," he said.

On Monday, Russell's commanding officer ordered the sergeant to turn in his gun and receive psychological ­counselling. Wilburn Russell says the order to give up his weapon would have been deeply humiliating for his son and that after his long service to the army, just when the sergeant needed it most, he was under the impression it was going to dump him.

"I believe the officers decided they wanted him out. At the stress centre they sit you down and tell you you're not the kind of person they want in the service. You're not worthy of being here. How dare you get those stripes. You're too stupid to be in the army. That kind of thing. Well, they broke him," he said.

"If the army turns against him, he doesn't have a life as far as he is concerned. He's ruined. He's done for. He's going to lose his house and probably his wife. He's going to lose everything."

There were other stresses in John Russell's life. He was paying $1,500 (£1,000) for the house his parents and son live in, and had fallen into debt. There were questions around the state of his marriage with his wife back in Germany. The US commander in Baghdad responded to the deadliest act of soldier-on-soldier killings in the war by ordering a comprehensive review of mental health services in Iraq.

But the challenge will be to understand Russell, and how the stresses of long tours in Iraq, the personal problems, the growing difficulties with his superiors fed into each other.

Veterans' groups say the army has been there before and that while the military is more attuned to the effects of combat and the stresses of serving in a war zone, it still falls far short of dealing with the problem.

A US army study of the mental health and morale of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq last year found that nearly one in five suffered from acute stress, depression or anxiety.

Soldiers, like Russell, on their third or fourth deployment were at significantly higher risk than those who spent less time in combat zones. Perhaps most shockingly, one in 10 soldiers had traumatic brain injury and only half were treated at the time it was sustained.

Another report, by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), said less than half of those suffering from psychological and neurological injuries were receiving sufficient treatment.

"Multiple tours and inadequate time at home between deployments are increasing combat stress," it said.

The army took little notice of the impact of 21st-century wars on its soldiers until a spate of murders in mid-2002 at the base in North Carolina by members of special forces recently returned from Afghanistan.

A month after returning from combat, Master Sergeant William Wright strangled his wife, buried her in a shallow grave and reported her missing.

Sergeant Rigoberto Nieves had been back for just two days when he shot his wife and himself. Sergeant Cedric Griffin stabbed his estranged wife at least 50 times before setting the house on fire.

Altogether four soldiers killed their wives. Two then killed themselves. In a fifth case a woman killed her husband, a special forces major.

Support groups for wives at Fort Bragg also reported a surge in domestic violence. The army study said that suicide rates among those recently returned from combat had risen sharply.

Private Joseph Dwyer caught attention across the US as an army medic photographed rescuing a wounded child during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The picture made front pages across the country and buttressed the popular US view of the invasion as a liberation and a good war. Dwyer returned home a national hero.

But the attention soon faded; he left the army and sank into addiction to alcohol and solvents between periodic bouts of treatment for post-traumatic stress. His wife left him, taking their young daughter.

The police found the 31-year-old former soldier's body after he died from an overdose of pills alone in a flat.

The military's instinct had been to cover up the scale of suicides.

Dr Ira Katz, head of mental health services for the Veterans Administration, denied there was a suicide epidemic when he told a congressional committee there had been 790 suicide attempts in all of 2007.

But then an email, written in February 2008 from Katz to a colleague, came to light. "Shh! Our suicide prevention co-ordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?" Katz wrote.

IAVA says it is particularly concerned about discharged soldiers "who can lose their bearings outside the camaraderie and structure of the military".

Late last year the military launched an advertising campaign to try to persuade traumatised veterans to come forward using a young army sniper, Bryan Adams, who was shot in the hand and leg during a battle in Iraq.

After he returned, Adams sank into depression, drinking more, alienating friends, smashing up the furniture.

"Each day I felt myself getting more and more out of control, I would push the limits of what was legal and appropriate behaviour just for fun. I behaved as if no laws applied to me," he has written. That continued until his mother, a nurse, recognised her son's problems for what they were.

Adams got himself into college with the help of a grant and is now one of the faces of IAVA when it launched an advertising campaign on the one word slogan - Alone - to encourage veterans to share their experiences.

The army says it greatly increased awareness about combat stress in recent years. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defence for health affairs, earlier this year said that there was also a lessening of the stigma associated with some psychological diagnoses.

"Guys are telling us they would still much rather be diagnosed with traumatic brain injury than post-traumatic stress disorder," he said. "But we're getting at some of that stigma. We've reduced it a bit."

The military also launched a suicide watch programme earlier this year.

But veterans groups say that the military continues to fail service personnel, with less than one in four of those who show signs of being at risk from post-traumatic stress disorder, based on screening questions, referred for evaluation and treatment.

No one disputes that many of those in danger continue to slip through the net.

Recently there has been an escalation in crimes committed by soldiers based at Fort Carson, Colorado, where nine soldiers have been responsible for killings after returning from Iraq. Five of the killings have taken place in the last year alone.