WE HAVE FAILED ANOTHER SOLDIER

WE HAVE FAILED A SOLDIER

“Army Whistle-Blower’s Lonely Death Highlights Toll of Mental Illness” (24 November 2021) is sad reminder of how little progress we have made with respect to how we treat men & women of whom we ask a great deal. We have just observed another Veterans Day, the first since the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, where the US had engaged in the longest war in our history. Ian Fishback was a victim of another war with questionable roots. He was not the first. He will not be the last, but I hope that we will pause to ask some serious questions.

When Ian Fishback was an Army Captain in 2005, he spoke up about the fact that fellow members of the 82nd Airborne Division systematically abused prisoners. Fellow soldiers opposed him, but he ultimately brought the issue to the attention of Senator John McCain. Senator McCain introduced legislation that made such treatment illegal. That legislation became law.

I did not know Major Fishback, but when I was a young Army officer stationed at Fort Bragg, NC, the home of the 82nd Airborne Div. I had a platoon Sgt. who had been a young soldier in March 1968, when members of Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) participated in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians at a village called My Lai. The men of Charlie company, after sustaining heavy losses entered the village and killed 384 civilians, many of them women & children. Additionally, 83 females were gang raped, the youngest being 10. My Sgt. For some reason talked to me about what happened that day. We could not have been more different, a White southerner NCO and younger Black officer from Baltimore. He talked, over bourbon all night long many times. He cried. I lost track of him when I was transferred to another base. We wrote & spoke over the phone for a few years, but then we lost touch. I knew he was trying get the mental health he needed, but he told me, “The VA docs can’t help me, because they don’t understand”

I recently lost a relative to cancer. A US Air Force aviator, he flew many combat missions over Vietnam. His death was not listed on any US Air Force after action report, but the war killed him. There is no question that Agent Orange contributed to his death. The Veterans Administration does an admirable job, but it is overwhelmed, particularly with respect to mental health issues. We shall mourn the death of Ian Fishback, but we need to do all that we can to provide all of the help that is needed by men & women of whom we have asked so much.

Roland Nicholson, Jr.

Washington, DC