softheart
11-23-2003, 06:01 PM
Nov. 23, 2003
By Jim Spencer, Denver Post Columnist
COLORADO SPRINGS - The Army's full frontal assault on Georg-Andreas
Pogany's reputation has all the public relations potential of Pickett's
charge. So you hope it has some sort of tactical objective.
Before the Fort Carson soldier was charged with cowardice because he
developed panic attacks after seeing a mutilated, dead Iraqi, Pogany was
regarded as a model soldier. He was a staff sergeant who received a
superior rating on his latest military review. A few months ago, the Army
recommended him for immediate promotion to a higher rank. Before going to
Iraq, he was a noncommissioned officer with meritorious service
commendations and a good-service medal.
Today, he's a pariah battling to regain his good name from the very
service that once sang his praises. The cowardice charge is gone, replaced
by a claim that Pogany was derelict in his duties as an interrogator
attached to a Special Forces unit. His crime appears to be asking for
assistance with a psychological reaction he had within a day of arriving
to fight in Iraq.
As records in this case become available, the commanders who stubbornly
insist on a court-martial for Pogany look at least as derelict in their
duties as the 32-year-old NCO. At this point, no evidence indicates that
Pogany endangered anyone or failed to obey an order. In an interview in
his lawyer's office last week, Pogany said he asked to be sent to a rear
area to get help because he felt like he was having a nervous breakdown.
"I saw a body," Pogany said. "The upper body was extremely torn apart."
Green Berets brought the body into a compound. Pogany didn't see it for
very long.
"I didn't go into convulsions on the spot," he said. "It came on later. I
had a physical reaction, throwing up and shaking." Then the panic attacks
set in. Panic attacks, medical experts say, are all-consuming
psychological obsessions with fear or doom that can affect a person's
ability to function normally.
"I couldn't clear my mind of the image of the body and other things that
went on in the compound," he said.
On the advice of his lawyer, Pogany refused to explain those "other
things." But he did discuss his feelings with his commanders at the base.
"The senior NCO told me to get my head out of my (expletive)," Pogany
said. "They told me, 'Think about what you're saying.' They told me to
think about it over lunch, and if I wanted to drop it, they'd forget I
said anything."
Pogany, known as Andrew to his wife and friends, persisted in asking to be
taken from the front and sent to talk to a chaplain.
"The senior NCO told me I had to stay there and get better or go home,"
Pogany said. "I said, 'I guess you better send me home."'
That comment may be the basis of the dereliction accusation. The Army
won't talk about it.
What is clear is that Pogany's commanders accused Pogany of cowardice, an
offense with a maximum penalty of death, for seeking help with what an
Army psychologist called a "normal combat stress reaction."
The psychologist, Capt. Marc Houck, is attached to an Army combat stress
unit. At the request of a chaplain, Houck examined Pogany three days after
the sergeant had his first panic attack.
"The soldier reported signs and symptoms consistent with those of a normal
combat stress reaction," Houck wrote. "Short-term rest, stress coping
skills and/or brief removal from more dangerous situations are often
adequate to resolve such reactions."
Houck recommended some stress-reduction techniques to Pogany, and the
sergeant said he was applying them successfully and assumed he would stay
in Iraq, where he volunteered for duty.
"The panic attacks had subsided to a manageable level," he said.
Then, with Houck's report in hand, commanders called him a coward and
ordered him back to Fort Carson. "At one point," Pogany said, "the
sergeant major told me if this had been 50 years ago, they would have just
taken me out back and shot me."
Pogany says the senior NCO who helped decide to send him home cursed him
continuously. "It felt like he called me a (expletive) coward 3 million
times," Pogany said.
The cowardice charge came out of left field. "I was in shock and
disbelief," Pogany said.
When he landed in Colorado, he says the Army treated him like a prisoner.
Coming off the plane, Pogany says, military authorities separated him from
other soldiers and placed him against a wall spread-eagled and frisked him.
"They took my Gerber (utility knife), my laptop and my satellite phone,"
Pogany said. "They put me in a Tahoe and drove me back to Fort Carson. I
felt like a criminal."
When the Army confiscated his personal gun from his home, he said, he felt
even worse.
The military psychologist the service forced him to see at Fort Carson
found nothing wrong with him. Pogany "should be returned to duty with no
change in duty status, to include retention of his security clearance and
retention of access to weapons/live ammunition," psychologist D.P.
Lancaster reported.
"The report from Iraq written by Dr. Houck clearly stated he expected this
soldier to be returned to duty," Lancaster said.
Pogany's commanders will have none of it.
"I'm not allowed to wear my uniform off-base," Pogany said, "not even when
I'm driving to and from work."
Work these days consists of day labor. Pogany's commanders at Fort Carson
have suspended the sergeant's security clearance and transferred him from
military intelligence to a service detail. He now puts his degree in
criminology, his fluency in Hungarian and German, and his training as an
interrogator to work sweeping parking lots and building pallets.
Any way you look at it, the message here is ugly and inscrutable. The Army
seems determined to destroy a good soldier. Maybe commanders hope that
will scare other combat-stress victims into getting on with the fight and
not asking for help. That would make Pogany collateral damage.
The question is: What does it make a military that wages psychological
warfare against its own troops?
-----
Source : Denver Post
By Jim Spencer, Denver Post Columnist
COLORADO SPRINGS - The Army's full frontal assault on Georg-Andreas
Pogany's reputation has all the public relations potential of Pickett's
charge. So you hope it has some sort of tactical objective.
Before the Fort Carson soldier was charged with cowardice because he
developed panic attacks after seeing a mutilated, dead Iraqi, Pogany was
regarded as a model soldier. He was a staff sergeant who received a
superior rating on his latest military review. A few months ago, the Army
recommended him for immediate promotion to a higher rank. Before going to
Iraq, he was a noncommissioned officer with meritorious service
commendations and a good-service medal.
Today, he's a pariah battling to regain his good name from the very
service that once sang his praises. The cowardice charge is gone, replaced
by a claim that Pogany was derelict in his duties as an interrogator
attached to a Special Forces unit. His crime appears to be asking for
assistance with a psychological reaction he had within a day of arriving
to fight in Iraq.
As records in this case become available, the commanders who stubbornly
insist on a court-martial for Pogany look at least as derelict in their
duties as the 32-year-old NCO. At this point, no evidence indicates that
Pogany endangered anyone or failed to obey an order. In an interview in
his lawyer's office last week, Pogany said he asked to be sent to a rear
area to get help because he felt like he was having a nervous breakdown.
"I saw a body," Pogany said. "The upper body was extremely torn apart."
Green Berets brought the body into a compound. Pogany didn't see it for
very long.
"I didn't go into convulsions on the spot," he said. "It came on later. I
had a physical reaction, throwing up and shaking." Then the panic attacks
set in. Panic attacks, medical experts say, are all-consuming
psychological obsessions with fear or doom that can affect a person's
ability to function normally.
"I couldn't clear my mind of the image of the body and other things that
went on in the compound," he said.
On the advice of his lawyer, Pogany refused to explain those "other
things." But he did discuss his feelings with his commanders at the base.
"The senior NCO told me to get my head out of my (expletive)," Pogany
said. "They told me, 'Think about what you're saying.' They told me to
think about it over lunch, and if I wanted to drop it, they'd forget I
said anything."
Pogany, known as Andrew to his wife and friends, persisted in asking to be
taken from the front and sent to talk to a chaplain.
"The senior NCO told me I had to stay there and get better or go home,"
Pogany said. "I said, 'I guess you better send me home."'
That comment may be the basis of the dereliction accusation. The Army
won't talk about it.
What is clear is that Pogany's commanders accused Pogany of cowardice, an
offense with a maximum penalty of death, for seeking help with what an
Army psychologist called a "normal combat stress reaction."
The psychologist, Capt. Marc Houck, is attached to an Army combat stress
unit. At the request of a chaplain, Houck examined Pogany three days after
the sergeant had his first panic attack.
"The soldier reported signs and symptoms consistent with those of a normal
combat stress reaction," Houck wrote. "Short-term rest, stress coping
skills and/or brief removal from more dangerous situations are often
adequate to resolve such reactions."
Houck recommended some stress-reduction techniques to Pogany, and the
sergeant said he was applying them successfully and assumed he would stay
in Iraq, where he volunteered for duty.
"The panic attacks had subsided to a manageable level," he said.
Then, with Houck's report in hand, commanders called him a coward and
ordered him back to Fort Carson. "At one point," Pogany said, "the
sergeant major told me if this had been 50 years ago, they would have just
taken me out back and shot me."
Pogany says the senior NCO who helped decide to send him home cursed him
continuously. "It felt like he called me a (expletive) coward 3 million
times," Pogany said.
The cowardice charge came out of left field. "I was in shock and
disbelief," Pogany said.
When he landed in Colorado, he says the Army treated him like a prisoner.
Coming off the plane, Pogany says, military authorities separated him from
other soldiers and placed him against a wall spread-eagled and frisked him.
"They took my Gerber (utility knife), my laptop and my satellite phone,"
Pogany said. "They put me in a Tahoe and drove me back to Fort Carson. I
felt like a criminal."
When the Army confiscated his personal gun from his home, he said, he felt
even worse.
The military psychologist the service forced him to see at Fort Carson
found nothing wrong with him. Pogany "should be returned to duty with no
change in duty status, to include retention of his security clearance and
retention of access to weapons/live ammunition," psychologist D.P.
Lancaster reported.
"The report from Iraq written by Dr. Houck clearly stated he expected this
soldier to be returned to duty," Lancaster said.
Pogany's commanders will have none of it.
"I'm not allowed to wear my uniform off-base," Pogany said, "not even when
I'm driving to and from work."
Work these days consists of day labor. Pogany's commanders at Fort Carson
have suspended the sergeant's security clearance and transferred him from
military intelligence to a service detail. He now puts his degree in
criminology, his fluency in Hungarian and German, and his training as an
interrogator to work sweeping parking lots and building pallets.
Any way you look at it, the message here is ugly and inscrutable. The Army
seems determined to destroy a good soldier. Maybe commanders hope that
will scare other combat-stress victims into getting on with the fight and
not asking for help. That would make Pogany collateral damage.
The question is: What does it make a military that wages psychological
warfare against its own troops?
-----
Source : Denver Post