Critics: Fort Carson policy targeted troubled, wounded soldiers

[The Straight Story]

FORT CARSON, Colo. — Army Cpl. Joshua Smith saw the orange glow against the South Carolina night sky long before he reached his sister’s apartment complex. The fire in the back buildings was intense. People stood in shock, watching the blaze.

Smith leapt from his rental car and vaulted a five-foot brick wall, yelling at onlookers to call for help. He grabbed an exercise weight someone had left in the yard, threw it through a sliding glass door and burst into the burning building. He shepherded a mother and her 16-month-old daughter to safety, then turned his attention to the other apartments, kicking down doors, running room to room, making sure no one else was trapped. By the time he emerged, firefighters had arrived. The local TV news hailed the 22-year-old infantryman — home on leave after a tour in Iraq before transferring to Fort Carson, Colo. — whose quick action saved lives.

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He was headed for a medical discharge he didn’t really want, due to knee and back injuries. He was in a disastrous marriage, drinking too much, trying to hide the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Fort Carson doctors checked him into a mental health facility for several days in January. Then, just three months after the Soldier’s Medal ceremony, Smith came up positive for cocaine use in a random drug test.

The usual course of action in the Army is to punish soldiers who test positive for drugs locally and to begin a process that can — but doesn’t always — lead to an administrative discharge from the military. At Fort Carson, military lawyers had devised a different plan to quickly get rid of wounded soldiers who got in trouble. Smith’s commanders in the rear detachment of the 2-8 Infantry Regiment, who hadn’t served with him in Iraq, took steps to court-martial him. The criminal charge they levied against him, use of a controlled substance, carried the possibility of jail time, a punitive discharge and a civilian felony record.

http://www.stripes.com/critics-fort-carson-policy-targeted-troubled-wounded-soldiers-1.160871