WE AREN'T TAKING ENOUGH CARE OF OUR WOUNDED SOLDIERS

Noel Koch, the head of the military's wounded warrior program, was forced to resign and this anecdote from the transition unit at Fort Carson gives some indication why:

Sgt. Keith Nowicki was an intelligence analyst who was sent back early from his second deployment to Iraq in April 2008 because of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, said his wife, Ashley. Assigned to the Fort Carson transition unit, he spent nearly a year waiting for his medical discharge.

Instead of getting the help he hoped for, he spent much of the time in the unit alone, growing increasingly angry, drinking heavily and abusing Percocet. In early 2009, he separated from his wife. While on the phone with her in March 2009 he shot himself to death. He was due to be discharged at the end of the month.

Though Ms. Nowicki does not attribute her husband’s suicide to the long wait for his discharge, she said the slowness of the process and the lack of support from the transition unit added to his sense of hopelessness.

“It was just a bunch of red tape,” Ms. Nowicki said. “He would spend days trying to track down his own medical records.”