Discharging Benefits.

• Author: Glantz, Aaron
• Position: Essay

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Staff sergeant Don Hanks had served fifteen years in the U.S. Army before he spent a year running patrols in the heart of Iraq's Sunni triangle. He had planned to spend his life in the service, but when he got back to the United States, he found he couldn't continue.

Hanks says he couldn't visit the mall or other crowded places. He broke off friendships and spent most of his days emotionally numb.

"You start to forget shit," he says. "I can't tell you how many times I'd get up in my house and go into my kitchen or my bathroom or my bedroom and just forget why I was in the room. It started to affect my interpersonal relationships, and when that happened, I bottled it up. I didn't go talk to somebody when I should have because of the stigma, because I didn't want them to know I was having problems because that is not the sign of a top performer. That is not the sign of a good soldier."

Hanks said he became completely nonfunctional. He started smoking marijuana to cope with his mental problems. When he was hospitalized at a military mental institution, he failed a drug test.

Then the military expelled Don Hanks, a move he did not fight because the alternative was another tour in Iraq. Formerly stationed in Fort Lewis outside Seattle, he landed a job washing windows on the city's downtown skyscrapers.

He no longer is entitled to most veterans' benefits, including disability payments, housing, and college education programs.

Don Hanks's story is hardly unique. Thousands of soldiers have received dishonorable discharges for a variety of offenses that disqualify them for benefits. Some would rather receive such a discharge than be sent back to Iraq.

The numbers are staggering: 11,407 U.S. soldiers have been discharged for drug abuse after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan; 6,159 have been kicked out for "discreditable incidents"; 6,436 have been discharged for "commission of a serious offense"; 2,246 have been discharged for "the good of the service"; and 3,365 have been discharged for "personality disorder," according to Pentagon data I obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

"The military, rather than take the responsibility that these guys have actually just fought in a war and are possibly damaged from that, is allowing them and almost helping them get these discharges to get rid of a problem," says Garett Reppenhagen, a scout sniper in the 1st Infantry Division who is on the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

A June 2007 report by the Defense Health Board Task Force on Mental Health confirms...