Post by Moses on Mar 8, 2005 8:28:42 GMT -5
Article published Mar 6, 2005
A bittersweet homecoming: Wounded veteran unhappy with treatment at home[/size]
Although he may have to walk with a cane for the rest of his life, Barrington resident Todd Titus feels he is a very lucky man.
During his tour of duty with a National Guard unit in Iraq, Titus was shot in the foot by enemy fire and later suffered severe injuries in a vehicle accident that left him permanently disabled.
While Titus 38, was recovering from a shrapnel wound in his foot, his squad leader and team leader were killed on Sept. 1, 2003, when the Humvee Titus would have normally been riding in ran over a roadside bomb.
But Titus and his wife, Lisa, agree his luck ran out when he came up against the military bureaucracy in the 14 months he was forced to spend at Fort Drum, N.Y., recovering from his injuries. Titus, a corporal, wanted to remain on active duty while receiving medical care, so he could retire with a full, 20-year military pension. But that meant he had to stay at Fort Drum while rehabilitating, driving home to Barrington monthly to visit his wife and child.
Then the Department of the Army decided he could no longer perform his duties as a military policeman due to his injuries and forced Titus to leave the service on Jan. 23, one day before his 38th birthday. He had served a total of 19 years, six months and five days. Besides the Purple Heart he received for being shot in the foot in July 2003, Titus was awarded an Army Achievement Medal for his work to keep the Fort Drum fleet of vehicles maintained while he was in rehabilitation.
Titus also received the Order of the Spur that is afforded to regular Army Cavalry units that see combat action, after his unit, the Rhode Island National Guard’s 115th Military Police Company, accompanied a cavalry squadron into action in August 2003 in Fallujah.
End of the line
Titus is back home with Lisa and their son, Benjamin, who turns 7 in April, and two weeks ago he went back to his technical support job at Enterasys in Rochester.
Titus’s unit was sent to Iraq in April 2003. He said their duties included house-to-house searches and providing armed security for convoys of military trucks that hauled vital supplies of food, water, fuel and ammunition to other units.
The convoys are vulnerable to insurgent attacks and roadside bombs daily and Titus learned quickly to expect the unexpected.
“It’s like playing poker blindfolded,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen. All they can do is teach you how to react to it.”<br>
Titus had a stuffed armadillo his aunt made as a good luck charm propped on his Humvee’s dashboard for every mission but two. Both times, Titus nearly lost his life. In July 2003, Titus manned the machine gun turret of his Humvee when a tracer bullet hit his ankle during an ambush. Then in September, his Humvee collided with one of the convoy’s 5,000-gallon fuel trucks.
Spc. Michael Andrade, 28, of Warren, R.I., was killed in the accident and Spc. John Urban, 24, of East Providence, R.I., was injured.
Titus was knocked out, suffered a severe concussion, and his helmet strap left a 14-inch mark where it was driven into the right side of his head. He also suffered two herniated discs in his neck, a broken rib and pinched nerves in his right wrist.
Neurological damage from the head injury left him with no sense of equilibrium. After being treated at Army mobile hospitals in Balad and Baghdad, Titus was airlifted to the Army Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, and then to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in suburban Washington, D.C., where he spent three weeks.
Lisa Titus spoke to her husband briefly while he was in Baghdad and also while he was in Landstuhl. But it wasn’t until he was transferred to Fort Drum in November around Veterans Day that she was reunited with him.
Lisa Titus got a call from her husband telling her he had a four-day pass and had a ride that could drop him at the McDonald’s restaurant on Route 125 in Epping, some nine months after his unit left home.
“I was trying to hold the camcorder and not cry,” Lisa Titus recalled. “It was an absolute rush of emotion.” She recalled thinking, “He’s really there. He’s really made it back.”
Based on the extent of his injuries, Lisa Titus said their whole family believed her husband would be coming home for good very soon. But he didn’t.
The family learned that Todd Titus could only receive medical care through the Tricare military health plan at Fort Drum, which has only a clinic and few of the specialists he needed.
“They basically told me there was nothing they could do with my neck because they didn’t have the surgeons who could do it up there,” Titus said, “and frankly, the physical they give you when you come home is a joke.”<br>
He also learned that the few medical services Fort Drum has are also not as readily available to guardsmen and reservists as they are to regular Army and the 10th Mountain Division, which has its headquarters there.
When Lisa Titus learned that her husband was waiting prolonged periods to see certain doctors while performing regular duties, she was livid.
“They didn’t have enough doctors to go around,” she said. “You can’t describe it.”<br>“I’m bitter about it,” Lisa Titus said. “The Army says they never leave anyone behind, but you know what, they did a hell of a job leaving my husband behind.”
Todd Titus said that when he first arrived at Fort Drum, the Army asked him play a civilian in training exercises for units headed to Iraq. He was even asked to play dead.
Eventually, he was assigned to Fort Drum’s Mobilization Operations Center to coordinate transportation of troops either headed to Iraq or home. Part of his job involved inspecting vehicles.
“In the military, you’re not allowed to do nothing,” Titus said. When soldiers arrive at a base, a profile is done to determine what they are fit to do.
Titus said he could have left the Guard earlier than he did, but it would have absolved the Army of any responsibility for his injuries. He would have been unable to use the Tricare health plan and would have lost his entire military pension benefits.
Titus thought it would be worthwhile to hang in and perform his duties at Fort Drum until he reached the 20-year retirement plateau.
But he took the Army Physical Evaluation Board in June, and when the results came back in September, Titus was rated at 20 percent disabled.
“If you are below 30 percent, you can kiss your good years of service goodbye and go home. If you want a pension, go talk to the VA,” Todd Titus said.
He requested and received a full evaluation at Walter Reed, conducted in October by a provost marshal and a doctor. Titus said an Army-appointed lawyer represented him during a subsequent 2½-hour hearing in November.
The board ruled he was mentally but not physically able to be a military policeman and rated him at 10 percent disabled.
“Basically, in their minds, the only reason I couldn’t be an M.P. is that I need a cane to walk,” Titus said. The decision made him extremely angry.
He appealed the decision on the grounds the board did not review his medical records properly. He also appealed on the grounds of Continuation of Active Reserve so he could continue his service and get to 20 years.
That appeal would have enabled him to go to training and drills like any other reservist or guardsman to finish his 20 years, but “the National Guard Bureau shot that down.”<br>
Attempts by telephone and e-mail to get comment from Titus’ lawyer, Army Capt. Roy Hilferty, were unsuccessful.
Titus had better luck in his home state of Rhode Island. He was told the Rhode Island National Guard would retire him medically if all else failed. On Jan. 10, Titus learned the state will allow him to retire with less than 20 years of service, which he can collect when he turns 60.
He was also entitled to apply for a Veterans Administration compensation benefit for his injuries. If approved, Titus said he would receive monthly VA checks for life. At 60, he will have to choose between the VA benefit and the military pension.
The VA benefit also provides him with health insurance coverage for life, whereas his military health plan ends six months after his service ended. He filed a claim, which is still pending, for VA benefits on Feb. 11 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Manchester.
A bittersweet homecoming: Wounded veteran unhappy with treatment at home[/size]
Although he may have to walk with a cane for the rest of his life, Barrington resident Todd Titus feels he is a very lucky man.
During his tour of duty with a National Guard unit in Iraq, Titus was shot in the foot by enemy fire and later suffered severe injuries in a vehicle accident that left him permanently disabled.
While Titus 38, was recovering from a shrapnel wound in his foot, his squad leader and team leader were killed on Sept. 1, 2003, when the Humvee Titus would have normally been riding in ran over a roadside bomb.
But Titus and his wife, Lisa, agree his luck ran out when he came up against the military bureaucracy in the 14 months he was forced to spend at Fort Drum, N.Y., recovering from his injuries. Titus, a corporal, wanted to remain on active duty while receiving medical care, so he could retire with a full, 20-year military pension. But that meant he had to stay at Fort Drum while rehabilitating, driving home to Barrington monthly to visit his wife and child.
Then the Department of the Army decided he could no longer perform his duties as a military policeman due to his injuries and forced Titus to leave the service on Jan. 23, one day before his 38th birthday. He had served a total of 19 years, six months and five days. Besides the Purple Heart he received for being shot in the foot in July 2003, Titus was awarded an Army Achievement Medal for his work to keep the Fort Drum fleet of vehicles maintained while he was in rehabilitation.
Titus also received the Order of the Spur that is afforded to regular Army Cavalry units that see combat action, after his unit, the Rhode Island National Guard’s 115th Military Police Company, accompanied a cavalry squadron into action in August 2003 in Fallujah.
End of the line
Titus is back home with Lisa and their son, Benjamin, who turns 7 in April, and two weeks ago he went back to his technical support job at Enterasys in Rochester.
Titus’s unit was sent to Iraq in April 2003. He said their duties included house-to-house searches and providing armed security for convoys of military trucks that hauled vital supplies of food, water, fuel and ammunition to other units.
The convoys are vulnerable to insurgent attacks and roadside bombs daily and Titus learned quickly to expect the unexpected.
“It’s like playing poker blindfolded,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen. All they can do is teach you how to react to it.”<br>
Titus had a stuffed armadillo his aunt made as a good luck charm propped on his Humvee’s dashboard for every mission but two. Both times, Titus nearly lost his life. In July 2003, Titus manned the machine gun turret of his Humvee when a tracer bullet hit his ankle during an ambush. Then in September, his Humvee collided with one of the convoy’s 5,000-gallon fuel trucks.
Spc. Michael Andrade, 28, of Warren, R.I., was killed in the accident and Spc. John Urban, 24, of East Providence, R.I., was injured.
Titus was knocked out, suffered a severe concussion, and his helmet strap left a 14-inch mark where it was driven into the right side of his head. He also suffered two herniated discs in his neck, a broken rib and pinched nerves in his right wrist.
Neurological damage from the head injury left him with no sense of equilibrium. After being treated at Army mobile hospitals in Balad and Baghdad, Titus was airlifted to the Army Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, and then to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in suburban Washington, D.C., where he spent three weeks.
Lisa Titus spoke to her husband briefly while he was in Baghdad and also while he was in Landstuhl. But it wasn’t until he was transferred to Fort Drum in November around Veterans Day that she was reunited with him.
Lisa Titus got a call from her husband telling her he had a four-day pass and had a ride that could drop him at the McDonald’s restaurant on Route 125 in Epping, some nine months after his unit left home.
“I was trying to hold the camcorder and not cry,” Lisa Titus recalled. “It was an absolute rush of emotion.” She recalled thinking, “He’s really there. He’s really made it back.”
Based on the extent of his injuries, Lisa Titus said their whole family believed her husband would be coming home for good very soon. But he didn’t.
The family learned that Todd Titus could only receive medical care through the Tricare military health plan at Fort Drum, which has only a clinic and few of the specialists he needed.
“They basically told me there was nothing they could do with my neck because they didn’t have the surgeons who could do it up there,” Titus said, “and frankly, the physical they give you when you come home is a joke.”<br>
He also learned that the few medical services Fort Drum has are also not as readily available to guardsmen and reservists as they are to regular Army and the 10th Mountain Division, which has its headquarters there.
When Lisa Titus learned that her husband was waiting prolonged periods to see certain doctors while performing regular duties, she was livid.
“They didn’t have enough doctors to go around,” she said. “You can’t describe it.”<br>“I’m bitter about it,” Lisa Titus said. “The Army says they never leave anyone behind, but you know what, they did a hell of a job leaving my husband behind.”
Todd Titus said that when he first arrived at Fort Drum, the Army asked him play a civilian in training exercises for units headed to Iraq. He was even asked to play dead.
Eventually, he was assigned to Fort Drum’s Mobilization Operations Center to coordinate transportation of troops either headed to Iraq or home. Part of his job involved inspecting vehicles.
“In the military, you’re not allowed to do nothing,” Titus said. When soldiers arrive at a base, a profile is done to determine what they are fit to do.
Titus said he could have left the Guard earlier than he did, but it would have absolved the Army of any responsibility for his injuries. He would have been unable to use the Tricare health plan and would have lost his entire military pension benefits.
Titus thought it would be worthwhile to hang in and perform his duties at Fort Drum until he reached the 20-year retirement plateau.
But he took the Army Physical Evaluation Board in June, and when the results came back in September, Titus was rated at 20 percent disabled.
“If you are below 30 percent, you can kiss your good years of service goodbye and go home. If you want a pension, go talk to the VA,” Todd Titus said.
He requested and received a full evaluation at Walter Reed, conducted in October by a provost marshal and a doctor. Titus said an Army-appointed lawyer represented him during a subsequent 2½-hour hearing in November.
The board ruled he was mentally but not physically able to be a military policeman and rated him at 10 percent disabled.
“Basically, in their minds, the only reason I couldn’t be an M.P. is that I need a cane to walk,” Titus said. The decision made him extremely angry.
He appealed the decision on the grounds the board did not review his medical records properly. He also appealed on the grounds of Continuation of Active Reserve so he could continue his service and get to 20 years.
That appeal would have enabled him to go to training and drills like any other reservist or guardsman to finish his 20 years, but “the National Guard Bureau shot that down.”<br>
Attempts by telephone and e-mail to get comment from Titus’ lawyer, Army Capt. Roy Hilferty, were unsuccessful.
Titus had better luck in his home state of Rhode Island. He was told the Rhode Island National Guard would retire him medically if all else failed. On Jan. 10, Titus learned the state will allow him to retire with less than 20 years of service, which he can collect when he turns 60.
He was also entitled to apply for a Veterans Administration compensation benefit for his injuries. If approved, Titus said he would receive monthly VA checks for life. At 60, he will have to choose between the VA benefit and the military pension.
The VA benefit also provides him with health insurance coverage for life, whereas his military health plan ends six months after his service ended. He filed a claim, which is still pending, for VA benefits on Feb. 11 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Manchester.