By KIMBERLY HEFLING
Associated Press

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. ‹ In combat, Army Spc. Dwayne Turner was a hero. Back home from Iraq, his life has been in shambles.

Just last month Turner, a 101st Airborne Division soldier, was honored with the Silver Star medal for saving at least two lives in combat. Today he is out of the Army, driving a borrowed car and sleeping at a friend's house.

The smile he beamed at the medal ceremony masked months of problems he says he experienced since returning home with battle wounds: a suicide attempt, along with flashbacks and nightmares so bad he resorted to binge drinking to fall asleep.

"I kind of felt like I was blowing in the wind pretty much," said Turner, 23, of Indianapolis, who was an Army medic.

He said that because he had been absent without leave for two days and smoked marijuana while drunk, he received a general discharge rather than an honorable discharge.

That means he is not eligible for at least $40,000 in college funding he expected to receive. The Army also demoted him to private before his discharge.

The Army will not comment on the circumstances surrounding Turner's discharge, which occurred in the period since the medal ceremony, because it is an administrative issue, said Master Sgt. Kelly Tyler, a public affairs officer at Fort Campbell.

Turner, who still walks with a limp, said his problems relate to his struggles back home after the war.

"They don't understand," he said. "They think you're pretty much supposed to be normal when you come back from war, and I don't understand that."

At 18 Turner signed on to be a medic and became known as "Doc" to his Army buddies.

Last year, he deployed for major combat in Iraq with the 101st's 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment. He was in his element as he treated wounded American soldiers, prisoners of war and Iraqi civilians.

"I loved my job," Turner said. "I loved my guys."

Then, on April 13, he was with comrades in a crowded area south of Baghdad when assailants shot at the soldiers and threw grenades.

Turner treated 16 soldiers as the attack continued, even though he had shrapnel wounds in both legs and was shot at least twice in the limbs.

"He is a bona fide hero. He saved two lives without question," Brig. Gen. Frank Helmick, who awarded Turner the Silver Star, the third-highest award given for actions in combat, said at the ceremony last month.

Turner returned to Fort Campbell without his comrades. He said after a couple of weeks of hospital treatment he felt guilty for leaving them behind. He also had flashbacks and anxiety. While eating at McDonald's, he would worry the restaurant would be robbed.

Turner said he sought counseling offered by the Army, and psychiatrists diagnosed him with acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress. He was set to get out of the Army on a medical discharge, he said.

Last summer, things got worse. His grandfather died and he was having problems with his ex-wife, the mother of his 2-year-old son.

Everything was too much to handle, and he stopped showing up for duty at Fort Campbell. He was declared AWOL, according to paperwork he provided.

"I wasn't planning on coming back," Turner said. "I thought I was gone for good."

While drinking one night, he contemplated suicide and cut his wrist. Changing his mind, he treated the wound himself, covered it with gauze and hid it with his watch.

He said he became drunk at a party and smoked a cigar that he did not know had the tobacco inside replaced with marijuana. But a friend persuaded him to go back to the Army.

Given an Army drug test ‹ standard after a soldier goes AWOL ‹ he tested positive for marijuana.

He said he wishes now that things had turned out differently. But given his state of mind, he's not sure he would not go AWOL again in the same circumstances.

"I wasn't there. There was too much turmoil. I'm pretty sure with my state of mind if it happened all again the same way, I'd probably do the same thing over again," Turner said.

"It was all really just too much for one person to handle and come out OK all the time. Everybody has their breaking point."

Tyler, the public affairs officer, said the Army weighs all aspects of a soldier's conduct when determining the type of discharge.

"The Army is responsible for a great number of things, but some of this has to come down to individual responsibility," he said.

Turner said he has stopped the heavy drinking. He has gotten a part-time job as an aide at Jennie Stuart Medical Center in Hopkinsville and is hoping to begin classes soon at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn.

He thinks he would like to be a psychiatrist. After all he has been through, Turner said, he would like to help people with their own mental problems.

"I kind of understand."

 

Copyright 2004 The Courier-Journal. this article first appeared in the Louisville
Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky

American Forces Press Service
based on a release from the
Fort Campbell, Ky., Public Affairs Office

A 101st Airborne Division soldier who, despite being critically wounded himself, repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to treat wounded comrades in Iraq received the Silver Star on February 5th. Pvt. Dwayne Turner, a combat medic assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, provided life-saving medical care to 16 fellow soldiers April 13 when his unit came under a grenade and small-arms attack 30 miles south of Baghdad.  Turner and two other medics from Company A of that battalion were part of a work detail that came under attack as they unloaded supplies in a makeshift operations center.  "I moved to (my vehicle) just before the first grenade came over the wall," Turner said. "The blast threw me

Ignoring his own injuries, Turner ran to the front of his vehicle and saw a soldier with eye injuries.

"I checked him out, and tried to get him into a building," Turner said. The other two medics established a triage system under the cover of a building while Turner ran back outside to bring more soldiers into the makeshift clinic.

"I just started assessing the situation, seeing who was hurt, giving them first aid and pulling them into safety," he said, downplaying his actions on that day.

Turner, his legs wounded by shrapnel in the initial attack, was shot at least twice while giving first aid to the soldiers.

"I didn't realize I was shot," he said. "A couple of times, I heard bullets going by, but I thought they were just kicking up rocks on me."

At one point during the attack, one of Turner's fellow medics told him he was bleeding. "Someone told me, 'Doc Turner, Doc Turner, you're bleeding.'" he said. "I looked down at my leg and saw I was bleeding, and kind of said, 'Oh hell, if I'm not dead yet, I guess I'm not dying.'"

"I don't think he realized how much blood he lost," said Sgt. Neil Mulvaney, from the same unit as Turner.

"After I got the first patient inside the building, I sort of slumped down in the corner," Turner said. "I didn't think there was any way we were going to get out of there, and it would have been really easy to just stay in that corner.

"Then I heard (the wounded) calling for medics," he continued, "and I realized I could let them continue to get hurt -- and possibly die -- and not come home to their families, or I could do something about it."

Turner chose to do something about it. He continued to give first aid and to bring soldiers in from the barrage of gunfire outside the compound until he finally collapsed against a wall from loss of blood. A bullet had broken his right arm. He had been shot in the left leg. Shrapnel had torn into both of his legs.

The Silver Star is awarded for gallantry in combat, but Turner does not see himself as a hero.

"Nobody gets left behind," he said emphatically. "We were the medical personnel on hand. You're not relieved from your duty until someone comes. No one else was going to get the job done, so we did."

Although Turner downplays his heroism, the Army believes that at least two of the 16 soldiers he treated would have died had he not been there.

"He risked his life for 16 other men without noticing his own injuries - that's heroism in my book," Mulvaney said.

"I was just doing my job," Turner insisted. "As far as the values of the Army, it's not to 'earn' a Silver Star; it's to uphold what you signed on for. Other people may see me as a hero; I see myself as doing my job. No one is going to die on my watch."

Turner's Silver Star is the highest award given to any 101st soldier during Operation Iraqi Freedom thus far. He received the Purple Heart in July.

The 101st Airborne Division is in the midst of returning to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after a year's deployment to Iraq. The last division convoy rolled across the border into Kuwait Feb. 10th. A 10-soldier contingent assigned to Mosul Airfield is all that remains of the 101st in Iraq; they are slated to leave Iraq late February.