Texans at War: Brownwood and the Big Country Included in Texas Monthly Special Edition !

Casualty Of War

MASTER SERGEANT JAMES COONS, OF CONROE, WAS A DECORATED SOLDIER WHO SERVED HIS COUNTRY FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS. BUT WHEN THE HORRORS OF BATTLE TOOK THEIR TOLL, THE ARMY HE LOVED SO DEARLY LEFT HIM ALL ALONE TO FIGHT HIS DEMONS.
by Skip Hollandsworth

MASTER SERGEANT JAMES COONS was alone in his trailer at Camp Doha, in Kuwait, standing in front of the bathroom sink, when he saw the face. It appeared in the mirrora young soldiers face, most of it ripped away, the bones exposed and the skin blistered with burns.
For several seconds, Coons stared at the mirror. He turned away, waited for a moment, and looked back. The face was still there, hovering like an apparition. The one remaining eye was open, unblinking, staring right back at him.
It was the spring of 2003. Coons, who was 35 years old, was about to receive a Bronze Star and a U.S. Army Meritorious Service Medal for his work installing combat communications systems during the invasion of Iraq. He was, by all accounts, a soldiers soldier: six feet two, two hundred pounds, with a flattop, a perfectly chiseled jawline, and biceps the size of baseballs. A real-life G. I. Joe, one sergeant said about him. Our Rock of Gibraltar, added a lieutenant colonel. In just a couple of months, Coons was scheduled to return to Texas to attend an academy at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, so that he could become a sergeant major, the highest rank an enlisted soldier in the Army can achieve.
But Coons never made it to Fort Bliss. He never fulfilled his dream of leading a large battalion of soldiers and passing on to them what he described as the joys of Army life.
Instead, Master Sergeant Coons would soon find himself alone, stuck in a little room in a little building at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C. No one came by to check on him. No one stopped to ask about the face of the soldier that he had seen in the mirror.
And what happened next became a tragedy that, to this day, no one has been able to explain.
IT WAS CALLED SOLDIERS HEART during the Civil War, shell shock during World War I, and battle fatigue during World War II and Korea. Since the Vietnam War, it has had a sophisticated medical namepost-traumatic stress disorderand as doctors now know, it can cause psychic wounds in soldiers that are just as devastating as the physical wounds that come from a bullet. In many cases, it slowly worms its way into soldiers lives months or even years after they have returned home. But it has also been known to afflict soldiers almost overnight, plunging them inexplicably into the depths of despair. According to psychologists and neurologists, the stress of war literally changes the brain chemistry of those soldiers, causing them to fall apart emotionally and plaguing them with nightmarish flashbacks, searing panic attacks, and constant, overwhelming anxiety.
Coons hardly seemed like a candidate for such a disorder. He was not a raw, young recruit. He was one of the Armys more experienced soldiers, a seventeen-year veteran who told everyone that he wanted to remain a soldier for an additional twenty years. He was willing to do anything for the Army, says his mother, Carol Coons, a gentle-looking woman with highlighted hair. Sitting next to her husband, Richard, at the kitchen table in their home in Katy, outside Houston, she digs through a large cardboard box that is filled with letters, e-mails, photos, certificates, and government reports documenting Jamess life. Look, here is one of his commendations for marksmanship, she says. And here is his commendation he received when he completed Air Assault School. She leafs through more papers. And heres something when he completed a military scuba diving course. Scuba diving! Good Lord, he would try anything.
Maybe this will help you understand how he thought, says Richard, the owner of a small grass-seeding company. He flips through the file and finds a copy of an e-mail his son had sent from Kuwait just before the war began. This is my life, James wrote. I would not change anything. There is not another place on the face of the planet earth that I would want to be right now. What I do now is not about me. Its about the American Flag.
Richard stares at the e-mail. You would not think that this would be a soldier that the Army would be able to forget, he says.
As a young boy growing up in Katy, James was so in love with military life that he would go to the Army surplus store on Saturdays to buy MREs (meals ready to eat), which he would then take to school and devour during lunch period. On one trip to the store, he bought a parachute and a harness, which he wore while jumping out of a backyard tree. At school, he wore his hair short, and he stood at attention during the Pledge of Allegiance. His father, who had served with the Air Force during Vietnam, told him that if he went to college, he could become an officer. But James said he wanted to be one of the grunts, and in 1986, when he was a high school senior, he signed a letter of intent to enlist in the Army so that he could report to basic training almost immediately after graduation.
He was shipped to Fort Hood, where he became a field artillery expert. After receiving his parachuting wings, an Army Good Conduct Medal, and an Army Achievement Medal for his work in special weapons, he was moved into the Signal Corps, where he learned to install communications systems and computer networks for troops in the midst of battle. He then served for a few years at an Army base in Okinawa, Japan, where he was promoted to sergeant in 1993 and received another Army Good Conduct Medal. While there, he married an Okinawan woman, who gave birth to his first child, a daughter. Every Saturday hed drive thirty miles to a barbershop to get his hair cut from an older Okinawan woman who knew how to do flattops, says Bryan Randall, a retired command sergeant major who served with him. He was such a perfect soldier that if he got dirty while working, hed race back to his home and put on another uniform.
To round out his r鳵m頩n hopes of becoming a sergeant major, Coons returned to the United States and spent a few years working as a recruiter in Conroe, north of Houston. By then, he was divorced but had custody of his daughter. He met and married Robin Martin in 1999, a beautiful, young blonde who worked at a preschool. Robin adopted Jamess child, and she soon gave birth to another girl. He was always joking with the girls, ordering them to stand at parade rest and then at ease, Robin says, sitting at her dining room table in her home north of Conroe. Hed tell them to scrub their grills, which is Army for brushing your teeth, and if they were talking too much, hed say, Okay, girls, shut your pie holes. Then, while they were giggling, hed give them a big formal salute that looked like a karate chop gesture. We called it the hand.
He was soon transferred to the U.S. Army War College, in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, where he served as the noncommissioned officer in charge of the bases computer network systems. In the words of Patrick Kasse, another sergeant stationed at Carlisle, Coons was determined to make his way to the top. Around Carlisle, he became known as Big Daddy, not only because of his height but also because of his love of mentoring recruits.
He did not hesitate to walk right up to a young soldier hed see on base and say, Soldier, you need to address your uniform. You need to address your hair, says Robin. And the young soldiers loved it. He was so respected that other soldiers sometimes would meet with him to ask for help with their careers or even with personal things, like how to improve their marriages.
His next assignment was supposed to be at a base in Korea, after which he would be sent to the Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss. But in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he volunteered to go to Kuwait to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. He brought Robin and the girls back to Conroe, where they leased a townhome, and handed Robin a gray folder that contained everything she would need in case something happened to him: copies of their life insurance policy, the familys financial information, and even some notes about what he wanted to take place at his funeral. Then, in July 2002, he said good-bye.
THIS PROBABLY WAS NOT HIS FIRST trip to the Persian Gulf; Coons reportedly made a couple of classified visits during Operation Desert Storm, in the early nineties. But this time around, he was responsible for all the enlisted soldiers and civilian contractors who were setting up the computer networks for the Armys Central Command. And once the war began, he was part of the team responsible for implementing the communications systems between officers and field commanders.
Im truly amazed to see my lifes work in action, he exultantly wrote to his father just after the war began. These young kids are kicking some serious ass. I trained them and now Im proud to lead them. He regularly called Robin via satellite phone to tell her that he was doing just fine. Meticulous as always, he once called to remind her that their daughters had an appointment that afternoon with the dentist. He also sent his daughters postcards. Girls, he wrote on the back of one that showed a camel standing in the desert, this is my pet. He lives outside my tent. Haha. Love, Daddy.
According to one written commendation of Coonss work, his actions ensured complete dominance and victory on the battlefield. His company commander, Captain Michael Singleton, not only described Coonss job performance as stellar but also noted that Coons took it upon himself to set up a computer system for the morgue at Camp Doha so that the remains of fallen U.S. soldiers could be quickly identified and returned home for burial. While he was at the morgue, Coons would stand at attention in front of the bodies, paying his respects.
Then, one afternoon in April 2003, when he was talking to Robin, he seemed subdued. She asked him if anything had happened. Oh, its nothing, he quickly said. I havent been sleeping all that well.
During another phone call a couple of days later, he said, I just want to get home and have a good nights sleep.
Robin realized her husband was speaking more slowly than usual. Honey, are you sure you are okay? she asked.
Ill explain everything when I see you, he replied. Some things happened that I didnt expect.
COONSS FELLOW SOLDIERS noticed that he showed some signs of exhaustion that spring, but none of them sensed that he was in any way troubled. He continued to work eighteen-hour days, and in his spare time, he played basketball and went on long-distance runs around the base. Dressed in his uniform, his back ramrod straight and his flattop perfectly trimmed, he also continued to visit the morgue to honor the latest fallen soldiers. Captain Singleton would later say that he believed Coons was handling the stress of war better than he was. Another soldier at the camp would say that Coons maintained a remarkable ability to make sure there was a smile on everyones face when they were feeling down. One afternoon, Coons and some of the members of his company made a videotape for students at an elementary school back in the United States that had been sending letters to Camp Doha. Coons grinned at the camera and barked, Little people, I want to deliver this message to you. Understand: Take your vitamins, say your prayers, and mind your teachers. If you dont mind your teachers, then were going to give you some rawhide! Take care, and have a good day!
But that May he called his mother and told her that he missed her. Carol heard the strain in his voice and asked him if he was sleeping.
A long silence followed. One or two hours a night, he said.
Jimmy, said Carol, if theres something bothering you, why dont you tell me?
There was another silence. Mama, these soldiers who are dying over here are just babies, he said. Just babies. Ive seen them in the morgue.
He told her that on one of his visits, he had seen the body of a soldier whose face had been mutilated by a bomb blast. It was hard to stop thinking about that face, he said. It was especially hard to stop thinking about the face at night, when he was lying alone in his bed.
Now, Jimmy, Carol told him, youre going to be home in about thirty days. Thirty days! When you get here, youll have your girls and Robin. Youll have us. Well give you different things to think about. Well give you different memories.
Im so tired, Coons said. Im so tired.

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