GI Suicides in Haiti Alert Army to the Enemy Within : Military: All missions have stresses and strains. But the impoverished nation is taking its toll on U.S. troops.

Sgt. James DeCoite’s wants as a military police officer in Haiti are simple. A shower without mud. A day off. Cold water to drink.

“Saudi Arabia was 10 times better than this,” DeCoite said amid the filth of a Port-au-Prince street market as he watched over the Dessalines Street police station. “It’s rougher here. Even though I was under threat in Saudi, this is rougher and more frustrating mentally.”

The suicides of three American soldiers in as many weeks has focused new attention on the morale of the men and women serving in the operation to restore democratic government to Haiti.

The suicides--15 times the U.S. national average--have raised questions about whether the mission in Haiti is taking an unusual toll on the troops.

On the surface, it shouldn’t.

In marked contrast to the backdrops for military endeavors in Saudi Arabia and Somalia, this is a non-hostile environment where crowds are more likely to cheer soldiers than shoot at them.

But, say the counselors and mental health specialists assigned to the military, each deployment has its peculiar sources of stress and strain.

American soldiers stationed here voice complaints that range from the quality of their living conditions to shock over the poverty of Haiti to frustration with the changes in and limitations of their mission.

And the swift way in which the nature of the Haiti operation shifted--overnight, from an invasion to an unchallenged occupation--gave soldiers little time to adjust and created confusion, the counselors say.

“In Somalia, you knew from the beginning what was going to happen,” said infantryman Anthony Paquin, standing on a dirt road as Humvees roared by. “When we first got here, we didn’t know what to expect. First we were told we were going on an invasion. And then it was a peacekeeping mission.”

Many servicemen and women note especially the frustration of not being allowed to intervene more directly in stopping “Haitian-on-Haitian” violence.

GIs frequently break up fights if they happen upon them, but they are generally supposed to leave the pursuit of criminals and detentions to international police monitors working with Haitian police.

“We don’t want to get too involved, because we want to go home, but we want to do something,” DeCoite said, a short distance from where ever-present crowds of curious Haitian children stared at him over barbed-wire coils.

“We’re frustrated about how much power we can use. . . . We’re military police. It’s inbred in us. We want to stop (violence). But we can’t. The Haitians are supposed to take care of Haitian problems.”

While U.S. Army officials caution that the suicides are still under investigation, they acknowledge alarm at the phenomenon.

After the most recent suicide, the Pentagon announced an increase in the number of psychiatrists and mental health workers assigned to troops in Haiti, although officials here said the increase was part of routine deployment.

In recent days, delivery of mail and access to U.S. news have increased. Duty is rotated to vary a unit’s contact with the Haitian public.

The counselors say they encourage the troops to talk out their problems and seek the listening ear of a chaplain or psychiatrist or psychologist. Forty-seven chaplains are available to attend to the 20,000 troops here.

“We emphasize that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” said Maj. Eric D. Cipriano, a behavioral scientist with the 528th Combat Stress Control Detachment out of Ft. Bragg, N.C., in an interview Thursday with a small group of reporters. “You always want people to understand the reality of the situation, but you don’t want them to dwell on it. Some troops talked about it. The majority we’ve talked to have dealt with it.”

The three suicides, military spokesmen said, were Army Spec. Alejandro Robles, 20, of Los Angeles, who shot himself while on patrol in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 29; Marine Lance Cpl. Maurice A. Williams, 21, of Detroit, who shot himself while aboard the transport ship Nashville, docked at Puerto Rico, on Oct. 5, and Army Pvt. Gerardo D. Luciano, 22, of New York, who shot himself in Port-au-Prince on Oct. 16.

Robles and Luciano belonged to the same brigade of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, and Cipriano said there is some concern about possible copycat suicides.

There was only one suicide in Somalia, where 96,000 troops served for more than a year. There were eight suicides during the Persian Gulf War, where 500,000 troops were deployed.

Soldiers guarding the entrance to a series of vacant lots near the port here said Thursday that morale was in flux.

A few feet from where the soldiers stood, a woman had been bathing her feet in water from Haiti’s ubiquitous open sewer canals. And not far away, thousands of Haitians were picking through a mountainous garbage dump in search of food.

“It (morale) varies,” Sgt. Orlando Pendleton said. “It’s high one day. Next day, it’s low. . . . Some of us feel sorry for a lot of them (the Haitians). We wish we could help more.”

“The rich people don’t want us (here),” Paquin said. “They don’t like us. You can tell by the way they look at us. They snub their noses.”

As the dust kicked up in air almost too hot to breathe, Sgt. Jesse Spencer added: “The biggest question is when are we going to go home. There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

Especially for the troops attached to the 10th Mountain, the heat and sun take their toll. These GIs are required to wear hard helmets, thick flak jackets and often long sleeves in temperatures that soar well above 90 degrees.

“It’s physically tiring. The sun sucks every drop out of you,” said Spec. David Erickson, a medic attached to the military police unit at the Dessalines police station. He had just patched up a Haitian machete victim who bled for three hours, treated a local prostitute who was sick and almost delivered a baby (the Red Cross arrived in time to assume that task).

Erickson said many soldiers are falling ill with dysentery and respiratory infections. His MP unit had worked three weeks without a day off, he said, and the worst part was the crude conditions of the camp where they sleep.

“We shower in the mud,” DeCoite said.

Counselors say separation from family is the problem that most plagues the troops. And, especially in a place like Haiti, a major source of stress is a sense of helplessness and a loss of control over one’s situation and the immediate environment.

Sometimes the poverty of the surroundings challenges a soldier’s own value system, the counselors say.

“Soldiers who haven’t seen it before do” experience shock, said Capt. Chester Egert, a chaplain attached to the 10th Aviation Brigade of the 10th Mountain.

“Young soldiers who never traveled outside the U.S. are the ones who are most taken aback. It’s disbelief. They can’t believe people live in some of these conditions, without electricity, without water, in the kinds of houses some people live in.”

Egert said the quickness with which soldiers are deployed in the modern Army has robbed the men and women of time to decompress and sort out their feelings after grueling missions such as Somalia or Haiti.

“In today’s Army, you’re on the other side of the world in 24 hours,” he said. “It happened in Vietnam too. A guy would be back on the streets of L.A. in 18 hours, with no time to process his experiences, and come back to a community . . . with no one to talk to.”

As for a consistent trait that counselors look for to identify potential suicides, Cipriano, the behavioral scientist, said there is no exact science to it.

“I can’t give you a profile,” he said. “Everybody’s at risk. No one is immune.”