A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11 , 2021
BY KAROUN DEMIRJIAN
AND ALEX HORTONAs t he United States turns away
from a generation of war, a great
struggle remains.
Millions are living with
wounds, physical and invisible,
sustained in service to the nation
— injuries not only due to the
harsh realities of combat but also
the result of exploitation, discrim-
ination, demonization and negli-
gence.
Successive administrations
and Congress have struggled to
correct some of these ills. But
closer to the ground, countless
veterans are also working on is-
sues they experienced them-
selves, so that future generations
of service members don’t endure
the oftentimes avoidable harms
that can haunt individuals for
years and weaken the military.
To mark this Veterans Day, The
Washington Post profiled several
of those fighting the next fight to
fix the problems they encoun-
tered while serving. Their experi-
ences shed light on the breadth of
challenges affecting the active-
duty and veteran communities.
And while this selection of indi-
viduals is far from exhaustive,
each is illustrative of the call to
service, the drive to do good and
right wrongs, that many continue
to feel even after their military
careers come to an end.
Crystal Ellington
Crystal Ellington was working
as a helicopter mechanic at Joint
Base Lewis-McChord in Washing-
ton state when, in 2019, she was
sexually assaulted by a fellow sol-
dier. The trauma and indignities
that followed led her to become
an advocate for other women and
minorities who’ve faced injustices
or hardships in connection with
their military service.
Ellington, who is Black and
queer, was the only woman in her
unit when the assault happened.
She chose to report the incident
informally, hoping to avoid retali-
ation by not naming her perpetra-
tor, whom she describes as a char-
ismatic and well-connected sol-
dier who outranked her. But their
commander, Ellington says, mis-
handled the situation by asking
her to reveal her attacker’s identi-
ty. She called it “retraumatizing.”
Ellington began experiencing
panic attacks, and performing her
duties became more difficult. And
even though she was assigned a
committed victim advocate, she
says, “I didn’t feel like I had much
recourse, and I didn’t feel like I
had anywhere to go.”
Now, a s communications d irec-
tor for Minority Veterans of Amer-
ica, Ellington is working to
change not only how the military
prosecutes sex assaults — a divi-
sive topic in Congress, where law-
makers are debating moving such
cases outside the chain of com-
mand — but also how command-
ers acknowledge victims.
Ellington is particularly fo-
cused on urging the Pentagon to
adopt the clinical definition of
“military sexual trauma” in use
within the Department of Veter-
ans Affairs. That, she argues, is
the only way the military can
address the extensive and often
hidden fallout that can follow an
assault and ensure that victims
aren’t pilloried while in recovery.
“I don’t think people really un-
derstand military sexual trauma
as it relates to how you move
throughout the world,” Ellington
says. “Just because you can’t see
someone’s d isability doesn’t m ake
it any less valid.”
Kristofer Goldsmith
In the years after his discharge
from the Army, Iraq War veteran
Kristofer Goldsmith experienced
homelessness, u nemployment, al-
cohol addiction and social isola-
tion. He attempted suicide. Such
darkness, Goldsmith later real-
ized, can leave veterans vulner-
able to radicalization from anti-
government groups promising
fraternity around a shared em-
brace of extremist beliefs.
While managing the social me-
dia accounts for Vietnam Veter-
ans of America, an advocacy
group, Goldsmith discovered a
copycat page on Facebook. Before
long, he had unearthed multiple
sites targeting veterans specifical-
ly with divisive and what he saw
as dangerous propaganda. He
wanted to fight back.
Last year, amid a fractious and
polarizing presidential contest,
Goldsmith and a friend set out to
infiltrate a leading white-
nationalist group online. They
publicly exposed its members’
hateful rhetoric and outed their
leader to his neighbors, disrupt-
ing the group’s activities just be-
fore the 2020 election and forcing
the extremists to go underground
for a time.
Next, he wormed his way into a
group circulating conspiracy the-
ories about the election and ac-
tively recruiting veterans to join
their cause. After the Jan. 6 insur-
rection, Goldsmith was devastat-
ed and decided to turn his knowl-
edge of how extremist groups
function into a consultancy busi-
ness. He’s also writing a book
intended to be a how-to manual
for other veterans to help take
down hate groups from the inside.
Goldsmith wants such organi-
zations to become too paranoid to
seek out veterans — an attractive
target, he says, because of their
experience recruiting, organizing
and fighting, and their influence
with other veterans. He is advo-
cating for the Pentagon and the
Department of Veterans Affairs to
focus on becoming more attuned
to extremist tendencies or sympa-
thies in potential m ilitary recruits
and among those currently in
uniform, and more forthcoming
with resources that can help vet-
erans avoid falling prey.
Goldsmith believes veterans
can find a “sense of purpose,” as he
did, in mobilizing against domes-
tic extremists — the vast majority
of whom “are not veterans,” he
says. His aim is to make it “so that
civilians who are involved in these
movements no longer trust veter-
ans — so that they no longer
consider veterans an asset and
instead view them as a liability.”Chelsey Simoni
Chelsey Simoni remembers the
day in 2014 when the man who
would become her husband, fel-
low veteran Kyle Simoni, told her
that many people he had been to
war with had died of rare forms of
respiratory disease and cancer in
just the few years since their re-
turn from Iraq.
Simoni, now 31, was in the
process then of leaving the mili-
tary — she had been a medical
specialist before suffering a ca-
reer-ending injury — and had en-rolled in nursing school. Today
she leads a foundation dedicated
to researching toxic exposure in
the military and educating medi-
cal professionals about how to
spot rare conditions in those who
have served. She named the or-
ganization the HunterSeven
Foundation, a nod to her hus-
band’s sergeant major, who died
of a rare form of bile duct cancer.
Public discourse surrounding
toxic exposure, and the military’s
responsibility to minimize it and
care for those who have suffered
from it, is most commonly fo-
cused on burn pits — massive
open-air fires used to burn the
military’s trash at bases in Iraq
and Afghanistan. But according
to Simoni’s research, most veter-
ans who have suffered serious or
fatal conditions due to toxic expo-
sure never set foot anywhere near
a burn pit, and she wants more
suffering veterans to be acknowl-
edged as part of the military’s
problem.
“Statistically, we’ve seen a lot
more veterans become sick and ill
that weren’t around burn pits,”
Simoni said. “That’s the problem
with burn pits: It provides a false
sense of security. Because if we
restrict the problem to specifical-
ly burn pits, people are going to
say, ‘I was never around burn pits,
I’m fine.’ ”
Simoni’s organization has pub-
lished a comprehensive review of
the impact of toxic exposure on
veterans of the Iraq War and is
planning to follow that next
month by releasing a similar
study focused on Afghanistan.
She hopes the research helps to
educate medical professionals
and encourage them to probe
deeper when veterans present
with c ertain ailments, so that seri-
ous symptoms of combat-envi-ronment toxic exposure aren’t
misdiagnosed.
Her mission is personal. Kyle,
34, suffers from severe issues with
his liver and thyroid and a sleep
disorder, conditions they believe
to be connected to his service. “We
don’t even know if we can have
children because of his expo-
sures,” she says. “This is our fu-
ture.”Margaret Stock
It had become a familiar pat-
tern: A service member who
wasn’t yet a U.S. citizen would
encounter immigration enforce-
ment, become entangled in a
frightening bureaucratic mess in-
volving multiple federal agencies
until finally — in an act of desper-
ation — they would seek the help
of Margaret Stock.
Stock, a retired Army Reserve
officer and civilian immigration
attorney, became more and more
disturbed by the trend, particu-
larly as the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq had exposed the Penta-
gon’s lack of expertise in the lan-
guages and cultural sensitivities
unique to those parts of the world.
For centuries, she thought, the
U.S. military has leveraged immi-
grants in times of conflict, putting
them on paths to citizenship
while benefiting from their skills
— such as translating enemy doc-
uments and interpreting trans-
missions sent in their native
tongues. B ut after 9/11, the leader-
ship appeared blind to these po-
tential assets thanks to a broken
immigration system and regula-
tions that at the time barred en-
listment without a green card.
“It seemed crazy,” she says.
“Our national leadership didn’t
use the asset we have.”
By 2009, Stock implemented a
Defense Department-wide pro-
gram designed to attract military
recruits with badly needed lan-
guage, cultural and medical skills.
It was designed to trade them
fast-tracked naturalization in ex-
change for their service. More
than 10,000 troops joined the
ranks through her initiative.
The Pentagon mismanaged the
program, though, often placing
these personnel in jobs that didn’t
take full advantage of their spe-
cialization. Later, concerns
among senior defense officials
that the program could b e exploit-
ed by U.S. adversaries led to its
closing in 2016. Stock had retired,
but suddenly she was flooded
once more with messages from
frantic recruits still in the pipe-
line who suddenly f aced dismissal
and, for some, deportation.
In the years since, she has of-
fered legal advice and guidance
on how to navigate the military
enlistment process to hundreds of
immigrants, helping many suc-
cessfully reach their units and
naturalize. Today, her workload is
on the rise again, as tens of thou-
sands of Afghans — American
allies and their families — have
arrived in the United States fol-
lowing the chaotic withdrawal
from 20 years of war in late Au-
gust.
“The U.S. government doesn’t
have the institutional memory to
figure this out,” says Stock, who
has quietly helped some govern-
ment officials find their footing,
including with seminars intended
to explain the nuances of U.S.
immigration law.
The emails, she says, never stop
coming.Michael Washington
It was a late summer day in
Ta coma, Wash., in 2013, when
Michael Washington finished a
meal at his favorite seafood joint,
walked to the East 34th Street
Bridge and scoped out the best
spot to jump. As the cool wind
whipped around him, the retired
Marine turned firefighter con-
templated how he had reached
this point.
A veteran of several combat
deployments, Washington
watched his son — also named
Michael — follow him into the
Marine Corps and deploy to Af-
ghanistan in 2008. The father
returned from war alive. The son
did not. And five unbearable years
later, he readied himself on the
bridge’s edge and leaned forward,
like a swimmer on a diving plat-
form.
Washington, 59, says that if not
for the memory of his son and
what he believes was a spiritual
intervention urging him to step
away, he would have taken his life
in that moment of despair. In-
stead, he walked away, found help
and eventually learned to see that
in his tragedy there was opportu-
nity.
Washington became a psycho-
therapist specializing in trauma
among military personnel, veter-
ans and first responders. He says
that what he lacked, what drew
him to the bridge that day, is what
probably saved his life.
“If I had access to a gun, there’s
no doubt in my mind that I
wouldn’t be here,” Washington
SEE VETERANS ON AOut of uniform. Still in the fight.
Seven veterans, each on a mission to end the often avoidable harms that afflict those who serve
JACOB M. LANGSTON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Crystal Ellington, communications director with Minority Veterans of America, seen near her home in South Daytona, Fla. The
veteran is working on changes to h ow the military prosecutes sexual assaults a s well as how commanders acknowledge victims.COURTESY OF MARGARET STOCK; N EIL T. O’DONNELL
LEFT: Margaret Stock, seen at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1981.
RIGHT: The retired Army Reserve officer is now a civilian
immigration attorney who has helped immigrants navigate
the military enlistment process and naturalize.COURTESY OF MARTIN JOHNSON; V ERONICA WHITE
LEFT: Martin Johnson, seen in basic training in 2006.
RIGHT: Johnson is part of a lawsuit against the Air Force,
accusing it of sidestepping regulations on consideration of
mental health injuries and their role in misconduct.DAVID DEGNER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Chelsey Simoni and her husband, Kyle Simoni, in North Attleborough, Mass. Chelsey founded an organization that helps veterans
facing health issues due to exposure to toxic chemicals, while Kyle suffers from conditions they believe are connected to his service.