Tale of Two Soldiers (One White and One Black)

[Bro. Askia]

A Tale of Two Soldiers
http://www.bet.com/articles/0,1048,c1gb7802-8643,00.html

Posted October 24, 2003 -- Army Spec. Shoshana Johnson, the African American women who was held prisoner of war in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was looking forward to a quiet discharge from the Army in a few days.

Battle scarred and weary, she has said not a word as her fellow POW comrade in arms Jessica Lynch cashes in with book and movie deals and a celebrity status in the media.

But it is the Army that is forcing Johnson to break her peace.

A few days ago, military brass informed her that she would receive a 30 percent disability benefit for her injuries. Lynch, who is White, was discharged in August and will receive an 80 percent disability benefit.

The difference amounts to $600 or $700 a month in payments, and that is causing Johnson and her family to speak out. The are so troubled by what they see as a "double standard," that they have enlisted Rev. Jesse Jackson to help make their case to the news media.

Jackson, who plans to plead Johnson's cause with the White House, the Pentagon and members of Congress, says the payment smacks a double standard and racism.

"Here's a case of two women, same [unit], same war; everything about their service commitment and their risk is equal. . . . Yet there's an enormous contrast between how the military has handled these two cases," Jackson told The Washington Post.

Johnson's father, Claude Johnson, himself an Army veteran, says that while neither he nor his family begrudge Lynch her celebrity or disability payments, he believes that his daughter should get her due, and it is more than a 30 percent disability benefit.

For its part, the Army, in denying charges of double standard, said Friday that claims are awarded to soldiers according to their injuries.

Johnson, 30, the mother of a 3-year-old daughter, was held captive for 22 days, when her unit stumbled into an ambush in southern Iraq last March. Eleven solders were killed, and six, including Lynch and Johnson, were taken prisoners.

Johnson was shot in both legs and is still traumatized by her war experience. In addition to walking with a limp, she suffers from bouts of depression.

Why do you think Johnson is getting 50 percent less in disability benefits than Jessica Lynch? Lynch's "fame" or racism or what?

Black Army Specialist is One of Five Prisoners of War
By Stephanie A. Crockett, BET.com Staff Writer
http://www.bet.com/articles/0,,c3gb5849-6597,00.html

Posted March 24, 2003 -- U.S. Army Spc. Shoshawna Johnson is one of five POW's believed to be held captive by Iraqi soldiers.

Johnson, 30, is a single mother from El Paso, Texas, whose main job in the Army is as a cook.

But she was cross-trained on a number of areas, her aunt, Margaret Thorn Henderson, told the "Today" show. But Henderson still doesn't understand how her niece ended up inside the Iraqi border.

"I thought she would be cooking, that type of duty," Henderson said. "That's the last place I thought she'd be."

Tracy Thorn, Johnson's cousin, saw the tape of Johnson for the first time this morning. She was on Iraqi television, with a bandaged ankle, her eyes darting back and forth and her arms held tight in her lap, MSNBC reported.

"She looked scared," Thorn said on "Today." "I can't imagine what she's going through. I can't imagine what she's feeling."

Thorn said she never thought one of her family members could be a prisoner of war.

"You never think one of your family members will be one of those to be taken captive," Thorn said on the show. "It never dawned on me it would hit so close to home."

Only three of the five POW's have been identified. Pfc. Patrick Miller of Park City, Kan., is the father of two young children, and Army Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, of El Paso, Texas, is married with a daughter. All are part of the 507th Maintenance Company at Fort Bliss, Texas.

When President Bush learned that there were prisoners of war, he demanded that their captors take good care of them.

"We expect them to be treated humanely, just like we'll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely," Bush said, according to MSNBC. "If not, the people who mistreat prisoners will be treated as war criminals."

Send words of encouragement to the Johnson family by hitting the Discuss Now button.

 

[ALJSU3]

This is a shame. I have never understood all the hoopla in reference to Jessica Lynch. Yes, she served her Country, but so did Shoshonda Johnson. This is blatant racism.

 

[Attack Dog]

Were there not some questions about the magnitude of the "injuries" Lynch suffered?

 

[Bro. Askia]

Headlines

Urban Leagues calls for inquiry into and review of Spec. Johnson disability decision
http://new.blackvoices.com/news/bv-urbanleague102403,0,1301277.story?coll=bv-news-black-

NEW YORK -- National Urban League president and CEO Marc H. Morial today called upon the U.S. Army 's Acting Secretary, the Honorable Les Brownlee, to conduct an immediate inquiry into and review of the Army's decision to award Army Spec. Shoshana Johnson a 30 percent disability benefit for the injuries she received while a prisoner of war in Iraq.

In his letter to the Under Secretary, Mr. Morial notes that Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Spec. Johnson were captured at the same time in the same attack, and that Johnson was released a week later and is still recovering from gun shot wounds to both of her ankles. "Yet," the letter states, "Pfc. Lynch is receiving an 80 percent disability benefit compared to Spec. Johnson's 30 percent."

The letter continues, "Both Army Spec. Johnson and Pfc. Jessica Lynch are Americans who risked their lives in Iraq and suffered the indignity and horror of capture. Surely, the Army's commitment to fairness dictates equal treatment for both of these American heroes."

 

[Bro. Askia]

Deborah Mathis: Shoshana Johnson Deserves Better From Army
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/print_version.cfm?ArticleID=111963&CATID=4

10/26/2003 11:48 AM EDT

By DEBORAH MATHIS

From: http://BlackAmericaWeb.com

We still don?t know just what Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson went through during the three weeks she spent as a prisoner of war in Iraq. Johnson didn?t get a movie contract or a book deal to detail what she endured when the 507th Maintenance Company ran into an ambush near al-Nasiriyah in southern Iraq on March 23.

Yet, what little we do know is proof enough that those were some awful, frightful, dangerous days for the young black woman who ran into harm?s way while serving her country.

There is, for example, the unforgettable videotape of the interrogation by her captors barking orders in broken English: "What?s your name? Where you are from?" The fear on Johnson?s face was unmistakable.

In addition to that psychological turbulence, we also know that Johnson had other problems. She was shot in both ankles. The video shows her crudely bandaged legs. When she and four other prisoners of war were released on April 13, television cameras recorded Johnson?s painful limp to the U.S. military truck that had come to whisk the newly emancipated to safety. A week later, when a cheering throng gathered at a Texas military base to welcome several of the POWs back to American soil, Johnson was carried from the plane by stretcher, unable even under those happy circumstances to run to her family?s arms.

Around that same time, one of Johnson?s fellow soldiers from the 507th was recuperating in Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. Although the Pentagon first said that Pfc. Jessica Lynch had been shot several times while trying to fight off the Iraqi ambushers, it was later conceded that Lynch was injured when the vehicle she was riding in crashed into a Humvee during the al-Nasiriyah fighting.

Lynch is being immortalized as a hero of the Iraq war. A movie is being made and a former New York Times reporter is penning an authorized biography of the West Virginia woman?s experience. Lynch and her family are being handsomely paid for their cooperation.

For the disability she suffered, Lynch has been collecting 80 percent of her Army pay since August, when she was discharged. For her injuries, Johnson will collect a 30 percent disability payment when she is discharged from service shortly.

Thirty percent is a snub, a blow-off, to a woman who put her life on the line for her country and who, to this day, is said to suffer bouts of depression while still undergoing rehabilitation for the wounds she suffered when she went into a war that the profoundly safe and secure man in the White House insisted on fighting.

Graciously, Johnson and her family are not "hating" on Jessica Lynch?s good fortunes. Indeed, the two women are friends. But the Johnsons are stunned by the disparate way the Army is treating them. It certainly bears the stench of racial discrimination ? the old double standard that would place a higher value on Lynch?s whiteness than on Johnson?s blackness.

The Pentagon will, of course, deny that and take defensive cover under some entrenched formula for determining benefit levels. But, as Urban League President Marc Morial said in a letter to Army Undersecretary Les Brownlee, parity is "important to ensure public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the Army?s treatment of its own members."

When Johnson?s father saw the videotape of his fearful daughter in the hands of her gun-toting, excited captors and considered the possibility that she might be sexually abused, he made a veiled appeal to the men who had grabbed her.

"I just hope they treat her like a lady," Claude Johnson said.

What a crying shame it is now that he has to hope the U.S. military will treat her like an American.

Deborah Mathis is a nationally syndicated columnist and former White House correspondent for the Gannett News Service. She is the author of two books, Yet A Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel at Home and Sole Sister: The Joys and Pain of Single Black Women.