DICKINSON, Texas — Kelly Winn’s Killeen home may be 5 miles from the U.S. Army’s Fort Hood, but Thursday’s shootings that left 13 people dead were almost as if they happened in her backyard.
"I turned on the TV. It was very overwhelming, and I started crying and freaking out," Winn, a Dickinson native and wife of any Army sergeant who is deployed in Iraq said. "It was scary.
"I can’t get my head completely wrapped around it. You want to wake up from this dream."
Winn had friends on the base who were in lockdown as military officials tried to sort out what was happening. It would be hours before any sense of calm would return to the base or nearby Killeen.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is accused in the shooting that also wounded 29 people.
As Winn watched the scene unfold on her TV set, the phone rang. On the other end from Iraq was Staff Sgt. Timothy Winn, who had one message for his wife, two children and another soldier’s wife and children: Get out of town.
"He just knew I was upset and the kids were upset and he just wanted us to get away," Mrs. Winn said. "It’s scary. Our husbands are fighting a war over there and now we had a war in our own backyard. There were armed guards at the schools’ front doors now. Our kids are scared."
So Winn packed up the car and drove to her father’s house in Dickinson, where she stayed until returning to Killeen on Sunday. She admitted the return would be tough.
"The whole thing has me baffled," she said. "Every day we worry about something happening (to our husbands). We just don’t think about it happening here in America. Now we not only have to worry if they will come home, but if somebody will do something crazy here."
The shootings add another layer of stress to an already stressful life for a soldier’s family. It comes at a time, Winn said, when the entire community around Fort Hood already was on edge mentality.
The military only recently has taken note of the added stress of its personnel. The Army launched a joint stress research program with the National Institutes of Mental Health.
Already, the research uncovered some startling facts.
In 2008, the rate of suicide among members of the military outpaced the civilian population for the first time. For the first nine months of this year, the Army reported 81 suicides among active duty personnel and another 36 where the cause of death has not been confirmed but thought to be suicide.
The stresses of repeated and longer deployments are "important potential contributors" to the higher rate of suicides, the institute said in a summary of the research.
Winn didn’t need a study to tell her what she already knows. She’s seen firsthand that repeated deployments — her husband is on his third in four years — is taking its toll on the soldiers, as well as their families, she said.
"It’s already wore on me, I am ready for (the war in Iraq) to be over," she said. She called the stress level in the community "ridiculous," and blames it on back-to-back deployments.
Winn said if the repeated deployments are going to continue, she would like to see soldiers like her husband get more "dwell time" — time spent away from the service and with family at home.
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