[AngelsSix]

Part 3

Critical comments

"Your conduct is inconsistent with the integrity and
professionalism required by a Special Forces soldier,"
wrote Lt. Col. Christopher E. Conner of the 2nd
Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group Headquarters in
Kuwait. "I do not believe you are suitable for further
Special Forces duty." The Alfords were later told that
Staff Sgt. Alford had been seen by a doctor in Kuwait,
who reportedly said nothing was wrong with him. A
psychiatrist in Kuwait reportedly said that he was
"faking it."

"Jamie was a good soldier," said his mother, who has
left her job to care for her son. "When all this
started happening, anyone should have known he was
sick."

The cause of Staff Sgt. Alford's disease, diagnosed as
"sporadic" CJD, is unknown.

CJD is a fatal degenerative brain disease in which
early symptoms of behavioral changes and memory loss
lead to severe mental impairment, dementia, loss of
coordination, involuntary jerking movements, loss of
speech, loss of vision, coma and death. Sporadic CJD
is said to occur spontaneously, while new variant CJD
is caused by eating beef contaminated with mad cow
disease.

Sporadic CJD usually affects elderly patients, who
often die within six months of the onset of symptoms.
The duration of new variant CJD symptoms is often 18
months or more, and the median age of death is 28.

Staff Sgt. Alford showed clinical symptoms of new
variant CJD, but his brain pathology was consistent
with sporadic CJD. The Alfords suspect he might have
contracted the disease by eating contaminated beef
somewhere. During the past six years, he was deployed
to Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Uzbekistan,
Afghanistan, Thailand, France and England.

But they also see another possibility.

Staff Sgt. Alford told his doctors and his family that
he ate sheep's brain when serving in Oman two years
ago.

"As a Green Beret, he lived among the people," said
his wife, Spec. Alford. "He said the locals served him
the head of a sheep. It was considered an honor."

But while experts say cattle in Great Britain
contracted mad cow disease from eating
scrapie-infected sheep parts, they don't believe the
disease is transmissible from sheep to people - no
human has been proved to have contracted "mad sheep
disease."

It's also theoretically possible that the soldier was
given a contaminated vaccine.

In 2001, certain vaccine manufacturers admitted that
they were using fetal calf serum and other materials
from cattle raised in countries at high risk for mad
cow disease, in spite of years of warnings from the
Food and Drug Administration. The vaccines include
those to prevent polio, diphtheria, tetanus and
anthrax.

"Jamie was given all those," his father said.

No one has been known to have contracted the disease
from a contaminated vaccine, and the FDA puts the odds
of a vaccine being tainted with mad cow disease at 1
in 40 million doses.

But the odds of Staff Sgt. Alford getting CJD
"spontaneously" are one in 100 million, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

His family realizes that the cause of his disease is
likely to remain a mystery.

Now, in the final months of his illness, Jamie is fed
intravenously and sedated to help him sleep. He stares
blankly and doesn't recognize his family. His wife,
brother, parents and grandparents help him in his
walking ritual.

"We walk the floor," his wife said. "I hold onto him
so he won't fall down. We just walk across the living
room and back and forth. He'll do that for hours and
hours. It's like he can't be still."

The family knows it is only a matter of days or weeks
before he may go blind and lapse into a coma.

He is expected to die before Christmas.


Soldier sent home

On April 22, Staff Sgt. Alford was sent home to Big
Rock, Tenn., near his Army post at Fort Campbell.

"His hands were shaking," said his neighbor Justin
Hawkins, 23. "He couldn't turn his keys. He wasn't
able to talk right. Something was really wrong with
him, but we didn't know what. He just seemed really
shook up and frightened."

The utilities were disconnected. Mr. Hawkins said he
unlocked the house and called the power company. His
mother, Beverly Hawkins, contacted the Alfords in
Texas on April 26.

Neither they nor their daughter-in-law had had any
communication with Staff Sgt. Alford for months.

"I had a 24-year-old son I thought was fighting a war
in Iraq, and I find out from his neighbor that he's
sick in Tennessee," Mrs. Alford said.

The Alfords drove about 600 miles to see their son
that night.

"He had lost 30 pounds," his mother said. "He looked
like a skeleton. ... He couldn't drink from a glass.
He couldn't hold a pen or eat with a fork. He couldn't
button a shirt, couldn't drive, couldn't say his
wife's name - how could anyone not have known he was
sick?"

The Alfords took their son to the hospital emergency
room, then to an Army medical clinic. From the
Blanchfield Army Hospital, he was sent to the
veteran's hospital in Nashville, where Dr. Steve J.
Williams, clinical fellow in the Division of
Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, eventually diagnosed CJD.

"I was very struck by Jamie's symptoms," Dr. Williams
said. "I had never seen a patient like Jamie before."

Dr. Williams said Jamie's superiors might not have
realized he was ill because Jamie tried so hard to
hide his symptoms.

"Jamie was very smart," Dr. Williams said. "He was
tremendously resourceful. He tried to hide his disease
as long as he could. He tried to compensate. When I
asked him his birth date, he glanced at his nametag.
He wanted so much to get it right."

A brain biopsy was performed May 29, and the sporadic
CJD diagnosis was confirmed at the Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology two weeks later. The National
Prion Disease Surveillance Center also examined the
brain tissue, to confirm it was not a case of new
variant CJD.

In May, Staff Sgt. Alford was still able to recall and
describe, in broken sentences, how he was treated by
his superiors in Kuwait.

"They called him stupid, called him lazy," his father
said. "It made him so angry and there was nothing he
could do."

Mr. Alford's other son, Billy, is in the National
Guard. Both of Jamie Alford's grandfathers and two
great-uncles fought in World War II. Mr. Alford says
he still loves the military.

"But we need to remove cruel commanders," he said.

Doctors who treated Staff Sgt. Alford wrote letters
supporting the family's efforts to correct his record
and restore his rank.

The Alfords filed paperwork to challenge the demotion.
And they asked for apologies from 12 individuals in
the 5th Special Forces Group who they say were
"involved in the persecution both verbally and
physically" of their son.

U.S. Rep. Max Sandlin, D-Marshall, intervened on the
Alfords' behalf and received a reply from the Army on
July 30.


'Deepest concerns'

"The 5th SFG(A) would like to express its deepest
concerns to Sergeant Alford and his family," wrote Lt.
Col. Johan C. Haraldsen from the Office of Special
Inquiries at Fort Campbell. "His disease was not known
prior to or during his [Uniform Code of Military
Justice] proceedings. All actions taken by the 5th
SFG(A) involving Sergeant Alford were appropriate
based on the best information available at that time."

The Alfords received no reply to their application to
correct Staff Sgt. Alford's record, and so they sought
help from the Army Review Boards Agency. That request
was denied in August in a letter stating the Alfords
had not exhausted other remedies.

Spec. Alford, said her husband's Green Beret teammates
had been helpful and supportive during this ordeal.

"His team has been fantastic," she said. "They call
when they can and ask how he's doing. They helped me
move all our stuff out of our house in Tennessee.

"That was hard," she said. "That's when it hit me that
he'd never be coming back."

Mr. Sandlin's office and The Dallas Morning News made
further inquiries, and the Alfords were informed Sept.
24 that the Army had reinstated Staff Sgt. Alford's
rank.

"The Army tries to take care of its people as best it
can," said Maj. Gowan of the Special Forces. "Getting
things done like this often takes a long time. They're
trying to do the right thing and act with compassion
in light of Sergeant Alford's misfortune."

Surrounded by his family, Staff Sgt. Alford was in the
hospital with a kidney infection when his father
received the news in a phone call from the major who
is second in command of the battalion.

"He's a good man," Mr. Alford said. "He asked about
Jamie. He assured us that everything had been
corrected. ... It took too long. But we're glad it's
finally done."

Staff Sgt. Alford is unable to comprehend that he's
been vindicated.

But his father confessed that he told a white lie to
his son three months ago, when Jamie was still able to
understand.

"I told him they'd already corrected it," Mr. Alford
said. "I wanted him to know that. If I had waited 'til
now it would have been too late."