May 8, 2005 - Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany, an eight-year Army veteran, had been in Iraq just three days during Operation Iraqi Freedom before his world -- and his military career -- collapsed. He suffered a meltdown.

But Pogany's 2003 "psychiatric breakdown," as he calls it, wasn't caused by injury or battle stress. He says it was finally diagnosed as a severe reaction to an anti-malaria inoculation given to him by his own government.

His account of a military system unable to distinguish a serious medical condition from malingering grabbed the attention of several dozen Mideast war veterans attending the annual meeting of The National Gulf War Resource Center in Orlando on Saturday.

For two years, Pogany, a member of the Army Special Forces, fought his own war with the Army, which put him on a suicide watch and charged him with cowardice and "willful dereliction of duty" before sending him home in disgrace to face a court-martial.

"I had hallucinations and panic attacks," said Pogany, 34, of Colorado Springs, Colo. "I was the first soldier in 28 years to be charged with cowardice in front of the enemy."

The resource center meeting, which concludes today at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near Orlando International Airport, is one of three public forums this year to update veterans on war-related issues and help them with their service-connected problems.

This year's hot topic -- war-related illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, allergic reactions to inoculations and damage from toxins -- is an issue center director Steve Robinson is using to spur legislative change.

"Pogany is an example of what's wrong with mental-health care in this war," said Robinson of Silver Spring, Md.

One in six veterans returning from Iraq suffers from post-traumatic stress, a psychiatric condition that can follow high-stress combat situations, he said.

And an increasing number of returning soldiers -- about 30 percent -- are found to be suffering from a range of neurological symptoms that have been traced to toxic chemicals encountered in Iraq, said Dr. Lea Steele, an epidemiologist from Kansas State University and scientific director of a recent study on Gulf War illnesses.

Steele, a member of a research advisory committee on Gulf War illnesses formed by the Department of Veterans Affairs three years ago, presented the study's findings with committee chairman James Binn, a Vietnam veteran and former Defense Department official.

Among the startling findings: One of the illness-related toxins given to troops was a military-issue pill to protect them from nerve gases. Another toxin was pesticide soldiers used on their uniforms and bodies.

Iraq veterans also are being diagnosed with ALS, the condition better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, at twice the rate of other veterans, Steele said.

Charles Grimes, 52, a building inspector from West Palm Beach, listened quietly as Steele presented her findings.

The Army Reserve sergeant, sent to Baghdad to head a postal platoon in 2003 "right after they blew it up and there was no food, no water, no nothing," shakes uncontrollably as he talks.

He says he didn't give a second thought to the battery of shots he received before being deployed to Bosnia in 2001. And he didn't think much about the "feeling" in his leg when he came home a year later.

He figures it was the second series of shots he was given before being sent to Iraq that "did it."

The man who ran two miles a day and could lay 400 blocks a day on freelance construction jobs now suffers from Parkinson's disease.

"I was in good shape when I left," Grimes said. "My second month in Iraq I couldn't stand up straight, I was shaking and had panic attacks."

Grimes was sent home to Fort Stewart in Georgia, where he remained under medical care for 18 months. His tests there showed nothing abnormal, he said.

He was released from the military in February, with medication for panic attacks and Parkinson's, and expects to return to his inspector's job later this month. And he is seeking civilian medical specialists in Miami.

"The military is not taking care of its soldiers," Grimes said.

Robinson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, wants to change that. His organization based in Silver Spring is working on several pieces of legislation now in Congress to make the military more accountable for soldiers' conditions, including a bill that would require the military to track ill soldiers after their return home.

Pogany said the Army finally dropped all charges against him in December. He was medically retired just three weeks ago. Today, he says, he is jobless and saddled with $25,000 in civilian attorneys' fees.

"I don't hold a grudge against any one individual," Pogany said. "I recognize it as a failure of the system. I'm speaking out to fix the system."

Sandra Mathers can be reached at 407-420-5507
or smathers@orlandosentinel.com