Who Cares?

He's still having bladder problems. "I haven't been able to hold my urine all the time." He's had continued bladder infections. He wears Depends. He's been shown how to catheterize himself but isn't especially good at it, so mostly his wife does it.

He uses a Fisher-Price children's wipe board to communicate with his wife. He can't drive.

His wife tells a similar story when it's her turn to testify. Bema Johnson-Hall will have been married to Celester for five years this coming October. On the witness stand she describes their life since Afghanistan.

Every morning she gets Celester breakfast, helps him dress and goes off to work, which is only minutes away. She returns around noon to bring him lunch. After she gets off at 5 p.m., she gets him dinner and then goes off to her second job, where she works till 9 p.m.

Then on Saturdays she goes to her third job, covering phones in a real estate office. She has to do this to pay the mounting bills, to pay for the prescription drugs out of her own pocket. They go through a bag of adult diapers every two weeks.

Her husband suffers from depression. "He doesn't want to eat. He cries. He says he doesn't want to live anymore," she says. Since the cochlear implant doesn't work, he feels worse. She'd like to have him get psychological counseling. "He's always been a cheerful person."

When Celester was in Afghanistan he was usually on a water truck as an escort, and one of the Afghan men drove. The trip was 40 minutes out and 40 minutes back, not counting the time it took to dump the water at a site provided for by the military. He was riding with one Afghan who was really sick for about a week.

It was crowded and dusty inside the hut. It was always dirty. They kept it cold to discourage the rats and spiders from coming in through the cracks along the electric pipes. He bought masks from the store.

His work schedule was seven days a week, 12 hours a day. Critics say SEII was incorporated in the Cayman Islands to get around U.S. labor laws. No overtime is paid. KBR says it does comply with U.S. law, but different standards apply with overseas incorporation and they -- just like other companies -- pay straight time for work in excess of 40 hours per week.

When Celester first got sick, the medic told him it might have been due to the elevation and that he didn't drink enough water.

He starts crying on the witness stand when he tells about first seeing his wife in the hospital. He didn't know where he was; Bema got a writing board and told him all the things that had happened to him.

He shows the sore in the middle of his stomach where they put in the feeding tube. It hasn't quite healed. His wife replaces the bandages. He has burning and pain in his hands and feet.

Most days he sits at home, where he reads his Bible. He can't answer the phone. He went to church on Easter Sunday but hasn't gone much since because he can't hear anything. His wife helps him bathe or shower.

Asked what he wants by the attorney for his former employer, Hall says he wants to be restored.

"Help me get better so I can enjoy life. I miss a lot of things…I used to be able to play sports, and now I can hardly walk."

Civilian worker Sam Walker was in the KBR chow hall at Camp Merez in Iraq when a suicide bomber blew up the place, killing 22 people and injuring more than 50 others on December 21, 2004. Walker suffered shrapnel wounds to his hand, head and leg. He picked bits of flesh off himself after the explosion. He's being seen by a psychologist for post-traumatic stress disorder.

He hasn't received any benefits from KBR.

The 43-year-old has problems with anxiety, sleep disturbance and hypervigilance, Pitts says.

Rates of PTSD among those serving in Iraq are much higher than from the first Gulf war, Pitts says. "The first was a war that lasted six weeks, and only three days were a ground war. This is a chronic guerrilla war, no front line. The first war had a front line. There are a lot more soldiers that are actually having to engage in house-to-house fighting and actually shooting the enemy and seeing them."

The U.S. Army counsels people before they leave the theater of war, Pitts says. It has instituted a policy of following up after they return to the States. There's been a learning curve since Vietnam.

The civilian contract workers who are exposed to the war zone don't have the same treatment, Pitts says.

A country goes to war, and it recruits young people to fight for it. In the case of civilian workers, however, the average age tends to be higher.