Army Pvt. Jessica Rich was medically evacuated from Iraq in January. Eleven months and two misdiagnoses later, she is still waiting to see a specialist who can treat the autoimmune disease hardening her muscles and attacking her joints.

Sgt. Michael Lemke spent two months after returning from combat dealing with flashbacks of a mass grave at Abu Ghraib prison and dodging phantom sniper fire. Finally, an Army nurse asked him if he might like to see a psychologist.

Sgt. Irene Cornett spent a year in treatment for a wrist injury that occurred when a tent rope snapped. After a bad infection, doctors fused the bone, leaving her with 10 percent movement and eligible for disability pay, according to her hand surgeon. But the officer who summarized Cornett's medical records to determine her eligibility for disability payments reported she had twice as much movement, ultimately disqualifying her from a lifetime pension.

All three, along with more than 13,000 others nationwide, have spent time in a "medical holdover" unit, a system now under congressional scrutiny and the source of seemingly endless frustration to members of the Army Reserve and National Guard.

Critics inside and outside the Army say "med hold" units are choked with reservists who should have been home much sooner with family or friends. Instead, they find themselves in a system that some Army officials acknowledge was unprepared to handle the thousands of soldiers wounded in combat overseas or injured while training or serving on U.S. military bases.

Shortly after the March 2003 Iraq invasion, when casualties started returning to the U.S., "the system was immediately overloaded," said Col. Lynn Denooyer, an Army Reserve nurse stationed at Colorado's Fort Carson between March 2003 and August 2004.

Soldiers, veterans' advocates and some lawmakers say that despite recent efforts to beef up medical staffing and speed delivery of care, the Army still hasn't caught up, particularly when it comes to caring for National Guard and Reserve soldiers.

"Clearly, the unprecedented number of guardsmen and reservists mobilized in the war on terrorism has severely taxed the system and its resources," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.

The med-hold program was set up in March 2003 to help injured soldiers keep full-time pay while under review.

Guard and Reserve soldiers can spend months in med-hold units, unable to return to their civilian lives, while the military decides whether they are fit to serve or must be discharged - and if so, how much pay they should receive.

Since November 2003, 13,542 men and women who volunteered to serve as Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers have been injured on military bases or returned wounded from combat and been assigned to med-hold units. Currently, 4,326 soldiers are in the system, according to the Army surgeon general's office.

Past and present members of Fort Carson Army Base's medical-hold company, including Rich, Lemke and Cornett, say they've waited weeks, even months, for medical appointments, surgery or other treatments. Soldiers say military doctors routinely deny them consultations with specialists while prescribing dangerously large quantities of sleep aids and painkillers that only mask underlying medical issues.

Some argue that the delay and substandard care are a symptom of an Army that cares more for "active" or "regular" soldiers than for the Guard or Reserve.

"I'm National Guard - that's what happened," said now-discharged and unemployed Sgt. Virgil Travecek, 45, who waited about a year on medical hold for treatment of an injured back at Fort Carson before he was finally given a lump-sum check and sent home to South Dakota.

"They screw you around," he said. "If you were National Guard, Reserve, you were not really a soldier. If you were regular Army, you were the best."

The Army acknowledges that there remains a shortage of specialty doctors but insists that no preference in medical care is shown to active Army soldiers over those from the Guard and Reserve.

"Guard and Reserve are being treated differently than regular soldiers. They're being treated better," said Col. Brian Lein, commander of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson. "We don't treat them as second-class citizens. We take great care of all our soldiers here."

Beyond the frustration of being cooped up in a barracks, with untreated mental and physical ailments, reservists and guardsmen say the system frustrates their efforts to be medically retired, a discharge that requires an Army judgment of 30 percent disability and comes with a lifetime monthly pension and access to military perks such as commissary stores.

Lemke described the whole process as a "pressure cooker" designed to frustrate soldiers to the point where they stop fighting for medical care and retirement the Army can't afford.

He and others feel a deep sense of betrayal. These volunteer soldiers never expected to go to war.

Once they did, they expected to be taken care of when they came home to face broken marriages, unsalvageable careers, wasted minds and crippled bodies.

"Those who served are being kicked to the curb with little or nothing, and many of them will never fully regain their health," said Lemke. "I still find it totally incomprehensible that people wearing the same uniform I had on while fighting a war are the ones treating medical patients this way.

"It makes me wonder, past all the flag-waving, what exactly it was I fought for."

Col. Michael Deaton, Army deputy assistant surgeon general for force projection, acknowledged that the Army is having a difficult time getting injured soldiers to some specialists such as orthopedic surgeons, neurologists and rheumatologists, mainly because of the remote locations of its bases.

"Are we stretched thin in areas? Absolutely," he said. "Are we providing safe and adequate care? I think we are."

In November, congressional staffers visited Fort Carson to hear soldiers' concerns. The following week, the Army surgeon general's office dispatched a team of officers who held a similar series of meetings with many of the then-75 soldiers in medical hold at the base.

The Army has made "significant strides" toward improving care for soldiers assigned to med-hold units, Deaton said. It has hired 762 new staffers to exclusively support medical-hold units and is expanding programs that will allow injured and ill Guard and Reserve soldiers to get care in their hometowns, Deaton said.

"We are making that cultural change that says we are here to take care of you, not to throw you out," he said.

For soldiers who are injured or fall ill in Iraq or on their home bases, the system leading to medical hold begins with a diagnosis in the field.

Upon arrival back in the states, they are initially screened. If they are not declared fit for duty within 60 days, they have the option of mustering out of active duty and going home to receive medical care through short-term reserve benefits.

Those who choose to seek more extensive care or disability pay enter medical hold. They are given treatment on the base, while boards of soldiers and doctors determine how severe their disabilities are, and whether they are eligible for lifelong payments.

That process can take more than a year, though Army statistics show the average time spent in medical hold is 155 days.

Reserve Sgt. Shelly Hays, 31, injured her back at Fort Carson last year while moving a 700-pound pump.

She said the doctor who saw her made it clear she would receive "part-time care for part-time soldiers."

"He said, `I'm sick and tired of all you reservists coming in here and taking up all the (appointments) for the regular soldiers,' " she said.

Army statistics show that reservists and members of the National Guard are less likely than active Army soldiers to receive full medical retirements.

From Oct. 1, 2003, through Sept. 30, 26 percent of injured active Army soldiers received a disability rating that resulted in a temporary or permanent retirement with all benefits.

Only 16 percent of Reserve or National Guard soldiers received a similar rating.

The Army says the discrepancy is partly explained by the different roles the soldiers play. Most reservists serve support roles while a large number of active duty soldiers are in combat.

Dr. Gene Bolles, a Colorado neurosurgeon, spent two years as chief of neurosurgery for Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. He said he felt the Army's motivation in treating all soldiers was monetary, not medical.

He has seen herniated discs go untreated, causing severe neurological problems - loss of bladder control, loss of sexual function, atrophied extremities.

In his view, the Army needs to invest more in the care of soldiers, or Americans will face long-term costs for Veterans Affairs hospitalizations.

"This is one of the so-called `hidden costs' of the war," Bolles said. "We are going to end up with a lot of young people with chronic pain."

(Freelance photos accompanied this story. For information, contact Chuck Bigger, 719-649-6171.)