But combat changed that. During deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, he was exposed to multiple explosions, suffering head, neck and spinal injuries. He had achieved the rank of a staff sergeant when he began to suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

His goal: to become the top enlisted soldier in the Army.

James Moffatt was as gung-ho as they come.

“Injured Heroes, Broken Promises,” a joint investigative project between The Dallas Morning News and NBC5 (KXAS-TV), examines allegations of harassment and mistreatment in the U.S.’ Warrior Transition Units, which were created to serve soldiers with physical and psychological wounds. Reporters David Tarrant, Scott Friedman and Eva Parks based their findings on dozens of interviews with soldiers, Army officials and medical experts, and hundreds of pages of military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Assigned to Fort Hood’s Warrior Transition Unit, or WTU, where many soldiers go to recover from physical and mental wounds, he vowed to bring the same gung-ho attitude to his recovery.

Right away, he found himself undercut by the kind of treatment typically reserved for recruits in boot camp.

Or worse, slackers.

“I was getting talked down to,” Moffatt said. “I was wondering why I was being treated as a private.”

Moffatt, 29, who retired July 28 after nearly nine years in the Army, said the situation began to improve recently — only after increased scrutiny of the nation’s WTUs.

At the Fort Hood WTU, those in charge began adhering to doctors’ orders. As a result, he no longer saw soldiers with PTSD or brain injuries, who took powerful medications to help them sleep, ordered to pull overnight guard duty anymore.

He stopped seeing soldiers on crutches or in wheelchairs being ordered to mow lawns or pick up trash. And the WTU leaders seemed to speak to injured soldiers with more respect.

“I think they pulled everybody in and said, ‘In case you forgot, this is why we are here. These are our guidelines on how we’re going to do this,’” he said.

Under scrutiny

Last November, a joint investigation by The News/KXAS-TV (NBC5) revealed problems at the three WTUs based in Texas. Reporters examined complaints filed to the Army’s ombudsman by soldiers at Fort Hood, Fort Bliss in El Paso and Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

Last April, the ongoing investigation found a similar pattern of complaints lodged by soldiers in WTUs throughout the Army. Nationwide, soldiers have lodged more than 1,100 complaints since 2010 about the way their chain of command treated them at more than two dozen WTUs.

At Fort Hood, the Army also launched a “15-6” investigation, an internal review looking into claims of mistreatment.