A total of 109 soldiers assigned to Fort Bragg Army Base, North Carolina, died between 2020 and 2021. Rolling Stone magazine has revealed the consequences of what appears to be a drug epidemic within the institution.

According to a set of casualty reports obtained by Rolling Stone through the Freedom of Information Act, since the early 2020s, some 30 soldiers were killed or found slumped over for no apparent reason. Among the most notable events recorded at the base are the multiple suicides and murders. Five Fort Bragg soldiers were shot to death, and one was decapitated. The strange events are believed to be related to the use of narcotics.

Fourteen of the casualty reports explicitly state that the soldiers died of a drug overdose. Eleven of them identified fentanyl as the fatal agent. In five other cases, soldiers died at a young age from acute kidney or liver failure, or from a heart attack. These medical pathologies are not usually suffered by young people, but could be caused by excessive drug abuse. There may also be complications from mixing these substances or from the use of prohibited steroids.

Rolling Stone reports that there was no acknowledgement by the Army or any reports in the national press, of any aspects of this phenomenon. Added to this, there was never a single mention from any member of Congress. Only the families of the victims were informed, discreetly and privately.

"My son was not a drug user."

Rachael Bowman is the mother of Matthew Disney, a 20-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Bragg. Military authorities informed her in June 2021 that her son had died on base as a result of a fentanyl overdose. Bowman reiterated:"My son was not a drug user".

Military investigators informed him that Disney had ingested a smuggled pill of Percocet, a painkiller. "I had never in my life heard of a fake Percocet that looked like it came from a pharmacy, until my son took one and it killed him ."

Bowman explains that in their home, they were fully aware of the effects of drugs. Disney's little sister had endured dozens of surgeries, and periodically relied on or had to be taken off opioids, so he was very aware of the risks involved. Fentanyl, ketamine, Narcan, Laudanum, Percocet, morphine are drugs we talked about on a very regular basis," Bowman said.

Dozens of preventable cases

Of the 109 Fort Bragg soldiers, active and reserve, who lost their lives in 2020 and 2021, according to casualty reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, only four of the deaths occurred in combat operations overseas. Everything else took place in the United States. Fewer than 20 were due to natural causes. All other cases were preventable.

Other Fort Bragg soldiers who died of an overdose with no public notice in 2020 and 2021 include the Spc. Christhiam González-Pineda, a helicopter repairman from Honduras who died from the acute effects of unspecified "illegal substances". The casualty report also records the case of Anthony Savala, an infantryman from California, who was another of those who suffered a drug-related death, in his case, from ingesting a cocktail of Benadryl, benzodiazepines and fentanyl.

Also Zachary Bracken, a Green Beret candidate from Maryland, died from a combination of alcohol and fentanyl. Sgt. 1st Class Michael Tardie, lost his life from the same combination. Sgt. David Mazzullo, a New York signals intelligence analyst, died from an overdose of heroin and fentanyl. And then there is the case of Spc. Matthew Meadows, a Texas parachute rigger who died from fentanyl use. None of these deaths were made public. These unprecedented events of deaths at a modern U.S. military facility were reported by Rolling Stone but have not been widely reported in the national media.