Shifting Sands: Iraq War Suicides Up

NowPublic contributor phrolen ia a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Joint Taskforce Katrina. His commentary is based on actual experience.


    Recently released U.S. military data indicates a dramatic upswing in military suicides. Indictions are that as deployments get longer and the strain of war gets tougher on our nations fighting men and women, more of them seem to be turning down a path of hopelessness and despair. Back in 2004 I encountered what one could call a speed bump in the proverbial road of my Air Force career. Never mind the circumstances surrounding the scenario, which are to this day controversial in my mind, the point is I ended up in the Air Force ADAPT program which is an educational and rehabilitative program for violators of alcohol and drug policies.

    No, I wasn't on a drug binger, don't worry. However, being a good ole boy from East Texas I did enjoy a nip at grandpa's old tyme cough syrup every now and then. Being young and naive to military policy, one might say that I failed to properly insulate myself from career hazards, and by acting irresponsibly I ended up in the clutches of the program. In that program I met military personnel who, like myself had ran on bad luck, some had made irresponsible decisions and got DUI's, and others were just truely Alcoholics. However, one particular individual I met during my 6 week outpatient treatment might have indeed been a caricature for foreshadowing the statistics released in recent DOD reports.  
   

    For privacy sake lets call him specialist X. X was in the program for the same reasons I was, he liked to drink. However, with X, his rural upbringing and observance the American tradition of kicking back a Bud and watching the game had turned into a personal nightmare when his hobby became his way of self medicating. X had been part of the initial coalition invasion contingent in 2003. He was your run of the mill Army guy, outgoing, sports buff, bit obnoxious but in a cool, brash Army kind of way; infantry guy, if memory serves me correctly. X had been there at the fall of Baghdad and was there months after when the initial insurgent waves began. X was proud to have been a part of OIF and the people whom he had left behind in country meant a great deal to him.

    The Army has a program called battle buddies which we in the Air Force called wingmen, they are your best friend when you are deployed. To put it into a simplistic format, you could see it as Forrest and Bubba from the academy award winner Forrest Gump. Someone to look out for you is exactly what the battle buddy program was designed for; part of the Army's corps support system while in the field. The system is built strong and these guys experience what few of us ever experience today in true comradery. In fact during my time at the theatre hospital in Balad Iraq I heard literally hundreds of guys, with the worst of wounds, express deep dissatisfaction at the thought of being flown out of country and leaving their battle buddy behind. One day in early winter 03, X found his battle buddy on their Baghdad FOB (forward operating base), he had placed his rifle in his mouth and taken his own life.

    Only the warrior knows the strains and pains of combat, I was In Iraq with an Air Force medical contingent in 2005 and it is a pain and a world that I have only guessed at. Those guys give it their all at incredible operations tempos for a now ever increasing length of time. The strain is enormous. I got to know X pretty well. He had been back for almost a year when problems with alcohol and prescription pills, devastating relationship woes, and then a decline into a general malaise where he did not want to do anything but escape all began to dominate X's life. X struck me as the kind of guy who people once thought as the all american kind of fellow. The X I knew was broken without anyone there who really seemed to know how to fix him. I finished the program and lost touch with everyone there as seems to be the cycle in my life.

    However, one statement that I remember X making comes crashing back to me today as I see this DOD report being handed down, greeted by the traditional, gasp and politicojournalism that we are so accustomed to today. It wasn't a matter of fact statement, off the cuff; middle of sentence rather. But seemingly prophetic and visionary no less. While X recounted his battle buddies tragic fate, in almost a rage with angry finger pointing X said "They don't even know, this guy was solid, there'll be more of this" and he continued without missing a lick never revisiting the thought. People who know me will quickly confirm the fragile nature of my memory, but, when I read the DOD report this hit me like,excuse the cliche, a ton of bricks. There definately has been more and, if I had to measure, more from individuals no less as solid as X's battle buddy.     

    It is not just the current era of war veterans facing these problems, studies have shown that nearly 10,000 Vietnam veterans committed suicide from the time of the war through the early eighties and calculations among Gulf War veterans put that groups suicide rate at somewhere around 200 total. Hostilities cease and treaties are signed, but it seems the wars rage on long after the battlefield has cleared. Our governments seem to be getting the picture though with the VA now slotted to spend an estimated $37.7 million of the departments almost $3 billion mental health budget to place psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health technicians in primary care facilities allowing for faster identification and treatment of mental health issues. I can also add from experience that combat forces in theatres of operations have easy access to mental health professionals who are deployed along with them. Though, even still, it is often stigmatized, in some ways, among military peers if a visit to mental health were to become public. I suppose the point to take from this commentary is that there is a big problem, and it seems we, as a society, may be waking up to it. Perhaps with medical advances, proactive treatment, and early identification, future generations of fighting men and women can make the transtion from soldier to citizen a bit easier.