The face of suicide

Not all of this is about suicides, but it does tell some tragic stories. The last article is about Command Sergeant Major Samuel Rhodes who has ben to the dark place and returned. His admonition--all the money in the world won't help--leadership is the problem. Despite all the mouthings of our leaders, the stigma of mental illness, PTSD or whatever name you want to hang on these victims is still there. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the JCS knows damned well the problem is OPTEMPO and PERSTEMPO, yet we continue to stress our troops by repeated tours in a war that seems to have no end. Yes, some talks are going on and some troioips are coming out of Iraq, but some troops are still dying as the result of enemy action, some are among the walking dead,; their soul sucked out of them by their experiences and sadly some are dying by their own hand, haunted by the ghosts of this war.

George Harris

5 months after Iraq bloodbath, young veteran takes his life

By Cynthia Hubert Sacramento Bee

On March 7, 2007, Army Spc. Trevor Hogue was inside his barracks in Baghdad, describing his morning on the battlefield.

"I saw things today that I think will mess me up for life," Hogue typed to his mother, Donna, as she sat at her computer thousands of miles away from Iraq, in Granite Bay.

That day the young soldier, whose assignment included driving a Humvee through perhaps the most dangerous ZIP code on the globe, saw his sergeant blown to pieces. He saw the bodies of half of the men in his platoon torn apart. Heads were cut off and limbs severed. It happened 30 yards in front of him, and he had never been so afraid, he told his mom.

"My arms are around you," Donna Hogue wrote. "You'll be alright."

But Hogue never really recovered. Last week, he committed suicide by hanging himself in the backyard of his childhood home. He was 24 years old.

According to the Army, soldiers are killing themselves at the highest rate in nearly three decades, surpassing the civilian suicide rate for the first time since the Vietnam War.

At least 128 U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, a number that has risen four years in a row. The death toll could be even higher this year. Through April, 91 soldiers had committed suicide.

Hogue's death, because it occurred after he was discharged, is not included in those statistics. But his friends and loved ones believe he was a casualty of war as much as any soldier on active duty.

"You think that they are safe when they get back home," Donna Hogue said, tearfully reading printed messages that she and her son exchanged while he was at war. "They're not. The reality of the things that they experienced continues to haunt them."

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VA system ill-equipped to treat mental anguish of war, 2/5/07

Iraq War veteran Timothy Bowman, of the Illinois National Guard, committed suicide in November 2005. He had been home from the war only 8 months.

FORRESTON, Ill—A year ago on Thanksgiving morning, in the corrugated metal pole barn that housed his family's electrical business, Timothy Bowman put a handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. The bullet only grazed his forehead. So he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger again.

He had been home from the Iraq war for only eight months. Once a fun-loving, life-of-the-party type, Bowman had slipped into an abyss, tormented by things he'd been ordered to do in war.

"I'm OK. I can deal with it," he would say whenever his father, Mike, urged him to get counseling.

A young warrior who spent months patrolling the treacherous highway that runs between the Baghdad airport and the city's fortified Green Zone, Tim received several medals and is set to be posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

"Tim always referred to the National Guard soldiers as the Army's disposable soldiers," his father, Mike Bowman, said. "Six months of training to kill, 12 months of the nastiest duty in Iraq and then two weeks that the Army gave them to be re-educated back to civilian life.

"It's not humanly possible to readjust to civilian life with that type of treatment," he said.

In the small town of Grundy Center, Iowa, Randy and Ellen Omvig keep a large plastic freezer bag. Inside is a piece of torn paper with "Mom & Dad" written at the top.

When she first saw it in December 2005, Ellen thought it was a Christmas list from her son Josh, who had just walked out the front door.

Then she read the words:

"Don't think this is because of you," it said. "You did the best you could with me. The faces and the voices just won't go away."

The note indicated Josh's imminent suicide and went on to apologize for the pain he would cause. He said he had just received a driving-while-intoxicated charge—a surprise since he rarely drank. "This kills all hope of becoming a police officer that I ever had," he wrote.

By the time Ellen realized what the note was about, she ran outside. Josh was getting in his truck. She grabbed the side mirror, yelling hysterically that he would have to run her over before driving away. He yelled back, about a friend who had been killed in Iraq.

"Your battle buddy would not want you to die," she screamed.

"Mom, you don't understand," he said. "I've been dead ever since I left Iraq."

Josh shot himself in the head a few seconds later, as a police officer—and close friend—pulled up. His case made local headlines and has since become the inspiration for legislation in Congress to better prevent veteran suicides.

Josh Omvig had been a happy kid who signed up for the Army Reserves the day after he turned 18. He spent an intense 10 months in Iraq and then suddenly was home again. In the space of six days, he went from serving in Iraq to sitting at his family's Thanksgiving dinner table.

In the 13 months that followed, it was clear that Josh had changed. His parents urged him to get help. But he was convinced that showing up at the VA would go on his record, costing him a career in the military and law enforcement.

The Omvigs believe the nation faces a cascade of mental health problems.

"There are so many Joshes coming back now," Randy Omvig said.

In many respects, the Omvigs' story is remarkably similar to that of the Bowmans', whose son Tim killed himself on Thanksgiving Day in 2005.

It's impossible to know what goes through the mind of any suicidal veteran, or whether care would have made a difference. But as he tries to rebuild his life without his son, Mike Bowman is convinced that even a little care would have been better than none.

Tim Bowman joined the National Guard after Sept. 11 but before the Iraq war.

He was a charming jokester, a small-town kid who played musical instruments in high school, attended some junior college and then went to work in his family's electrical business in Polo, Ill.

He left for the war on March 4, 2004, his 22nd birthday.

Over the next 12 months, his assignments varied, but among them was helping patrol Route Irish, the treacherous airport highway. He told his father about having to bag body parts.

In his communications back home, Tim became an expert at withholding the details of his reality. He did open up once, however. Home for a short leave, Tim and his father stopped for a beer after a softball game. They got into their deepest conversation about the war and even talked about an episode in which Tim, as the last line of defense, said he was forced to shoot at a car—with a family inside—that had failed to stop at a checkpoint.

"He was really quiet as he told me—not at all the normal Tim," his father said. (His commander at the time said he is unaware of any incident like Tim described. Tim's father said Tim may have been involved in a shooting and "assumed the worst in his state of mind.")

At the end of his leave, Tim didn't want to go back to Iraq, but he didn't not want to go back, either. More than anything, he couldn't stand being away from his unit.

He returned home for good in March 2005. His deployment had included some mental health screening, but he told his father that it was "a joke." Soldiers coming off months of active duty would say anything during the screenings. "All they wanted to do was get home," his father said.

That was a feeling shared by Tim's commander in Iraq, Maj. Mike Kessel of Mahomet, Ill., who recently retired after 21 years in the Army National Guard. Two months before his unit returned home to Illinois, Kessel urged his bosses to change the demobilization process by letting the soldiers go home briefly before returning for health screening.

"I knew we were going to have problems," Kessel said. But his proposal was rejected.

"We got off the bus, we had a five-minute ceremony, and, boom, we were released," he said. "We didn't come back to drill for 110 days. Suddenly, your support system is gone. We had 120 people in 70 communities spread across five states."

Tim came home and tried to dive back into his life, working his electrical job and volunteering at the fire department. He'd be pleasant one minute and flip out over mild annoyances the next.

"I don't feel right here," Tim admitted during a rare candid conversation with his sister Michelle. "I'm spending too much time in the bar," he added.

Tim took a six-week National Guard assignment to help with the Hurricane Katrina recovery. His family said he relished the structure of the unit. He even began talking about the possibility of going back to Iraq.

"What better place for a soldier to die," he told his father one night.

In November, Tim scheduled an appointment with the VA. His father wasn't sure what it was for—mental issues, or perhaps follow-up for a hand injury that Tim had suffered in Iraq.

The night before Thanksgiving, Tim had a great conversation with his father and his sister. He seemed his old, jovial self. His family now believes that by then he already knew what he was about to do.

The next day, Tim didn't show up for an extended-family Thanksgiving dinner. They called and called. Finally, Mike Bowman decided to see if Tim was at the family business. He found him on the floor, shot but still breathing.

Tim died two hours later.

At Tim's funeral, Kessel, his commanding officer, found that several other soldiers were having mental troubles, too—and having trouble getting into the VA.

"They were told, `We can't get you in for six months,'" Kessel said. "We started pulling a bunch of strings and making lots of noise, and then people started listening.

"But it was one soldier too late."
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I didn't used to be this bad.

John Wixom, a burly 58-year-old with a full gray beard and long brown hair, has been in Carlsbad his whole life, except for his year of service during the Vietnam War.

He works at a potash mine east of town, maintaining its vehicles and equipment. All along, he's had trouble dealing with other people, with crowds, with Fourth of July fireworks. He flies off the handle with little provocation. "I get so mad I want to choke somebody, and I'm afraid I will choke somebody," he said.

At work, he said, colleagues drop heavy tools or whack a big metal drum "just to see me jump."

"Everybody at work knows what a Wix fit is," Wixom said.

After 35 years of suppressing his rage and drinking away his memories of Vietnam, Wixom said that his emotions are erupting more regularly. He has night sweats two to four times a week and nightmares regularly—apparently provoked by the latest war news from Iraq.

"I didn't used to be this bad," he said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tough old soldier battles new enemy: Suicide epidemic

By Halimah Abdullah McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Samuel Rhodes keeps pictures of the dead in his pockets.

They're the faces of young soldiers whose eyes stare out resolutely from photocopied pages worn and creased by the ritual of unfolding them, smoothing them flat and refolding them.

They're the faces of men who, haunted by problems at home or memories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the dead children, the fallen comrades and the lingering smell of burnt flesh — pressed guns to their heads and pulled the triggers or tied ropes with military precision and hanged themselves.

The pictures remind Rhodes of how close he came to joining them and how, sometimes when the sadness presses in dark and suffocating, he still mentally pens suicide notes.

"How many times have I written that letter in my head?" he said. "I still think about suicide, but when I start thinking about it I have to think, 'What's the impact on everyone I care about?' "

It's been roughly five years since Rhodes came home from his third tour in Iraq, and despite a highly-decorated 29-year career in the Army, a new book, more than a hundred speaking engagements and praise from the likes of Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, for his efforts in suicide prevention, Rhodes still wrestles with his own demons. When he speaks to crowds and gently holds up the photos of fellow servicemen who've committed suicide, it's as if he's holding up a mirror.

"It's not about me," he tells soldiers. "Every one of us can tell our own story. Start telling it. Change the culture of silence."

Rhodes is among a small cadre of senior non-commissioned officers and officers who're opening up about their journeys back from the brink of suicide — efforts that top military commanders applaud as they battle a suicide epidemic. The open support from the military's uppermost ranks for openly discussing a topic long considered taboo is a revolution triggered largely by both greater awareness and pressure to curb record-high suicide rates.

This month, the Defense Department reported that there were 160 reported active-duty Army suicides in 2009, up from 140 in 2008. Of these, 114 have been confirmed, while the cause of death in the remaining 46 remains to be determined. The increase in military suicides includes men between the ages of 18-30, mid-career officers and, increasingly, women.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders have said the increase is likely related to repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and to the stigma long associated with seeking treatment for mental health problems. Many soldiers are embarrassed to seek help and worried that doing so will hamper their prospects for advancement.

In response, the Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into new suicide prevention programs and thousands of hours on helping soldiers suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Through programs such as the Real Warriors Campaign, with its catchphrase of "Resilience. Recovery. Reintegration," the military encourages soldiers to help others by sharing their stories of sorrow.

Veterans such as Rhodes put a different face on grief.

"The one thing that I've found when talking to soldiers and leaders, a lot of the response has been, 'this is the first time we've had a senior leader who has dealt with this talk about it,'" Rhodes said. "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much money we put into this system to change policies and whatever else. At the end of the day, it's leadership."

For Rhodes, 49, who grew up in Ringgold, Ga. and lives in the shadow of Fort Benning, near Columbus, Ga., where he once commanded troops, the Iraq war was a greedy ghost that stole him away for 30 months and gnawed at his marriage and his sanity.

He lost both during his third tour. Rhodes' sky cracked open in April 2005.

"The first hundred days, we didn't have a boy get a scratch. Then we lost two guys when their suits caught on fire. It started then. Then a couple days later we lost a few more."

Then the unit lost two captains — younger men with children and career aspirations.

"We arrived at the scene, and that was the first time I saw a human body in so many dismemberments. A young private walked over to me with a hand and said, 'What do I do with this?' I took his ring off and said, 'Put this over in that bag.' "

In all, he watched 37 soldiers die during his time in Iraq. Rhodes pushed on through heavy fighting, fatigue and a grief so deep that it threatened to swallow him whole.

Then one day, everything went dark.

"I woke up on the helicopter, and a young soldier put a card in my pocket and said, 'You've been serviced by Angel Flight.' "

Rhodes was flown to a military hospital in Baghdad and was diagnosed with PTSD. He made what he calls "a deal with the devil" and was offered an opportunity to slow down and receive counseling.

He was also prescribed medication for depression, which he rarely took. Soon he started sleepwalking.

"I'd tie myself to my bunk at night. One time I was found on top of my bunk and was brought back down."

Back home, his wife, Carol, found that she could relax only after 10 at night, figuring that the Army would never bring her news of her husband's death any later than that. His son, Sam, dropped out of college and joined the Army in the hopes of fighting alongside his father in Iraq.

That November, Rhodes was sent to Fort Benning to help lead a brigade. By day, he was a stalwart commander, barking out orders and in full control. At night he'd go back to his now empty apartment — he and Carol had divorced — drink and think about whether in death he might find some sort of respite from the nightmares and the overwhelming guilt he felt because he'd survived and others hadn't.

"I went to a friend's house, a retired veteran, I got a gun from him with bullets, and the next day I was trying to figure out when and where to do it."

Col. Charles Durr, the brigade commander, sensed that Rhodes was having problems and pulled him aside.

"He spent the day with me, and he recognized I was having issues; he didn't know I was considering suicide," Rhodes said. "It was just a very positive day. He told me I was doing a good job. When somebody says something positive to you and reinforces you're doing good things, it makes it seem better."

Slowly, painfully, Rhodes found his way back.

He met Cathy, a friendly Army IT specialist who made him feel new. They married in a small, spur-of-the-moment ceremony in Fort Benning's chapel, then dashed off for a whirlwind honeymoon in Las Vegas.

It was willfully impulsive, and it was the closest thing to normal he'd felt in a long time.

He also rediscovered a love of horses and found catharsis in stoking their smooth coats and silently unburdening all his troubles on his quiet, gentle companions.

Rhodes also came to realize that his father, William Rhodes, a highly decorated World War II veteran who'd saved the life of future Georgia governor Marvin Griffin in combat, also suffered from PTSD and drank to deal with his demons.

Fearing a generational curse, Rhodes told his son, who's currently serving in Iraq, about his own and his grandfather's problems, and he prays that the military's changing attitude about mental health might help spare Sam his father's and grandfather's fate.

He decided that he might be able to help others, too. So one day, following a presentation on suicide prevention in the Army, Rhodes went up to the facilitator and said, "I think I can help."

He has. Rhodes receives hundreds of e-mails every week from soldiers who pour out their hearts with secrets they don't feel they can tell their spouses or their commanding officers. He encourages them to get help, and every once in a while they do.

"The other week, we were at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, and we were walking into the building, an old theater, this E-7 (Sergeant 1st Class) was sitting there with his sunglasses. (Rhodes) said hi to him 'cause the guy looked disturbed," Cathy Rhodes said. "People came up after the presentation. This one soldier came up to him and had taken off his sunglasses, and he said, 'Sergeant Major, I want to thank you.' That really touched my heart."