The Suicide of Mike Crutchfield, Army soldier

A Soldier's Story: Nowhere to go
Struggling with a sense of rootlessness, a former foster child joins the Army and heads to war
By Gina Kim - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 7:28 am PDT Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1


First of two parts

More service members killed themselves while serving in the Iraq war last year than in any year since the war began, and the suicide count for 2007 is on track to surpass that. The dead are generally junior enlisted soldiers who are single, white and male. They are Mike Crutchfield.

It's two days before Christmas 2006, but it doesn't feel much like the holidays in "The Suck," what soldiers sometimes call Iraq, where the days blend together – broken up only by brilliant sunrises and sunsets.


Michael Crutchfield taps out a final e-mail to his family 7,392 miles away in Stockton. It is a suicide letter – to his mother, brother, sister and nephew. He hits "send" at 12:13 p.m. Then the 21-year-old Army specialist picks up his military-issued M9 Beretta pistol. He presses it to his chest. And he fires.

Two soldiers passing Mike's office in the Balad motor pool hear the gunshot and a shell hit the floor. Then groaning. They kick the door in and there's Mike, sitting in his chair, his arms hanging limp, his head tilted back.
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MONDAY: Mike discovers his greatest enemy in Iraq. Himself.

We hear numbers but very few of their stories. It took a lot longer than it should have to find about a hundred of their stories for the video I did, Death Because They Served. Each one of their stories need to be told, without shame, without judgment, for the sake of those who may be prevented from coming after.

PTSD is impossible to conquer if it remains in the shadow of all the famous slogans of those who serve. The Few And The Proud, are all of them. The combat veterans are rare in this nation and those serving today in both occupations are even more rare. PTSD has nothing to do with bravery, patriotism, approval of the "mission" or anything other than they are humans exposed to the horrors of combat. The duties they have to perform are a necessary evil when they are sent to fight, kill and defeat the enemy dictated by those who sent them. It is brutal, bloody and gruesome. It is chaotic. It is what they live through and with.

Some will be able to overcome what they participated in, yet none will honestly tell you that they were able to forget any of it. Some will relive it for the rest of their lives. As the horrors of combat claim more and more of their minds, the natural defenses take over. Numbing walls are built to protect emotions from further attacks. What manages to make penetrate them, forcing them to feel anything, is killed off by self-medication quickly. Lives are turned from living into existing.

There are more families willing to talk about the loss, about the lives gone, and about the pain left behind. As this happens, more and more of the wounded will become able to speak of their own pain before it is too late for them as well. Families of the veterans who have committed suicide have to deal with self inflicted shame they feel for not being able to stop it, not being able to be worthy of the wounded wanting to live and blaming themselves. They have to manage to find the rational in the emotional. Once they understand what PTSD is, they can deal with the fact it had nothing to do with them at all. It was the invisible enemy. It was the silent killer determined to claim who got away from the battle field. It is a stalker terrorizing until it wins. It wins by silence. It wins by denial. It wins by default. It wins by a false self imposed stigma fed on ignorance.

The only way to defeat PTSD is kill the infection eating away the wounded. Truth will win. Honesty will win. Compassion will win. Knowledge will prevail. All this can happen as soon as silence is ended. The families need to tell their stories while the media still is willing to listen. This needs to be done for the generations before now and after now as well as now. We are loosing too many after the risk to life has ended but the risk of continuing to live begins.

Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington