Sgt. Brian Rand worth training but not worth saving

Since the start of the Iraq war, Fort Campbell, a sprawling installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, has seen a spike in the number of suicides and soldiers suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Sgt. Brian Rand, shown here grilling chicken in Iraq, killed himself a few months after being discharged from his second tour of duty in Iraq. Rand believe he was being haunted by the ghost of the Iraqi man he killed.

Memories of Iraq haunted soldier until suicide
By HALIMAH ABDULLAH
McClatchy Newspapers

Until the day he died, Sgt. Brian Rand believed he was being haunted by the ghost of the Iraqi man he killed.

The ghost choked Rand while he slept in his bunk, forcing him to wake up gasping for air and clawing at his throat.

He whispered that Rand was a vampire and looked on as the soldier stabbed another member of Fort Campbell's 96th Aviation Support Battalion in the neck with a fork in the mess hall.

Eventually, the ghost told Rand he needed to kill himself.

According to family members and police reports, on Feb. 20, 2007, just a few months after being discharged from his second tour of duty in Iraq, Rand smoked half of a cigarette as he wrote a suicide note, grabbed a gun and went to the Cumberland River Center Pavilion in Clarksville, Tenn. As the predawn dark pressed in, he breathed in the wintry air and stared out at the park where he and his wife, Dena, had married.

Then he placed the gun to his head and silenced his inner ghosts.

"My brother was afraid to ask for help," said April Somdahl. "And when he finally did ask for help the military let him down."

Since the start of the Iraq war, Fort Campbell, a sprawling installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, has seen a spike in the number of suicides and soldiers suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

In 2007, nine soldiers from Fort Campbell committed suicide - three during the first few weeks of October, according to a letter sent to base personnel by the 101st Airborne Division's commander, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser.

"As our soldiers fight terrorism, the sacrifices asked of them and their families have increased significantly," Schloesser said in the letter. "... Regrettably, under such circumstances, it is natural for our people to feel the stress of these demands and to be overwhelmed at times. Tragically, these pressures too often end in suicide."

Fort Campbell spokeswoman Cathy Gramling said post officials were unable to track the suicides referred to in the letter and declined to give additional suicide figures. The Pentagon said it does not track suicides by military installation.
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http://www.kansascity.com/440/story/635463.html

It costs a lot of money to get a soldier and even more to train them.

The military spends a fortune on recruitment advertising but relatively little on retention of trained soldiers. Substantially more money needs to be shifted from recruitment to retention. The reasoning: it can cost as much as $250,000 to properly train a soldier for a skilled assignment -- only to have them leave after one term of service.
http://www.politics1.com/jcoc.htm

It costs even more to outfit them.

It Ain't Cheap to Outfit a Soldier
Modern soldiers, with their night-vision goggles and high-tech vests, are starting to look more and more like they might have dropped out of a popular video game. But it's a pretty expensive one:

It now costs 100 times more to outfit a soldier than it did during World War II. Back then, it cost $170, even adjusted for inflation. These days, The Associated Press reports, it costs $17,000 and could reach $28,000 or even $60,000 by 2015.

In the 1940s, a GI went to war with little more than a uniform, weapon, helmet, bedroll and canteen. He carried some 35 pounds of gear that cost $170 in 2006 inflation-adjusted dollars, according to Army figures. That rose to about $1,100 by the 1970s as the military added a flak vest, new weapons and other equipment during the Vietnam War.

Today, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are outfitted with advanced armor and other protection, including high-tech vests, anti-ballistic eyewear, earplugs and fire-retardant gloves. Night-vision eyewear, thermal weapons sights and other gear makes them more deadly to the adversary.


These days, soldiers are responsible for more than 80 items, weighing a total of 75 pounds. And in the future, their gear could include "a weapon that can shoot around corners so soldiers don't have to expose themselves to their enemy and a helmet-mounted 1.5-inch computer screen showing maps of the battlefield."

All this new technology stands to increase the pressure on the military to retain well-trained personnel because of the cost to train and equip new ones.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2007/10/it_aint_cheap_to_outfit_a_sold.html

When it comes to the price tag on getting them ready for combat, it seems as if the sky is the limit. So where is the money when they are done doing the risking of life? Why are they no longer of value? Sgt. Brian Rand was still the same person the military trained, spent a lot of money on and depended on. He was still the same person who left his family and friends to serve the nation and still the same person they loved. Why is it that when they come back home, no one seems to take what happens seriously enough in the chain of command? Is it because they were willing to risk their lives that the military has taken this long to care what happens to them and felt their deaths by their own hands was no great loss? Aside from the moral question, we have the financial one. Sgt. Rand, along with all the others who took their own lives because of being wounded, have to be replaced. You would think it would be in the financial interest of the military to take care of them and get them help as soon as humanly possible in order to retain the trained and not have to replace them. Think of what kind of symbol taking care of them would provide for those who are contemplating joining the military or not. It would go a long way for them to truly believe their lives were valued. Think about it. It's too late for Sgt. Rand and all the others. But what about the next one?