Three weeks shy of his 21st birthday, Tilton had shot himself

After over 30 years of trying to get ahead of what PTSD does, will there ever come a day when we can finally say it is no longer claiming more lives after war than during it? Time ran out for too many last year and the year before that and so on and so on. It ran out for too many families as well.

Military suicides the deepest wounds of war
By LAURA BAUER
The Kansas City Star

Two months after returning from Iraq, 20-year-old Pfc. Gregory Tilton committed suicide. The soldier, who was based at Fort Riley, is seen here with his wife, Molly.

The day before Thanksgiving, Army Pfc. Gregory Tilton was on the phone with his parents, talking about recipes.

He needed tips on ingredients for the first holiday meal he and his wife, Molly, would prepare together. The previous year during the holidays, he was in Iraq with Fort Riley’s 1st Battalion, 63rd Armor, so this one was important.

“I’ve got to make Thanksgiving a great thing,” the soldier told his dad, Tim Tilton. They were to host four other couples at their apartment near the post. “We have to do things up right.”

But as the day went on, things weren’t right. Flashbacks of the war — the crack of gunfire, helicopters overhead, the smell of smoke and images of blood-soaked earth — were playing through his head.

By 9 that night, his family said, he was mentally back in Iraq, climbing a hill to bury bodies. About four hours later, there was a gunshot — and not just in his nightmares.

Three weeks shy of his 21st birthday, Tilton had shot himself.
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Military suicides the deepest wounds of war

Just 20 years old.

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When they come home at the age of 19 or 20, they have seen and done things most of us will never go through in an entire lifetime. Most of us will decide that we don't need to pay attention to what happens when they come home and the media, well, they certainly won't take the time to remind us. Most reports come from local newspapers never picked up by national papers or news stations. As for the 24-7 cable news, they are too consumed with stories like Haiti covering that for over a week except for the special election to fill the Senate seat held by Senator Kennedy in Massachusetts, but then it was right back to the Haiti reports. When that was not enough the story ended up being the reporters feeling they needed to do something like the CNN reports Cooper and Gupta. There are thousands of troops arriving in Haiti to supply aid but we don't know exactly how many have arrived after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan or if there is any help for them with what they will see in Haiti. Imagine a young man or woman a few years out of high school going through this after being deployed into combat. It can either be very healing depending on what their mission is or it can be very harmful depending on what they see.

While the devastation in Haiti needs to be reported on, there is a bigger crisis that is being ignored and this is one of them. We are still losing more after combat than during it.

Military suicides set record in 2009
Published: Jan. 16, 2010 at 3:41 PM

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- At least 301 active-duty members of the U.S. military took their own lives in 2009, more than in any year since the Pentagon began keeping track in 1980.

There were 235 suicides in 2008, the Chicago Tribune reports.

In 2009, the suicide rate in all four branches of the military was higher than the national average, Defense Department statistics reported by the Congressional Research Service show. They included 160 in the Army, 52 Marines, 48 sailors and 41 members of the Air Force.
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Military suicides set record in 2009

What if PTSD became a priority 30 years ago? 20 years ago? How about 9 years ago? Did any reporter pick up on the fact no one in the VA was preparing for the wounded when the troops were sent into Afghanistan? Did any reporter pick up on the fact that the DOD was not gearing up with psychologist and psychiatrists in place ready to respond? No. No reporter was covering the fact there were less doctors and nurses working for the VA than there were after the Gulf War. It was assumed since the population of veterans was dying out, they didn't need to prepare anything but they should have known better.

Reporters forgot how to study the facts and history. Reporters covered the Gulf War and they covered what was said, given as a reason to not invade Iraq after the Gulf War, that it would be a "quagmire" in the words of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and leaving the troops "like a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit" in the words of General H. "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf. History provided the need to ramp up services in the DOD and the VA just as history provided the need to do it as soon as troops were sent into Afghanistan. If the reporters had bothered to report on this, the American people would have been screaming for everyone to be ready to take care of the wounded, but most of us were left uninformed.

Even today they jump on stories about these suicides but each and every one of them add nothing to correcting the reason why they would rather die than live after surviving combat. People paying attention see the death by suicide as a condemnation and a price paid that should have never happened. People not paying attention have the excuse no one told them and this, this is the greatest sin of all.