Military suicides are causing civilian casualties, too

If you ever wanted to know what happens beyond some of the stories you read here, you should be able to know after this. Too many of these stories are happening all over the country in military families but beyond that, you need to know they are also being repeated all over the country in the families of veterans. We lose 18 a day to suicide and another 12,000 attempt it, leaving behind a family trying to make sense out of how things got so bad.

Military suicides are causing civilian casualties, too
By Halimah Abdullah, McClatchy Newspapers
Stars and Stripes online edition, Monday, March 1, 2010
WASHINGTON — Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Wimmer charmed potential Army recruits with a movie star's smile, but somehow it never quite reached his eyes, even when he was cradling his newborn twin daughters.

Whenever he closed his eyes, he dreamed of his own dead body swinging from a rope, his feet dangling just above a chair.

When those nightmares eventually blurred, the Persian Gulf veteran and former Army recruiter began trying to recreate their grisly images. He tried to kill himself with pills in the woods, and a razor blade in a hotel room, and every suicide attempt drew his wife, Jennifer, and their four daughters deeper into his dark world.

Jennifer learned that his fourth suicide attempt, on July 23, had succeeded when she got a text message: You'll "find his body hanging like a Christmas ornament from a tree across from the range on base. If he knew I was sending this he would be pissed. Hope you understand. Bob."

Jennifer doesn't know who "Bob" is, and the military is preparing to close its investigation into his death pending more evidence.

So less than a year after Daniel Wimmer, five days short of his 34th birthday, drove his white Ford F-150 truck to nearby Fort Benning, a sprawling military installation near Columbus, Ga., and hanged himself from a tree across from a practice range, his family is still caught in the dark currents that took his life — a life they're only just beginning to understand.
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Military suicides are causing civilian casualties, too