by
Chaplain Kathie
Some high school kids spend their last year, hitting the books with plans to go to college. Some think of their last days of having to pass tests and getting whatever job they can get. For others, they spend this last year preparing to join the best minority group in the nation, serving in the military.
They are fully aware of the sacrifices they will have to make in order to serve. They prepare their bodies and their minds training while suspending their sense of "self" for the sake of the greater good. They know they will have to leave their families and friends, often traveling away from home for the first time. They know they can be sent into combat just as much as they are aware, they may never walk through their doorway again.
Marine Sgt. Peter Louis Kastner was a veteran of war by the time he took his own life at the age of 25. He would have been aware, with two wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan when he graduated high school, that being deployed was almost guaranteed. Yet he was still willing. Few know what it is like to be willing to risk your life for your country and perhaps that's the biggest problem this nation has.
Afghanistan has been an ongoing operation since 2001 and Iraq, since 2003. Most Americans have forgotten that men and women are still sacrificing their lives but they are ready to complain about the price tag. Ask someone on the street if they know how many are serving in Iraq and they are shocked there are troops still there. Ask someone if they know how many died in Afghanistan this year and they have no clue.
This attitude of ignorance is carried on when they come home. While people care about the troops, they don't know about the suicides of soldiers going up every year or the fact this is the first month the Marines have reported a slight decline in the numbers of suicides committed by Marines. They know even less about the fact we lose 18 veterans a day to suicide. While tax money pays for programs and care by the VA, they simply assume all veterans are taken care of. They are unaware of the flood of calls into the VA's Suicide Prevention Hotline.
VA’s Suicide Hotline
10000 Rescues and Counting
Someone to Listen — VHA Health Science Specialist and Suicide Lifeline Responder Melissa Rath talks with a caller. (VA staff photo)
The Department of Veterans Affairs National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is on track to record its 10,000th rescue — an achievement likely to occur some time around the Fourth of July. That’s 10,000 Veterans who would not be here today had they not called the VA Lifeline and talked to a trained responder — a responder who deemed it necessary to take immediate action to save the caller’s life.
“These are people who call us, but they’ve already taken pills, or they have a gun in their hands, or they’re standing on a bridge,” explained Jan Kemp, VA’s National Suicide Prevention Coordinator. “These are the calls where we can’t wait. We call emergency services right away.”
VA’s Lifeline crisis center, which opened in July 2007, is staffed 24/7 by 20 responders, social workers, health technician assistants and counselors who handle 15 phone lines and three chat lines. The center, located in Canandaigua, N.Y., has received about 260,000 calls during its three years in existence.
“A lot of our callers just want information regarding mental health and other services available to them at their local VA hospital,” Kemp explained. “But some of the calls are more urgent. The person is clearly distressed. We try to provide them with immediate assistance...we’ll send someone out to their house to do a wellness check-up.”
click link above for more
There is an important fact most of us miss. How does it ever get so bad that 10,000 lives are being saved at the same time we see so many die by their own hand? How does it get so bad that in three years 260,000 calls were made to the hotline?
These are people who were willing to sacrifice their lives serving. Nothing selfish or weak about any of them. How do we let it get so bad for them when they come home so many end up on the brink of deciding to pull the trigger or give it another day? They survived the worst man can do in combat with other people trying to kill them and their buddies and having to kill in return. They know what it is like to escape the bomb in the road and the bullet in the air. What they don't know is how to survive being back home.
Former Marine from Camp Pendleton found dead in Yellowstone Park, an apparent suicide
July 20, 2010 2:52 pm
A former Marine sergeant from Camp Pendleton who served two combat tours in Iraq has been found dead in Yellowstone Park, an apparent suicide, park officials said Tuesday.
The body of Peter Louis Kastner, 25, was found in a remote part of the sprawling park. An autopsy revealed that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said. He had been missing since May 31.
His parents told park officials that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and had twice been injured by roadside bomb explosions. His medals include the Combat Action Ribbon awarded to troops who have been under enemy fire.
read more here
Former Marine from Camp Pendleton found dead in Yellowstone Park
The families left behind had spent a year worrying about the doorbell ringing knowing any day it could happen to someone they loved. What they didn't know was after the homecoming and rejoicing, they still had to worry about the doorbell, plus a phone call, plus coming back home to find they really never came home from combat all the way. Families prepared themselves to have to make funeral arrangements when they were deployed, but never thought about it after they came home.
The simple fact is, no matter how many years PTSD and combat has been researched, no matter how much money funds the research, very little has been accomplished in addressing this military crisis. Congress, the DOD and the VA love to ask questions, but they ask the same questions to the same group of people and get the same answers.
The Suicide Prevention Hotline is only in place because there were law suits filed by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth. There was the
Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill and people stood up after they suffered a loss too great to just move on.
Yet for all the efforts, all the people trying to make a difference there had to be this many lives on the brink of being lost forever. We cannot restore life to any of them, but we can count them and honor them. We cannot replace the lives lost, but we can stop the numbers from growing and save the lives of others. This can only happen when the American people demand words of actions result in less loss of ever reaching the point where they feel they have to call a suicide prevention hotline to live another day.
Hi Chaplain Kathie,
ReplyDeletePeter Kastner was my first cousin, once removed. I never met him or his father, Larry, or his sister, Jenny, but when I was growing up between 1953 and 1970 I met his mother, Sara, maybe half a dozen times. She and her brother, Ed, were my first cousins, two or three years older than me. Their mother was my dad's oldest sister, Aunt Vera, the eldest daughter of a minister who was married to a minister, my Uncle Al. We would visit them in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on summer vacations when we drove to Indiana to see my mother's parents.
I started a genealogy blog five or six years ago, researching my great great grandfather, William Lubach, who died in the Civil War. He's buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis. William was Peter Kastner's great great great grandfather.
Peter's grandmother, Vera, died about three years ago at age 90. I exchanged e-mails with her shortly before she died. I suspect she may have had some help from Peter's mother, Sara. Vera knew that her great grandfather died in the Civil War. My father didn't. It was kind of a family secret.
German-Americans between WWI and WWII were supposed to act patriotic and not rely for proof of loyalty on German-American ancestors who weren't even citizens when they gave their lives helping to preserve the union.
My dad got a Christmas card from Sara five years ago with a family newsletter. Much of it was about her son, Peter, and his first tour of duty as a Marine in Iraq. She seemed anxious about the risk he was taking, but also proud of his desire to serve his country. It was the first news I had heard about Peter or his sister, Jenny. Sara was also quite concerned about her mother, Vera, who was having memory issues that were becoming a serious problem.
I don't think Vera could have sent me the information she had about my great great grandfather without help from Sara, who I think must have seen my blog and helped her mother respond to it. Vera's information provided independent verification for the information I had assembled from cemetery records, census records, immigration records, cargo manifests and military service and pension records maintained by the National Archives (NARA).
I don't know what information from my blog, if any, Sara might have shared with her son, Peter, before his suicide. Sara has been in touch with my dad during the past five years, but not with me.
My dad worked for the Veteran's Administration up until I was about seven years old. He worked with what were considered "shell shock" victims from WWII and the Korean War at the V.A. hospital in Topeka. It was his first job after he earned his doctorate. He attended an orientation at Jefferson Barracks when he first started work with the V.A. system, but he had no idea that his great grandfather had died in that hospital or that he was buried in the most honored section of that cemetery.
It was only about a month ago that I first learned of Peter's suicide in Yellowstone. I wonder now if he ever had a chance to take a look at my blog and my posts about his great great great grandfather. Did some of his struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder involve a family ghost, a soldier whose service is still remembered by his nation, but long forgotten by his family?
Regards,
Craig
May 28, 2012
ReplyDeleteI did not know Peter personally. I followed the news reports of his being missing.
On my last trip to Yellowstone, I went to the trail head.
Peter is missed, but not forgotten.
Rich Henderson