Veterans, the lives the DOD loves to forget

Veterans, the lives the DOD loves to forget
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 3, 2013

We still don't know exactly how many servicemen and women committed suicide last year. The DOD has not released the report yet. While the Army has released reports this year on Soldier, National Guards and Reservists, we really don't know how many Airmen, Marines and Sailors ended their own lives in 2012. As a matter of fact, we don't know how many did this year either. We don't know how many attempted suicide or how many times they tried.

One thing stands out, the numbers are not good for veterans the DOD no longer has to count, not that they have been even willing to accept any responsibility for them after discharge and after they were trained to be "resilient" so let's take a look at what they love to forget.

It isn't as if someone with a lot of power would listen to someone like me, so it is really not that shocking to be ignored. What is shocking is the fact that someone like me was right all along and they were wrong. I wrote that if they pushed this program, it would increase military suicides. As the military pushes their "resilience" propaganda on the troops, comes up with excuses for the reason why they keep going up even as the number of their ranks drops, it is a good time to take a look at what this year started out with. Take a look at this.

"The army’s suicide rate climbed nine-percent since a prevention campaign was launched in 2009." A local Army man is speaking out on military suicides and getting national attention. People Magazine recently did a feature on Army Major Jeff Hall, of Davenport, as a way to address the growing epidemic that’s got military leaders looking for answers.

January of 2013 didn't start out good. The VA said they didn't know if they has enough staff to take care of the veterans. "A January 2002 law "mandated that VA establish a nationwide policy to ensure medical facilities have adequate staff to provide appropriate, high-quality care and services" but the agency "did not have an effective staffing methodology to ensure appropriate staffing levels for specialty care services," the VA inspector general reported Thursday."

After being deployed into Afghanistan for a year, Eric Harm came home in January of 2012. He didn't survive a full year. He committed suicide on December 28, 2012 four months after he left the military. His suicide wouldn't be in the total of the lives lost the military tallied for the highest year but then again, too many others were not considered their responsibility.

"Dusty Michael Clark suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, his mother says. The Altona man, 28, was shot and killed by Clinton County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason R. Winters on Dec. 30, 2012, after Dusty threatened him with a knife and wouldn’t back down, according to the Sheriff’s Department. He was diagnosed in 2009 at a Veteran’s Affairs clinic in Albany but was not receiving treatment at the time of his death, said his mother, Sheila Clark of Altona."

The report of Navy SEAL Robert Guzzo committing suicide after Veterans Day in 2012 came out saying he "returned from Iraq, he feared seeking treatment for PTSD would endanger his career. After Veterans Day, he went to "be with the angels" after he committed suicide." There was a follow up report, "In 2006, shortly before serving a tour in Iraq, Robert's mother Robin Andersen said he was struck hard by the suicide of his best friend and fellow Navy SEAL. By the time he returned from San Diego a year later, something had changed."

On Jan. 2, Dr. Peter Linnerooth, 42, killed himself in Mankato. Linnerooth was awarded a Bronze Star after an honorable discharge in 2008 and became critical of the military's limited work on providing mental health care to soldiers, especially to those with PTSD, in the pages of Time magazine and the New York Times. Capt. Linnerooth will be buried with full military honors at 11 a.m. Monday, Jan. 14, at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. "He was really, really suffering," Linnerooth's widow, Melanie Walsh, told Time for its story on his death. "And it didn't matter that he was a mental health professional, and it didn't matter that I was a mental health professional. I couldn't help him, and he couldn't help himself."

As a machine gunner in the U.S. Marine Corps, John Lutz survived combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq while earning 13 service commendations and the respect of his buddies. "He was a Marine to the fullest," said fellow Marine Kevin Ullman. "He was someone who could lighten any situation with witty sarcasm." Ultimately, however, Lutz could not escape the demons he carried back home to Davie after his discharge 18 months ago. On Saturday, just hours after a lunch with his mother in which he chatted about his classes at Palm Beach State College, Lutz swallowed a handful of pills VA doctors had prescribed to help him cope with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Lutz died in his bedroom, in the house where he grew up. He was 24. "I'm sorry," he said in a farewell note he left on his open laptop. "I am happier now."

Navy medic Dustin Wernli, 30, called 911 Tuesday night saying he wanted an officer to shoot him, according to the Tucson Police Department. Officers talked to Wernli for about 15 minutes when he pulled a gun and an officer lethally shot him, according to TPD. Wernli was a Navy medic who was deployed with the Marine Corps in Iraq, according to his father. He suffered a brain injury from an explosion in 2004. He was receiving treatment from the VA hospital for PTSD, according to Wernli's father.

The young Hawaii-based soldier who was shot and killed by police in a hail of bullets early Tuesday morning suffered from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder. That's the claim being made by a spokesperson on behalf of Pfc. Gregory Gordon's parents, Todd and Tracey Gordon. Amateur video of a shooting in Waikiki Tuesday morning. "He was a good person, and when he came back from the war he was not the same," said Amanda Cureton. "He came back a completely different person."

According to the audit, nine of 10 patients who were on the high risk for suicide list did not receive sufficient follow-ups. The VA is required to check on such patients weekly for the first month following their release, according to the review, but Fayetteville officials failed to check on the patients for the last two weeks of that period. The report released Friday by the Department of Veterans Affairs revealed that 80 percent of all suicide attempts among VA patients occur within that one-month span.

That is how 2013 started. Since nothing has really changed, it doesn't look as if it will end as good as it should considering the troops left Iraq in 2011.