Yesterday we learned from the Washington Post of the record-breaking number of Army suicides during 2007. This is the latest edition of veteran suicide news that's made national headlines--further evidence that this is one aspect of the homecoming experience that isn't getting any better despite all the attention.The latest figures as reported by the Post:

• In 2007, suicides among active-duty soldiers reached their highest point since the Army began keeping records in 1980.
• 121 soldiers committed suicide in 2007, a 20 percent increase over 2006.
• Attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries rose sixfold since the Iraq war began: there were 350 cases in 2002 compared to 2,100 in 2007.
• Historically, suicide rates within the military decreases during wartime; the current trend is the opposite of that.
• In 2001 the suicide rate was 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers--in 2006 the rate jumped to 17.5 per 100,000.
• In 2007 twice as many soldiers committed suicide in the U.S. as they did in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Post provides this sober passage about a young Army reservist currently hospitalized after her suicide attempt:

On Monday night, as President Bush delivered his State of the Union address and asked Congress to "improve the system of care for our wounded warriors and help them build lives of hope and promise and dignity," Whiteside was dozing off from the effects of her drug overdose.

Taking a look at the issue of veterans suicides it's somewhat alarming to read this USA Today article from 2003. The language, the sense of urgency, the utter surprise in statistical findings can make one wonder if five years from now we'll still be reading the same type of articles--waiting for things to get better. The lead paragraph from the article could easily be substituted for a story about the current findings:

Alarmed by the number of suicides among soldiers in Iraq, the Army has asked a team of doctors to determine whether the stress of combat and long deployments is contributing to the deaths.

One very simple idea that would have helped relieve the mental burden of our troops (short of finding a way out of Iraq), and help them get the care that they need, is to give them substantial time off between deployments. Spend two years in Iraq, spend two years at home. And, on the homefront, aggressively test, treat, and monitor troops for mental injuries...

...Even without dwell time, and a much deserved rest for our forces, we have got to be more diligent about mandatory and exhaustive screening of returning troops, and providing adequate care and monitoring.

Our Readers Who Comment for the most part commend The Post and reporter Dana Priest for continuing to report on what happens to mentally and physically wounded soldiers returning from Iraq. They express sympathy for the individual around whom this story is built, call for a change in political leadership, improved patient car...Some contend that such reporting aids the enemy and question the patriotism of the journalist and her news organization. And, as sometimes happens, commenters take the opportunity to issue boilerplate condemnations of the Iraq War, some of which are anti-Semitic.

OCTOBER 30 -- A study by the American Journal of Public Health reports findings that younger veterans are more prone to suicide. This is the opposite of suicide trends among the general public.

NOVEMBER 13 -- CBS News concludes a five-month investigation into the "hidden epidemic" of military suicides.

DECEMBER 12 -- The House Veterans Affairs Committee holds a hearing on how to stop veterans suicides.

Last week Soldier's Home took a look at the passing of Louis de Cazenave, one of France's two remaining WWI veterans.  Since then we've heard news of two more veterans dying as the final representatives from a fading era.

Erich Kaestner, said to be Germany's last surviving WWI veteran, is making headlines not so much for his death but for the amount of time it took to realize his significance. He died on January 1 at the age of 107, but it was not until recently that word got out he was Germany's last living link to the Great War.  As the BBC reports:

Reports in Die Welt daily and Der Spiegel magazine identified Kaestner as Germany's last World War I veteran, but verification of the claim was difficult as the country keeps no record of its war veterans.

In a country where the shame of the Nazi genocide and memories of two world war defeats still cast long shadows, both publications focused more on the German national psyche than the death itself.

"The German public was within a hair's breadth of never learning of the end of an era," wrote Der Spiegel, until someone updated his death notice on the internet encyclopaedia site, Wikipedia.

In its obituary for Kaestner, Die Welt noted: "The losers hide themselves in a state of self-pity and self denial that they happily try to mitigate by forgetting." 

"Any form of commemoration of military events is seen as problematic here," Chiari told Spiegel Online.

"Our veterans only take part in public ceremonies when they are invited abroad to join commemorative events with veterans from other countries. World War I is seen as part of a historical line that led to World War II. You can't equate the two but there is much debate about it."

Combat Stress is alarmed at the huge increase in veterans from the Falklands, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, who come knocking on their door for help. A few are still turning up suffering long-term effects from the second world war and Korea. The oldest applicant for help recently was aged 100.

The problems of veterans today are compounded by the widespread recognition through much of the army that the Iraq campaign is unpopular, nasty, unpredictable and brutal—and, in the views of a significant minority of soldiers and officers in private conversation, a pretty unnecessary conflict at that. In the first and second world wars, the plight of service personnel was shared by almost everyone in the land. More than 1 million soldiers served in Northern Ireland over 30 or so years, so that became part of the national experience.

But combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a national experience, and the services are worried that they appear in the minds of many now to be detached from most of British national life. Though more American soldiers have been involved—more than 3,000 killed and nearly 50,000 injured, physically or mentally—Iraq is not a shared experience nationally for Americans in the way that Vietnam was.

A well-trained fighting machine reduced to nothing more than an empty shell.  Combat stress is their calvary, the infantry to fight off their demons.  They were protecting you, now they need your help.

“They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? … If you know where there's a veteran sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it.”

DAVID LETTERMAN: Tell me a little bit about your feud with Bill O'Reilly. Now there's a tough guy. He's been on the show a couple of times. And he's a tough guy. What's going on there? What's at the core of the feud?

JOHN EDWARDS: Well, the core of the feud is I've been talking about homeless veterans and the fact that we have a couple hundred thousand homeless veterans who have no place to sleep at night. They're either in shelters...

LETTERMAN: It's embarrassing, isn't it?

EDWARDS: It's incredibly embarrassing for America. Huge moral issue facing the country. And he kind of went on his show and said that I was exaggerating, making it up. And I think he got a lot of correspondence, a lot of homeless veterans have been calling in.

LETTERMAN: Well, you know what I've noticed about Bill O'Reilly — and he's a marvelous communicator. But he's not — he doesn't really care much about telling the truth.

As Laura Ingraham might say, tedious. Edwards and Letterman could not care less about the truth unless it fits into their far-left vision of the world. Using homeless veterans to make a dishonest political point is wrong. That's one of the reasons Edwards is going nowhere in his campaign. The man simply cannot be trusted.

Recently the Associated Press reported on an interesting program giving wounded Marines and Navy Corpsmen job placement in the film industry.  Working with the Wounded Marine Careers Foundationgives these vets hands on training in the various aspects of filmmaking--even the camera equipment can be modified to suite any injuries the vets may have.  As the center's co-founder Kev Lombard tells the AP, the idea for the program came out of his own project:

Lombard came up with the idea for the foundation's Wounded Marine Training Center for Careers in Media program after being asked by a friend in the military nearly two years ago to document the stories of wounded veterans at military hospitals.

"It wasn't our story to tell. It was theirs," he said. "So I said how about we teach them to tell their own story."

Throughout the story we follow one young wounded Marine who's filming a mock scene of helmets atop inverted rifles set as battlefield memorials to those killed.  If movies about Iraq will continue to be made in the future, his lens offers an idea of just how valuable these aspiring filmmakers may be:

Frey focuses on the helmets, which sit near a box of blank ammunition. For a moment he considers taking pictures. But then he decides against it, saying later that the scene didn't look real.

Rifle companies use the databases for vital intelligence procured from the local area, which can help avoid much of the time lost sending intelligence requests to the battalion or regimental level, Dickey said.

“If we can train ourselves at this level, we can produce the intelligence we’re asking for,” which could save days of waiting for responses over the duration of a unit’s deployment, he said.

If, for example, a company commander wanted more information about roadside bombs and small-arms attacks in his area, the C-LIC would compile and analyze recent recorded events, then present the findings to the company, Diana said.

“They give the brief, and then squad leaders in the company can start putting requests for information in,” Diana explained. “Squad leaders, team leaders, are starting to see what the [C-LICs] can produce for them. And then, in turn, ‘here are areas where I’d like more information’ and now it becomes cyclical. It becomes a process, a battle drill, where the guys who are down on the ground and are going to be conducting the patrolling can now go back and pull information from these [C-LICs].”

The paper also reports the battalion will receive 48 micro-unmanned aerial vehicles with night vision. 

On Monday we took a look at the fallout over a New York Times article looking at recent war veterans who have committed murder. Some critics said this article perpetuated the myth of "wacko" veterans returning from war. Additionally, a lack of comparison to murder rates among the civilian population was said to unfairly highlight the 121 veterans mentioned in the article. At the time of my last post most of the criticism seemed to be stemming from the online community.  By today, however, we've seen this wave of thought reach the mainstream press. 

In yesterday's New York Times the op-ed page printed letters from readers reacting to the story. Some excerpts:

CON:

Your article about veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who have committed or been charged with murder perpetuates the myth about crazed war veterans.  You note that in researching “homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years” after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, there have been 349 cases.  There are more than 1.4 million Americans on active duty. Philadelphia, a city with a similar population, alone had 392 murders in 2007.  As a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I find articles like yours do a disservice to America’s combat veterans by shaping a public perception that they are damaged people, prone to violence.

PRO:

It was simply not manly to seek psychiatric help during and after Vietnam. In my own case, I suffered for some 40 years. After all the nightmares, sleepwalking, waking myself up with my own screams and causing my near relatives anxiety and fear, a police officer introduced me to a talk group of Vietnam veterans at the local V.A. hospital...You are never the same when you return from combat. The American people must therefore be absolutely sure of the engaged war because of the terrible things war does to the psyches of those soldiers. It may be worth it, but only if the objectives of the war are worth it...Deep down, those images and sounds never go away. I am happy that today the military has recognized the humanity and manhood of those who seek help.

I have received your letter. I have also received two parcels of woollen goods from Mrs. Higgins but you can’t carry a lot of stuff about we have enough to carry about...Your biscuits was grand and I enjoyed them. I have also had a nice parcel from Kate she said she enjoyed the Christmas alright at home...It is still very cold out here at night and we have had some snow. it is different to being out in France, very quiet.

A young English soldier wrote [his thoughts] down on scraps of paper, gun fire ringing out all around.  He could not have known that nearly a century later thousands of computer users would be hanging on his every word.

We're in the position of his family.  We're waiting for the next letter or maybe a telegram from the war office saying he's been killed.  That's really the whole point of the blog.  We're as close as we can be to his family waiting for more news.

Three days after, we were called up the line again of course I went this time. We had to go to the front line were it was on the Menin Road no doubt you have heard about it. We were there for three days it was awful the shelling day and night. We relieved the KOYLI about 10 o’clock and what do you think Fritz came over about 5 o’clock next morning we had an exciting time for about one hour and a half I can tell you. but we beat him off he never got in our trenches he was about two hundred strong it was a picked storming party so the prisoners say that captured, they brought liquid fire with them and bombs and all sorts but not many got back we had twenty casuals and the captain got killed a jolly good fellow too. I was pleased to get out of it but did not feel nervous when I saw them coming over. No 1 in our section was on the gun and we used our rifles. Our Coy as to go before the general for the good work we have done. We have just been given a long trousers again as we have had had Short ones all summer.

It's been widely reported recently that movies dealing with veterans and the Iraq war are mostly  flopping at the box office. Peoples' opinions on the cause of this are varied, but a common line of thinking is that it's just too soon. Recently, however, I came across a movie from 1946 which astounded me in the accuracy and relevance of the veterans issues addressed.  The movie is called "The Best Years of Our Lives," and while it won the 1947 Oscar for best picture I'd never heard about it until my father mentioned the film at the Christmas dinner table.

If conventional wisdom within my own generation believes that many mainstream movies from that time period are sanitized and fail to address complex issues, "The Best Years of Our Lives" is an exception. The film traces the lives of three WWII veterans and their return to a small town and their families. One of the actors, Harold Russell, was a veteran himself and lost both hands while serving in the U.S. Army. 

While watching the movie I was struck how veterans of Iraq could easily replace these WWII-era characters. We see their apprehension as one-by-one a taxi drops the men off at their respective homes. None of the vets want to get out of the car, and face their families for the first time. The ensuing story line involves alcoholism, depression, joblessness, financial troubles, broken relationships, and opposition to the war. Even among their families and old friends the vets feel out of place, with images of their wartime experience always present. The plot is subtle and methodical. In portraying the assimilation of these vets back into civilian society, we see how they initially depend on each other, and how they eventually come to depend on their families as well.

Master Sgt. Cindy Rathbun knew something was wrong three weeks after she arrived in Iraq in September 2006. Her blond hair began "coming out in clumps," she says.

He was punished after admitting [in October 2003] that two months earlier, he fired a shot from his 9mm pistol as he held it next to the head of a recalcitrant detainee who West said had been stonewalling interrogators at a base near Taji, just north of Baghdad.

But the cop quickly caved in after West's phony death threat.

After the gunshot, West recalled, the detainee screamed "ok, OK, OK!" and gave up the names of three individuals who were then taken off the streets, ending a cycle of roadside bomb attacks on West's men that had been escalating the previous three weeks.

West said he knew firing the gun would probably end his career but nevertheless did it to protect his soldiers.

It's about taking a stand for the country, and I think that the entire episode in 2003 will let people know the measure of a man that I am.

The conservative media personalities and Web sites that raised money for his legal defense portrayed a military hamstrung by concern for the human rights of Iraqi detainees. The more than 2,300 letters and e-mail messages that he received were mostly "thank you" notes for putting his men first and resisting the pressure to treat suspects with kid gloves.

Ninety-five members of Congress signed a letter to the secretary of the Army supporting the colonel.

West isn't the only veteran vying for the chance to run against Klein.  Mark Flagg, a former Navy pilot, will run against West in an August 2008 primary.

Yesterday we took at look at four presidential candidates and examples of how veterans issues factored into their campaigns. Today's post contains five more front-runners:
 

JOHN EDWARDS: In November Edwards laid out a $400 million, five-point plan to aid in treating veterans with PTSD.  A main focus of the plan is to allow veterans to seek mental care outside of the VA system, and to increase the number of counselors available.  As the Associated Press reports:

"I strongly believe we must restore the sacred contract we have with our veterans and their families, and that we must begin by reforming our system for treating PTSD. We also must act to remove the stigma from this disorder," [Edwards said]...

...The VA currently has a backlog of as many as 600,000 claims, increasing delays for initial treatment by up to six months, according to the campaign. Edwards pledged the entire backlog would be eliminated by Memorial Day 2009 - four months after he might take office - and would cut the processing time by half.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Long before Huckabee enjoyed the level of attention he has now, the candidate spoke to New Hampshire voters in April about priority care for veterans [New Hampshire Telegraph]: