Through November this year, potentially 303 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard soldiers took their own lives. In Afghanistan 212 soldiers were killed as of Dec. 7. The trajectory for soldier suicides keeps getting worse.
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The numbers have increased despite a range of training and awareness programs instituted by the service in the last few years.
More measures may be on the way:
- A bipartisan group of 36 lawmakers is pushing for new rules allowing military commanders and mental health specialists to ask unstable troops whether they own any personal firearms; lawmakers from both the House and the Senate are working on a final compromise version of the legislation.
- Gun rights advocates have opposed the idea, saying it could lead to commanders intimidating some individuals into giving up personal weapons.
"Gun rights advocates," (NRA) see a problem with "unstable" soldiers surrendering their weapons? I'd really like to see a poll conducted among the soldiers themselves to see how they feel about such a measure being enacted in the hopes of reducing suicide in their ranks.
WELLSVILLE, Kan. -- The day after Jim Butler learned his son had died in Iraq in 2003, a U.S. Army casualty officer showed up at the family's small ranch to explain what happened.
Your son was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the city of As Samawah, the officer said. But he had no other details to offer, nothing about how the fighting came about or what Sgt. Jacob Butler was doing when he was killed. For the grieving father, it wasn't enough. The question of how Jake died gripped him in the days after, in part because he'd made an unusual promise before his son left: If you are killed, I will go and stand where you fell.
So Butler made a simple request to the Army for Jake's casualty report. Rules require one when soldiers are killed in a war zone. Unit commanders are supposed to create and maintain them, along with numerous other field records.
"They said, 'We'll have to see,'" Butler recalled, "because one should have been made."
Nine years later, Butler is still waiting for a report he may never get. As an investigation by ProPublica and The Seattle Times revealed, the Army has lost or failed to keep that document and many other field records from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 1st Armored Division Jacob Butler's unit is among those lacking many of its records. Documents and interviews show that dozens of units are in similar shape, and that U.S. Central Command in Iraq also lost records related to joint-service operations in the theater.
History is cheated when front-line records are lost. And without them, veterans can face delays securing benefits for combat-related disabilities.
But missing records can have another after effect, creating uncertainty and confusion as survivors struggle with the heartbreak of loss.
Family members of soldiers who die in war are entitled to casualty reports if they request them. That fact did not help Jim Butler. He pressed the Army repeatedly in the months after Jake's death for his casualty report, but got a series of conflicting and perplexing responses instead.
"I felt hurt because I felt they should be truthful," Butler said of the Army. "Is that too much to ask?
"If it turned out Jake was killed by friendly fire, it would hurt, but I could handle it," he said. "If he died by suicide, it would hurt, but I could handle it."
The truth turned out to be far different, but Butler had to dig out the story himself. And he never saw the most complete official account of Jake's death until a reporter provided it.
