BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Years now. Almost 11 years into the war in Afghanistan, and with Iraq mostly behind us, we’re still unable to get our hands and our minds around the military suicide rate.
July marked the highest number of suicides among …
BattlelandVeterans
I have to admit that when I saw the news about the Aurora, Colo., shootings Friday morning, my first reaction wasn’t appropriate. My very first instincts should have been shock and sympathy towards the victims and their …
BattlelandSuicide
I want to make a couple quick comments on the furor over Major General Dana Pittard’s blog post that soldiers who kill themselves are being selfish, and his exhortation that those thinking of suicide should just buck up and face their problems like an adult. “Suicide is an absolutely selfish act,” he wrote to his official blog …
BattlelandMilitary History
My Battleland colleague Nate Rawlings has done excellent work at keeping us all aware of trends in official Army reading lists. Like many veterans, I suppose, I have a shelf of books I own solely because some previous commander put it on his mandatory reading list. These lists are handed down as part of the boilerplate leadership …
BattlelandVeterans
I wrote a few weeks ago about Marine Major Jeff Hackett, who killed himself in the aftermath of a collapse following his distinguished 26-year career. Major Hackett’s widow, Danielle was initially denied payment of Jeff’s $400,000 life insurance policy because when times got tough economically for Jeff, he missed a few payments. …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
This week, the American Psychiatric Association is meeting in Philadelphia. Among the presentations in the “military track”—a spate of meetings directed towards practitioners focused on military or war related psychology and psychiatry—the top listed presentation is titled “Combat Related PTSD: Injury or Disorder?” Based on …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
For the past few days, Washington’s, America’s, probably much of the world’s airways have been filled with commentary about the horrific killings in Afghanistan allegedly committed by an American soldier. Radio, TV and the blogosphere have been inundated with reports, predictions, and speculation—why he did it, what it means for …
BattlelandArmy
In the spring of 1944, the focus of the American army in Europe was the fighting in Italy. Van Barfoot was a sergeant in the 157th Infantry, part of the 45th Division. The 25 men in his platoon, like the other 150,000 Americans on the beachhead, had been bombed and shelled regularly by German aircraft and artillery since they arrived …
BattlelandVeterans
If you were in Iraq in 2008, just after the wave of troops for the troop surge had crested with 160,000 or so American troops in country, you might have had a pretty good reason to think you were involved in a war. …
BattlelandVeterans
Jeff Hackett died in the war. He was a career Marine, a mustang who rose through the enlisted ranks to become a gunnery sergeant, then through the officer ranks to become a major. In Iraq, Jeff led a highly specialized unit of …
BattlelandMilitary
Apparently, three members of the Icelandic Parliament have nominated Army PFC Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. On February 1, 2012, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Margrét Tryggvadóttir, and Þór Saari, all members of the Icelandic Parliament, sent their nominating letter to the Nobel nominating committee.
This is, of course, …
BattlelandVeterans
I wrote recently about the press reporting on veteran-committed crimes as a trend of veteran/psychopaths returned from the war. CNN and the Christian Science Monitor were guilty last week. Now it’s USA Today’s turn. According to the bonehead editor who came up with this sensationalist headline, returned veterans are ticking …
BattlelandVeterans
