Veteran suicide a national tragedy

I have had the same dream for the last few months. More like a recurring nightmare, really.

In it, I walk up to various people. I’m dressed in my usual OD green Army field jacket, Iraq veteran’s hat, an old T-shirt and jeans with my desert combat boots.

First, I walk up to a man fiddling with an iPod. I grab him by the shoulders and spin him around to face me.

“What is happening to my kind? Why are they killing themselves off?” I ask.

He just blinks. “Who are you talking about?” he asks dully.

“The war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s who,” I say loudly, fairly shaking the poor man with each word.

He stares back at me like I am from Mars.

“Oh, that,” he said. “Who cares about that anymore?”

He turns his back and resumes texting.

Next, I walk up to a woman with a shopping cart full of food and three kids in tow. She’s blathering away on her cellphone while her children run amuck. As she walks from the grocery store to her huge SUV in the parking lot, I ask her the same questions.

She doesn’t even blink as she waves me away saying, “What war?”

I overhear a part of her cellphone conversation: “Oh, nothing. Just some bum rambling on about something.”

The dream takes many shapes with a variety of players. The responses to my questions all share the same ambivalence. I’m always dressed the same, but my actions seem to get more and more desperate.

It all came to a head when I paid respects to the fallen from the Vietnam war. The Moving Wall was in town this week. I was there Saturday, the day after the opening ceremonies. I wanted a more personal and private moment to honor them. It was a dull, grey day. Few people were there. A woman at a microphone read the names of the fallen. It was a sobering atmosphere, and the whole time I was there, the images of that dream kept creeping in to my troubled mind.

I talked to a fellow Iraq war veteran there, a tall man with a full beard. We swapped some stories. Then the talk turned to the very thing that was bugging me. Veteran suicides. I left there with a single word, a question, resounding in my head.

Why?

Later that night the dream came again, this time with an ending that shook me to the core. I was at the wall again. I was sitting on the bleachers after confronting two more uncaring people with the same results.

A few feet from me sat another veteran. He was wearing the old desert DCU uniform, just like I once wore in the war.

He walked up and whispered in my ear, “They don’t care about us brother, they never did.”

He put a still smoking sidearm on the bench. I watched him walk away with blood flowing from beneath his cap until he faded from sight.

I startled awake, sweating, with my heart pounding like a jackhammer.

Days later, I began to dig. I had to dig deep, too. Somehow stories like these tend to get buried under the heading of media apathy. It seems to me that a lot of people just don’t care whether veterans of the twin wars live or die.

The statistics are sobering. Headlines using words like “epidemic” and “tragic” are understatements. About one veteran kills themselves each day. So many soldiers have taken their own lives that these deaths now surpass the 6,460 killed in action from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another set of figures straight from the Pentagon is even more disturbing. In the first 155 days of 2012, 154 active-duty U.S. soldiers killed themselves. It makes me sick to my stomach.

Why?

There are some factors, including serving five or more deployments, post-traumatic stress disorder, battle scars, limb loss and other injuries. Many don’t report their PTSD symptoms due to a major stigma problem. Drugs, alcohol, divorce and domestic problems are others, as is a poor economy with little hope of a job after time was served.

The Veterans Affairs medical system is overwhelmed, out of touch, outdated, understaffed and under trained. We warned them, but in the end the VA blew us off and ignored the very people they were supposed to serve. It has cost us dearly because the numbers of suicides are growing. That no one seems to know why so many veterans are taking their lives is the most disturbing aspect of this whole mess.

Then there are the families who have experienced such huge losses. Their sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, husbands and wives have gone to war, and many who returned have taken their own lives. Now they must deal with this heartbreaking loss. It can shatter families in ways I cannot describe.

War veterans go through fundamental changes affecting both the veteran and his or her family.

The Dan Grota who went to Iraq in 2004 was not the Dan who came back in 2005. It’s still something I deal with daily. It can also cause a veteran to lose hope, and that can push one to end his or her life.

Veteran suicide is not new. What is new is the increasing number of veterans choosing suicide over life.

Why?

This is something that should make front-page headlines and be shouted from the rooftops. We must push until the problem is solved, until hope is restored, until veterans choose to fight to live.

I urge all fellow veterans to choose to live, one day at a time. I am including the Veteran’s Suicide Prevention Hotline number, (800) 273-8255. Call it. Use the help found there. Live.

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.