Posted on 08/23/2011 5:05:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Santa Clara native was apparently prone to sleeping on guard duty; fellow Marines took to disciplining him.
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Harry Lew took his own life in his foxhole in Afghanistan after he was kicked and punched by fellow Marines, military officials tell NBC Bay Area news.
An investigation into the 21-year-old's April death says Lew "leaned over his M249 squad automatic weapon as it pointed to the sky, placed the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger."
Lew wrote on his arm: "may hate me now, but in the long run this was the right choice I'm sorry my mom deserves the truth."
The suicide came moments after fellow Marines attacked Lew for repeatedly falling asleep on guard duty. An investigation shows Lew, from Santa Clara, was caught asleep at least four separate times in areas where "enemy attack was considered imminent." Military records show Lew, who was on his first tour in Afghanistan, was first counseled then disciplined by a sergeant for sleeping while on post.
At some point, Lew was forced to walk his rounds while carrying a single sandbag, symbolic of the weight of his responsibility to his fellow marines.
On April 3, Lew could not be raised by radio while standing post. A check of his foxhole found him asleep once again.
The unnamed sergeant then announced over the radio that "peers should correct peers," according to military documents. That led to what appears to be a sad series of events.
Fellow lance corporals [whose names have been redacted in the report] ordered Lew to dig a new foxhole as a punishment, then informed Lew he could go to sleep once the task was finished. Those corporals, however, did not inform the sergeant they had given Lew permission to sleep.
At 1:00 a.m., that sergeant, whose name has also been redacted from the report, "angrily confronted [Lew] about why he had again fallen asleep." Other Marines then demanded Lew to perform various physical tasks as punishment and would "stomp down" on Lew's back and legs if he failed to do an exercise properly.
"Towards the end of the physical training", the report says a "sandbag broke open at which point lance corporal [redacted] picked it up and poured the contents on Lew's chest and face as he lay with his back to the ground."
Convinced Lew was responding to his punishment with sarcasm and disrespect, fellow lance corporals then "kicked dirt on Lew, kicked him in the back of the helmet, punched him in the back of his helmet with a force that cut [his attacker's] knuckle."
At some point, a fellow Marine stepped in to stop the attack, saying he didn't "want it on his conscience if Lew killed himself" -- which is exactly what Lew did.
A sergeant is blamed in the report for giving responsibility for Lew's discipline to fellow marines.
"Further, he failed to intervene while those peers undertook inappropriate corrective actions." That sergeant faces court martial when the unit returns from Afghanistan, as does an unnamed lance corporal.
The military says unequivocally that Lew took his own life, though it the report does indicated more than one round was shot from Lew's SAW.
"This command mourns the death of Lance Corporal Lew" reads the final report. "His family and friends have my deepest sympathies" says his commanding officer.
Lew is a 2008 graduate of Santa Clara High School and was assigned to the 2nd battalion, 3rd marine regiment, 3rd Marine division.
His obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle says Lew wrote "Brand new Marine, feels good" on his Myspace page shortly after he joined the military.
“beating someone like Michael Vick’s dog will only work on someone with a dog-level intellect. “
Didn’t happen. The ‘beating’ he got was well under what many Marines do in basic.
“OMG, they smacked his HELMET! What Big Meanies!”
And yes, getting slugged or hit with the end of a rifle DID cure folks regularly. That isn’t movie experience, but my family’s 3 tours in the Marines in Iraq & son’s 2 tours (Iraq and Afghanistan). I turned a blind eye to enlisted correcting enlisted while in the USAF, and it also turned out well. Very well.
earlier you said it “always” worked, but I guess that perfect record is shot.
unless the intent was something different. then perhaps this story can be considered a “success” also.
just curious, if one of your targets had then gone and shot himself, what level of culpability would you have had? would you have felt guilty? changed your methods? would the high-fiving at least have been more subdued?
as has been pointed out this entire thread, real leaders don’t encourage this kind of behavior, real leaders stop it.
But when this is pointed out, they simply refuse to look at it, they just go back to their original claim that the kid deserved it. I think some of them think that being in the military makes them an expert on anything to do with the military. But it doesn't make them mental health experts. (In fact, a few of them... well, never mind.)
I can sum up this whole thread.
Non macho poser: Don’t we have some better system to deal with this? Why was this guy still in a combat zone?
Macho posers: YOU WANT SOLDIERS TO DIE!!! YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING STUPID CIVILIAN!
by the fourth time it should be obvious that something might be wrong, and technically the sergeant was deliberately endangering his troops by putting this Marine back on post. it really doesn’t matter whether he was a malingerer, or a coward, or sick somehow.
taking care of your troops is basic NCO duty. it’s taught at all NCO schools. perhaps this sergeant had been promoted in the field, and not had any formal training on NCO duties and responsibilities. too late for that now, regardless.
A_perfect_lady is right on. It wasn't the abuse itself that pushed him over. His persistent failure to stay awake -- and the persistence is the clue, the answer to how they were to know -- coupled with his desire to be a Marine and the almost inevitable frustration and self-hatred that arose from all this, while that all may not have been the "root cause" it was what made the abuse enough to push him over the edge.
Over night = as I thought about this, I realized that all my adult life, even after I left the "official" ministry, I have been in the people business and have been alert to what problems people have, what makes them tick, and so forth.
And one thing I've learned is that "lazy" is a word that is way over-used. I would venture the hunch that in the vast majority of cases where somebody presents as "lazy," there is a physical, neurological, and/or emotional problem.
I am not minimizing the important of staying awake when one is on watch. Good heavens! It's ludicrous to mention this in this context, but when one of the reserve deputies abandoned his post at what was a very non-threatening event, I was the most insistent that he be disciplined or discharged. If things break bad, I need to know my folks are where they're supposed to be and ready to rock. If some idiot leaves his post because in his judgment nothing much is going on, that's simply intolerable.
So, IMHO, in the case of this guy, after the second, and CERTAINLY after the third time he slept on watch something serious, like discharge, needed to happen. The only question in my mind is whether he is given a medical discharge or spends serious brig time before his discharge.
Finally, and a tad repetitiously, I ask you to think what it felt like to be him. He volunteered to be a Marine. He obviously couldn't cut it. He clearly doesn't think he has a medical problem. It is highly likely that he himself thinks he is a contemptible person and he is trying his hardest NOT to fall asleep, and failing repeatedly.
I am reminded of a lady almost 40 years ago who came to a prayer service which I was attending. She suddenly broke out in tearful thanks for being diagnosed as dyslexic.
Ever since she started school she has tested for above average intelligence and delivered below average performance. She was berated for being lazy and stupid. By the time she finished high school she thought she was a worthless person. SHE didn't know she had dyslexia, she just knew she seemed unable to do what other people did and she was upbraided and punished for a failure she could not avoid. SHE thought it was her fault, a moral fault, a defect of character which she could not fix no matter how hard she tried. By the time she got her neuro diagnosis, she also needed psychiatric help, ALL because those who were supposed to help her "be all that she could be" blamed her character for their inability to do so.
And I refer again to the seizing child -- by the way, she did NOT die. There was a bona fide miracle! -- whose parents didn't ask themselves if there could be a cause for her uncharacteristic misbehavior other than a "spankable" offense.
MAybe I am expecting too much of people who do stuff nobody's ever asked me to do. To me, this kind of failure is ALWAYS a red-flag and my learned response is to ask FIRST "What's up here?" before I say the persson is a bad person. Maybe spending a lot of time in injun country might give me another attitude.
“Buncha darn Jack Nicholson wanabes.”
Pretty ignorant comment to those who actually served in an Infantry or Combat Arms unit. Especially to those who served in combat.
Col Vit’s real life example has everything to do with it. Three Marine snipers were killed in their sleep. It illustrates the extreme reality of the situation.
You don’t find that in the fantasyland of the range, Talon.
You got research for that?
Well evidently it didn't cure this guy. And evidently the response was, "Well, we didn't hit hard enough." And evidently, in response to the obvious failure of this approach, some prefer it to something that would work.
I have a doctor who got mad at me because I had a bad reaction to a drug he prescribed. He's not my doctor any more.
Here we have a failure of the usually successful 'cure' failing and the conclusion is that the 'patient' was a bad guy.
I think that's not reasonable.
Well, we have disagreements on a number of the issues.
I do believe we have some common agreement in the area of extricating the guy from the area on the 2nd offense. The evaluations needed to take place asap once he was out of the combat zone where he could do no harm to his fellow Marines and his self.
As far as blame...a cloudy issue to me until I see the precise procedure in the field for getting a problem like this extricated quickly. Obviously, if there was a procedure available, imo, this is the guy that has the most fault in letting this situation degrade.
It’s a tragedy as are the multitude of suicides that are happening stateside to active duty personnel as well as veterans of these recent wars, where guys and taking 3 tours inside of 4 years.
“If the kid had been able to help himself, I think he would have. Because generally, being smacked around, punished, harrassed, etc, puts an end to mere laziness.”
There is another possibility to consider.
“Military records show Lew, who was on his first tour in Afghanistan, was first counseled then disciplined by a sergeant for sleeping while on post.”
Without seeing the actual report, one cannot be certain - but it looks like the initial incidents were handled, not with a fellow enlisted kicking him, but with counseling and later some sort of authorized discipline. Maybe he didn’t respond because it didn’t mean much to him.
In one case where I ignored enlisted-enlisted discipline, the 19 year old airman had been counseled, given a letter of reprimand, and additional duties due to his laziness. Yes, he just didn’t want to work & pull his load. This was in peacetime.
He was transferred to my TACP for a month long field exercise. My NCOs and Airmen got the same response - sullen attitude, laziness, not pulling the load. On one cold night, another airman tossed the guy’s sleeping bag out along with his gear and told him he wasn’t going to sleep in a tent until he EARNED it. The slacker came to one of my NCOs (and I) and complained. I acted like he wasn’t there. The NCO did likewise - we just pretended no one was in front of us complaining.
The kid spent the next couple of nights sleeping in the cold, then promised he would reform - and the other airmen allowed him back with the understanding that if he didn’t pull his weight, worse would happen. For the next few days the kid worked hard, and the NCOs made certain the other airmen treated the kid right since he was actually getting the job done.
About a week later, I was bouncing along in a Humvee with him and he volunteered the idea - which he seemed to be struggling to understand - that it felt good to be part of a team. I agreed & we talked (Captain to airman) about teamwork, friendship, and work. From there on, the kid turned into a man. A few months after we returned (& he went back to his original TACP), the other TACP’s senior NCO asked me what happened. He said he couldn’t believe the turn-around. I told him to ask my NCOs for the full story...
Some folks don’t get motivated by the normal routes of discipline. And just because he joined the Marines doesn’t mean he was gung-ho and had a good attitude. My daughter joined the Marines at 17, yet she screwed her tour up and left hating the Marines - although she married one, and would now admit that many of her problems were caused by her attitude, not the Marine Corps.
One thing we don’t know from this is how many days passed between first infraction and the final night. It could have been a month, or it could have been 2-3 days. If I was on the court-martial, that is one of the things I’d like to know. If this was a 3 month problem, then senior NCOs and officers SHOULD have been involved. If it was a few days, then I wouldn’t expect it to rise very high.
If, as an officer, I had a guy who was found sleeping on guard duty and who was carrying around some sandbags as punishment, I wouldn’t think much of it. One of my pet peeves in the military was when people would create a paper trail that would follow a guy for years without looking at other ways first.
Here is something else we know from the article:
“Convinced Lew was responding to his punishment with sarcasm and disrespect, fellow lance corporals then “kicked dirt on Lew, kicked him in the back of the helmet, punched him in the back of his helmet with a force that cut [his attacker’s] knuckle.”
The guy, according to the witnesses, was NOT apologetic or disgusted with himself after having been found sleeping on guard duty twice in one night - and that was when his fellow Marines escalated. But even then, kicking or hitting someone on the back of the helmet isn’t exactly severe physical abuse. It is a helmet, for goodness sakes!
“Lew was responding to his punishment with sarcasm and disrespect” - after sleeping twice on guard duty (although it sounds like he was set up for the second episode - but then, what Marine would think you were allowed to sleep while still on guard duty?) My daughter, who was NOT a sterling Marine, was appalled that anyone would believe it was OK for a Marine to sleep while on guard duty.
And then what happened? They let him go. “At some point, a fellow Marine stepped in to stop the attack, saying he didn’t “want it on his conscience if Lew killed himself”...”
No, that doesn’t mean the other Marine believed Lew was going to kill himself. If he had, Lew would not have been left with a SAW...you don’t turn you back and walk away from someone with a SAW if you think he is about to lose it!
The sequence of events doesn’t indicate a Marine who is shaken by his guilt. Nor was he repeatedly abused.
We don’t know why he killed himself. All we have by way of a suicide note is: “may hate me now, but in the long run this was the right choice I’m sorry my mom deserves the truth.”
Oh golly. He was feeling rejected. Ya think?! Falling asleep on guard duty is NOT the way to make friends in a combat area! And what does “I’m sorry my mom deserves the truth” mean? Was he trying to get back at the others?
In combat, sometimes folks are expect to just man up and take it. You just don’t have the option of sending folks to the rear for medical evaluations just because they are a discipline problem. There is nothing to indicate this guy was narcoleptic - narcos tend to fall asleep at all hours of the day.
“Periods of extreme drowsiness every 3 to 4 hours during the day. You may feel a strong urge to sleep, often followed by a short nap (sleep attack). “
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001805/
Physical causes would happen at random times, not just while on guard duty in the middle of the night. Wanting to fall asleep in the middle of the night is normal. Wanting to fall asleep on guard duty is normal. There wouldn’t be a separate article in the UCMJ (113 - ““Any sentinel or look-out who is found drunk or sleeping upon his post, or leaves it before he is regularly relieved, shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct...”) if it wasn’t a common impulse. And the penalty wouldn’t include death if it was easily dealt with by sending folks to the rear.
People commit suicide for all kinds of reasons.
Yes, something was wrong with him.
“a ‘straw man’. That is the technical term for a fake argument someone is using to take the place of their opponent. “
lol, you may want to google that. A strawman is illustrated in a few of your posts. After you google, see if you can fine them.
“a ‘straw man’. That is the technical term for a fake argument someone is using to take the place of their opponent. “
lol, you may want to google that. A strawman is illustrated in a few of your posts. After you google, see if you can find them.
So if all four were killed, how do you know it was because one of them fell asleep?
THE DEPLOYMENT OR BEING UNDERWAY IS THE MISSION. It doesn't matter if it's carrier quals off VACAPES or a deployment to the PG. Get a clue. A ship or sub is a weapon manned by sailors and Marines and sometimes soldiers the same as a track or missile battery is manned by soldiers the same as a patrol is manned by soldiers or Marines. In peace time we were challanged quite a few times.
There always has been a military way to get someone unfit for combat out of a unit. It is called the Chain Of Command C.O. has such discretion to at least remove man from unit or command until a final determination can be made medically or under the UCMJ. If you served you know that much so stop playing games.
The same thing on a ship if a person is deemed unfit for duty due too medical, mental, or by bad conduct which can harm others. The C.O. or the Medical Officer with C.O. approval can get the person off the ship in a few hours time or immediately in a Brig which ever is needed. There are or rather were certain conditions where the C.O. would get a man off the ship ASAP for the soon to be discharged sailors own safety. The USMC is part of The Department of the Navy.
BTW I know about hazing. I'm a Navy Snipe and Snipes when I was in had their own traditional hazing everyone took in Engineering. First time was traditional initiation. Second time was retribution if needed but it was by no means a fatal assault by an out of control members of the armed forces. Today that same hazing I took which is not much worse than the Shellback Hazing can get you a NJP or Court Martial.
“it was by no means a fatal assault by an out of control members of the armed forces”
Neither was this. They made him do physical labor, and - gasp! - hit his helmet. Big whoop!
“The C.O. or the Medical Officer with C.O. approval can get the person off the ship in a few hours time or immediately in a Brig which ever is needed.”
Not true at a fire base. It was difficult enough to supply some of them with water and ammo. Regular bus service wasn’t an option.
I’ve never heard of a guy being sent to the rear for sleeping on guard duty. I only did 6 months at a large FOB, but no one in my family has heard of it either.
And what is unfit for combat? Falling asleep at night? What do you do when you send out a patrol for a day, and they end up staying out for a week or more - which happened often enough that everyone who went on patrol took as much water and ammo as they could? Why do you think my 190 lb son-in-law lost 45 & 55 lbs on his two tours in Iraq?
The reason most folks fall asleep on post is exhaustion. Not brain tumors, not narcolepsy, just severe Dragon Ass.
Suicide is not caused by punishing people for failure to do their duty. Folks debate how much is genetic, how much is depression, etc - but you cannot send all your depressed, unhappy guys back to the rear or you wouldn’t have anyone left!
And no, service on a boat or in an aviation unit is not in any way comparable to what the infantry go through. Service at Bagram is in no way comparable to the smaller FOBs, and service on a FOB is not comparable to fire bases. And no service on a base is comparable to going on patrol. I was Air Force all the way, but I spent enough time around infantry and have enough infantry in the family to know the difference.
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