Posted on 05/28/2009 8:10:22 AM PDT by xzins
FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky -- At Fort Campbell, an installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee line, at least 11 Soldiers have committed suicide this year - the most at any Army base. Commanders have set aside routine duties for three days to find and help Soldiers at risk of killing themselves as they struggle with the stress of war.
From January to March, the base averaged one suicide per week, Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend said Wednesday,....
"But last week we had two. Two in a week," Townsend said. "This is not a place where Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division want to be. "We don't want to lead the Army in this statistic." ...
Frequent deployments by the division since 2001 have contributed to the stress Soldiers feel at Fort Campbell, said Col. Ken Brown, the head of chaplains for the base.
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
Ft Campbell has the 101st Airborne(Air Assault) Division, the 160th Spec Ops Aviation Regiment, and the 5th Special Forces Group.
I’d be interested in the number of those suicides correlated to relationships falling apart in the high optempo environment. Despite that, why would it affect Ft Campbell more than any other highly deployed installation?
Bush’s fault. Uh, wait...
Our enemy is killing themselves too, as a weapon.
good question.
Could be the local battalion commanders are having the troops constantly in the field when they are home.
We had one at Campbell who had us in Campbell’s back 40 6 months out of the year whether we needed it or not.
Thanks for the info. My son arrived there on Monday. He’s being assigned to the 3rd Brigade with Airborne. We have talked a lot this week. He said he is still “in processing” and they’ve gone through a lot of briefings on suicides.
On one hand I’m worried, but on the other, he’s the type of kid who goes above and beyond to help others so I think he’ll be a good friend to someone and especially someone in desperate need of friendship.
I once heard a saying “Mother’s go where angels fear to tread”.... I think that saying would apply very well to our soldiers too.
good luck to him...he’s going to be a Rakkasan?
When the country you have repeatedly risked your life to defend, becomes one that could elect an Obama and all that entails — can be a VERY significant demoralizing issue.
Seeing that black racist Communist, incompetent bullshit artist and terrorist sympathizer - together with his “fellow travelers”, thugs, racists and anti-constitutionalists in power - would cause ANY warrior to fall into deep depression..
This depression would be amplified - if the warrior has lost the closest friends a human can form - ones they have faced death with.
The loss in defense of the nabobs, assholes and corrupt sonsuvbitches in office now as a result of a dumbed down and treacherous American electorate - would be horribly compounded and seen as unacceptable.
Maybe these young warriors are depressed just watching the USA going down the tubes and noone is fighting the commies that are responsible.
this is the 2nd (at least) ‘insanity’ post from a military.com article. more to follow
Without knowing which units the suicide victims come from it’s a little difficult to know for sure. One clue is that Ft. Campbell is home to the 5th Special Forces Group (Green Berets). They are oriented toward Southwest Asia & the Middle East. The 5th SFG deployment schedule must be insane because their linguistic skills (among others) are in so much demand.
Other Special Forces Groups can & do help, but if they haven’t studied the culture & language of the area they can’t be as effective.
Just throwing that out there for others to comment.
The Left has pulled the rug out from under our soldiers feet. There is great sacrifice for a soldier to serve in a war and when your President is running around appologizing to everyone for the war, that has got to be a real mental mess for a soldier! Why would you fight, sacrifice, kill for a war your country’s leader says was wrong! Also the radicals going after Bush for war crimes...that really has to make a soldier feel wobbly inside.
They thought they were fighting to protect the country from terrorism. Now Obama says terrorism is not a problem and was never a problem and liberals say their leaders committed war crimes in the effort to defeat the enemy.
Yes, he is. We’re so proud of him.
This was totally predicable when the military started pushing more of it’s men into psychiatric hands via the delayed stress scam. More drugs = more suicides. Always.
Perhaps it is as simple as the rapid speed a soldier can be in a combat zone one day, and home the next.
Rapid transition is a good idea. So is psycho-drug treatment.
The question for me, though, is: “Why Ft Campbell, but not Ft Bragg?” They’re similar in lots of ways.
The public schools teach the students to be victims rather than teaching them personal strength. They teach men to be women and women to be men. Nature doesn't work that way.
I believe suicide among the youth today could easily be traced to government indoctrination. Strength has become a weakness and weakness has become strength.
These kids grow up to be weakened adults. I think the military is kinder then it's ever been because of political correctness, but these poor people were unable to deal with real world challenges. There wasn't a teacher around to coddle them.
“When the country you have repeatedly risked your life to defend, becomes one that could elect an Obama and all that entails — can be a VERY significant demoralizing issue.”
I am afraid you’re right on the button. These brave men and women have been told that they are “War criminals by proxy” from 2003 on. How can any of them feel like their new Commander-in-chief supports them? Who could blame those who feel remorse, guilt, hopelessness? They are heroes who fight a righteous battle. They deserve better.
Comparing the two units may provide an answer.
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