The Brave, Living and Dead

In this bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln's birth, I recently was re-reading part of Doris Kearns Goodwin's epic history, Team of Rivals.
Once again it was stunning to see the number of casualties during the
Civil War, the dead and wounded in four years of fighting exponentially
outnumbering the American men and women killed and wounded in Iraq and
Afghanistan over six and a half years of combat.

On both sides of the Civil War, 618,000 were killed, although some estimate as many as 700,000.

In just the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1863 - more
than 51,000 dead and wounded. Chickamauga, Georgia, 2 days, September
1863, nearly 35,000. Chancellorsville, Virginia, four days, May 1863,
more than 30,000. And on and on.

"The war took young, healthy men and rapidly, often instantly,
destroyed them with disease or injury," Drew Gilpin Faust notes in her
2008 book The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.
"... Loss became commonplace; death was no longer encountered
individually; death's threat, its proximity and its actuality became
the most widely shared of the war's experiences."

Up until that time, Faust writes, the US Army had neither regular
burial details nor grave-registration units. Such duties "seemed always
to be an act of improvisation." Often the townspeople in or near a
battleground wound up with the task. Many of the enlisted went
unidentified, their bodies hastily placed in mass graves for fear of
disease.

Contrast that with the painstaking care given each of the dead today
when they arrive from Iraq or Afghanistan at the Carson Center for
Mortuary Affairs, the joint military facility headquartered at the
Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Bodies and personal effects are
thoroughly washed and cleansed, dress uniforms are individually
tailored for the corpse, even the individual's wristwatch is carefully
set to the time at the location where they fell. When each body is
ready to leave Dover, all the service personnel at the mortuary stop
what they're doing and form a line along the driveway, giving a slow,
ceremonial salute as the hearse passes by.

I learned this a few weeks ago, when I happened on the telecast of the HBO made-for-TV movie, Taking Chance,
the true story of Marine Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl -- played in
the film by Kevin Bacon -- who in 2004 escorted the body of Lance
Corporal Chance Phelps, killed in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, to its final
resting place in Dubois, Wyoming.

I knew about the film but hadn't made plans to watch it. Nonetheless,
coming upon it by accident I was totally pulled in by the eloquent
simplicity of the script, its attention to detail and lack of
melodrama, the poignancy of Strobl and Phelps' stories and the people
"they" meet as Lt. Col. Strobl accompanies the body on its final,
cross-country journey. (You can continue to see the film through this
month, at various times, well worth the fewer than 90 minutes it takes
to view. Check the schedule at HBO.com.)

Coincidentally, the film's release came at the same time as the
Pentagon's announcement that it was lifting the ban on photographs and
videos of bodies arriving at Dover, a proscription that had been in
place since the first Gulf War in 1991. A similar renewed openness is
taking place as the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs
become more candid about suicide and PTSD, post traumatic stress
disorder.

Alarmed by the increasing rate of suicide, the Army has begun releasing
monthly numbers, in addition to the annual reports produced in the
past. 2008 was a record high -- 128 confirmed suicides and 15 under
investigation. The rate has been increasing steadily since 2004.

Last month, there were 18 suspected suicides, up from 11 the previous
year. In January there were 24, up from five in January 2008. According
to the Associated Press, "Usually the vast majority of suspected
suicides are eventually confirmed, and if that holds true it would mean
that self-inflicted deaths surpassed the 16 combat deaths [in January]
reported in all branches of the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and
other nations considered part of the global war on terror."

The Army's suicide rate is now exceeding the US civilian rate, for the
first time since the military began keeping records in 1980.

"Why do the numbers keep going up?" Army Secretary Peter Geren asked
rhetorically at a press conference last month. "We cannot tell you."

Experts say PTSD is a big reason -- the RAND Center for Military Health
Policy Research estimates that 19 percent of all the troops who have
served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from it, some 300,000 men and
women.

Others point to the high rate of redeployment. According to a new report in the Boston Phoenix
newspaper, "With the number of personnel that have served in the two
theaters reaching nearly 1.8 million, critics estimate that one-third
have served multiple deployments." With that redeployment comes
incredible stress and anxiety, not only on the battlefield but back
home, where marriages and other relationships collapse from the strain.

This past fall, the Army announced a $50 million, five year joint study
of suicide with the National Institute of Mental Health. And this week,
the service will be wrapping up a month-long training program to help
soldiers recognize suicidal behaviors in their comrades.

But much more needs to be done. "We keep getting studies," Rep. John
Murtha, chair of the House defense appropriations committee said at a
March 3rd hearing. "That's the problem with the Defense Department --
they study it to death."

What's more, according to an Army Medical Department's 2008 report, 33
percent of the troops in Afghanistan and 21.8 percent in Iraq say when
it comes to mental health, their leaders discourage them from seeking
help.

That has to stop. We must treat the living as respectfully as we do the dead.