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Suicides in iraq { February 19 2004 }

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   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52735-2004Feb18.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52735-2004Feb18.html

Suicides in Iraq, Questions at Home
Pentagon Tight-Lipped as Self-Inflicted Deaths Mount in Military

By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 19, 2004; Page A01

LUFKIN, Tex. -- Two-year-old Jada Suell tumbled out of the car and ran ahead of everyone -- her grandmother, her mother, her cousins and her 4-year-old sister, Jakayla -- toward the grave of Joseph Dewayne Suell.

"Dada," said the little girl. In the Sunday afternoon quiet of Cedar Grove cemetery, her toddler voice reverberated like a shout.

"Yes, we're going to Daddy's grave," her grandmother Rena Mathis said reassuringly.

The silver grave cover bore colorful wreaths and American flags -- a nod to Suell's three years of military service. He was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 as an Army petroleum supply specialist out of Fort Sill, Okla. Less than two months later, he was dead.

A report provided to the family at their request says that the 24-year-old died of a drug overdose on Father's Day, one of 22 suicides reported among troops in Iraq last year.

According to William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, who discussed the suicides in a briefing last month, that represents a rate of more than 13.5 per 100,000 troops, about 20 percent higher than the recent Army average of 10.5 to 11. The Pentagon plans to release the findings of a team sent to Iraq last fall to investigate the mental health of the troops, including suicides.

The number Winkenwerder cited does not include cases under investigation, so the actual number may be higher. It also excludes the suicides by soldiers who have returned to the United States. For instance, two soldiers undergoing mental health treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington reportedly committed suicide there, in July 2003 and last month. In its weekly report on the treatment of returning battlefield soldiers, the hospital never mentioned the deaths. An official at Walter Reed said the deaths are "suspected" suicides and are being investigated by the Army's criminal division.

Stephen L. Robinson, who visits the hospital regularly and is executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a nonprofit advocacy group for veterans and soldiers, said there was no public record of the deaths. "They just covered it up," he said.

The military's emphasis on honor, valor and courage makes suicide perhaps one of its last taboos. The Pentagon does not publicly identify a soldier's death as a suicide but may classify it as a "non-hostile gunshot wound," or death from "non-hostile injuries," which can also include accidents such as negligent discharge of a weapon. In comparison, the Pentagon will release a description of the cause of death -- enemy fire, a land mine, a car crash -- for a soldier killed in action or as a result of an accident.

The Washington Post contacted more than a dozen families of soldiers whose causes of death were listed as non-combat related. Some said that although the military had not provided further details, information from soldiers in the field indicated that the deaths were from "friendly fire" or an accidental weapons discharge. For others awaiting the results of an investigation, the possibility of suicide was too painful to bear.

"I am not ready to hear that," said the mother of one soldier who died from a gunshot wound to the head -- a "non-combat weapons discharge," according to the Pentagon.

In Texas, the Suell family says the military has it wrong. Suellboy, as he was known to those closest to him, was strong-minded and a God-fearing Christian. The son of a minister, he preached to others that suicide was a sin. He drew hearts on the letters he sent to his wife and said he could not wait to come home to see his daughters.

Rebecca Suell, 23, said she will never believe that her husband killed himself. She and her mother-in-law, Mathis, 47, are demanding answers, and they say the military has been silent and unsupportive.

"We call them, we have questions, we want to know, and they don't have anything to tell us," Rebecca Suell said, standing at the edge of her husband's grave. "They don't have nothing to say, and that's not right."

'A Different Kind of War'


The 130,000 troops stationed in Iraq are fighting the first prolonged ground war since Vietnam. What the two conflicts have in common is a public debate over the war itself, which can cause soldiers to question themselves, said Ronald W. Maris, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of South Carolina.

"World War I and World War II seemed a little more righteous in that there was an initial aggression by an enemy that we didn't start," he said. "That would not apply to Vietnam and not to Iraq."

The rate of military suicides is traditionally lower than that in the general population when looking at comparable age groups. And it usually decreases during wartime. A spike in the number in July prompted the military to send a mental health team to Iraq to investigate.

"Once the fighting is over, that's when people have time on their hands in an austere environment and 24-hour access to guns," Pentagon spokeswoman Martha Rudd said. "And they have the time to brood on their problems."

The postwar troops stationed in Iraq have to contend with roadside bombs, mortars launched into their base camps and the plaintive cries of women and children that are sometimes a ruse for an ambush. Although units are starting to be rotated and replaced, the length of deployment is uncertain.

By contrast, there were four days of ground war in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, after which the U.S. coalition declared victory. Two suicides were recorded during that conflict.

Other recent U.S.-led engagements "were more like video games," Maris said. "When you have hands on, face to face, see the dying, see the injured, see the blood, see the suffering, it's a lot more difficult."

Robinson, of the resource center, who is a retired Army ranger and fought in the first Gulf War, said Iraq is without a front line.

"Everybody's the enemy, there are no lines in front of you or behind you and the dangers are everywhere. . . . Every trash pile is your potential death," he said.

"It's a different kind of war."

That kind of stress can lead to low morale. For some, it can lead to full-blown depression and anxiety. And suicide is an overwhelmingly male behavior, by at least 4 to 1.

"A lot of times it's about feeling trapped," said Army Col. Ricky Malone, who recently returned from Iraq, where he was chief of mental health services at the Baghdad military hospital. " 'I've got to get out of here, and if I can't I'd rather be dead.' "

Ben Gonzalez, former emergency room chief of the same hospital, said: "For the comrades left behind, death of a soldier by suicide is much more devastating than enemy fire. The emotional attachment comes back. There's more participation from the unit, their buddies are here, they're standing around, they want updates -- it's a much more emotional level."

Soldiers looking for ways to cope have several options. Military chaplains, assigned to individual units, offer comfort without the label of mental illness. Soldiers in more serious distress might be referred to inpatient psychiatric wards or be sent home. The Army sent 596 soldiers from Iraq to mental health treatment facilities in 2003.

Still, some soldiers don't speak up or don't get noticed.

A Quest for Answers


In Lufkin, population 32,000, the names and faces of local troops serving in Iraq hang in the Lufkin Mall; shoppers pause briefly to look before continuing their stroll. Suell's picture is there. It has also been on the front page of the local paper, which is reporting his death as a suicide.

Mathis, Suell's mother, said she avoids the beauty salon and sometimes skips the Wal-Mart Supercenter, just to get away from the chatter. "No matter how he died or what happened, he still deserves respect and honor," she said. "I just want some honor for my son."

Floyd Slaughter, 74, who owns Lufkin Army Navy, doesn't know what to believe about whether Suell committed suicide.

"What could have happened -- fright? If he did, we don't have any proof except the word of the Army -- and they protect themselves," said Slaughter, who added that he supports a just war but not this one, because no weapons of mass destruction were found.

"If he did, he was scared and saw no way out. The officers should have caught that, pulled that boy out and sent him home."

Suell went against his mother's wishes when he enlisted in 2000. But when he returned from basic training, Mathis said the Army had made a man out of her son.

The family moved to Fort Sill, Okla. Suell went on a yearlong tour to Korea and missed the birth of his younger daughter. His wife called to complain that she was distressed and that Suell was granted a short visit home from his tour.

During the Iraq tour, too, Rebecca Suell pleaded, but she said she wasn't taken seriously. Her husband asked her to talk to his commander and say that his family needed him. She was working at Wal-Mart and attending school. She felt it was too much for one parent. "The commander said, 'We'll do everything that we can to get your husband home, it'll take a while' -- they ignored it," she said. "If he just had some time with his family, he'd still be here."

In his letters, Joseph Suell wrote that Iraq was a shadowy conflict. "Over here you never know what's going to happen next," he wrote to his mother-in-law, Janice Doggett, 41. "So I just keep faith in Jesus and keep my eyes open."

To his widow, those are not the words of a suicidal man. He had no history of mental illness, and even while in Iraq he was making plans. Married at City Hall, he and Rebecca planned a church wedding upon his return.

Maybe he took some pills because he couldn't sleep, Rebecca Suell suggested. Or because he was feeling a little bit stressed. But the intention was not death.

"When he got his teeth pulled he wouldn't even take one pill for the pain," said Rebecca Suell. "Why would he take a bottle?"

At the cemetery, one of two African American burial places in Angelina County, she circled the perimeter of the grave, stopping to straighten a fallen section of the white wooden fence. Nearby, her two children and nieces squealed as they ran around on the red Texas dirt.

Back at her house, Mathis has decorated her home with four yellow ribbons outside and a small shrine to Suell inside. It consists of a crisply folded American flag inside a triangular case with three of Suell's medals. A framed photo of Suell in military uniform stares out into the living room. There are several red and blue candles and two large birthday candles that say "2" and "5." Mathis had a birthday party for Suell in October, when he would have been 25 years old.

His younger brother Michael Shepherd, 23, sat silently on the couch. He speaks very little about his brother's death but wears several dog tags, one specially made. It says:

My Brother.

My Friend.

We Miss You.

RIP.

Suellboy.

"He didn't commit suicide," Shepherd said. "That ain't him."

Mathis has continued her quest for answers in her son's death. The search has taken her to the local office of her U.S. senator, and to a nearby town where she drove around for three hours on a tip that a sergeant who used to know her son was back home on leave. She never found him. She leaves messages for an Army criminal investigator to check up on the case.

Tears crawled down her cheeks at a Sunday morning church service when the minister spoke of having a good year. In her living room, they fell again as she tried to make sense of Suell's death.

"I have no autopsy report, no toxicology report, nothing," she said. The one document that Mathis has from the military is a DD Form 1300, a casualty report that lists the cause and circumstances of the death as "self-inflicted: drug overdose."

"I believe in my heart that he did take some medicine, but it wasn't to kill himself. He probably had a headache," she said.

"I'm not blaming God -- God don't make mistakes. I'm not mad at the war -- Joseph wasn't war material."

Suell told his mother that he hadn't killed anyone, and he hoped he wouldn't have to.

"God looked down on Joseph and said he's not that type of person. God came down and took my son."

Staff writer Tamara Jones and researchers Madonna Lebling, Julie Tate and Rob Thomason contributed to this report from Washington.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company



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