This post concerns the subject of suicide and should be read with care. If you, or anyone you know, currently have thoughts of suicide, the clock is running. Please  call (800) 273-8255 or hit this link for help 24/7. You can talk to someone right now. Please close out this blog and call or visit the website. If you are in a country other than the USA then please go now to a site for help or call your local Emergency Servive.

Stop. Please scroll back up and consider what you are about to do. There’s nothing worse than what you’re feeling right now. I get there often. I know feelings of deep loss, guilt, inadequacy and heartache. I’m so very sorry that you feel them too, but there’s help for people like us, and no matter what you think right now, you deserve that help. You do. Please go after it right now. We are stronger and better with you than without you. And you still have better times ahead that your mind will not allow you to see right now. Call or click. Please.

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“Yo! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you mangy privates!”

That’s what I heard in basic training. And it’s the dumbest thing you or anyone else can say to someone in a crisis. It doesn’t motivate. It hurts.

An existential crisis. One in which the person, military or civilian, is told to saddle up anyway when they’re unable to take anymore.

The implied explanation of “unable to take anymore” is the same as the obvious one. A man or woman has reached their limit. They’ve tried. They’ve given everything they had and found themselves lacking. They feel guilty. They think they’ve failed or will fail. That they’re not good enough. That death is the best way out.

Fort Leonard Wood reported an all-time record number of suicide attempts and chain of command reports of suicidal ideation in 2019.

First, I believe 2019 is the first year such numbers were reported under a new initiative. But bear in mind that the military has always kept records of suicides. The numbers include active duty, reserve and National Guard troops. No one is ignored in death; that part is reserved for the living.

There are two overall reasons for this. One is, people who find themselves in over their heads are desperate, and seek out the military as a way out. They’ll be trained for a job, get three meals a day, be busy and grow stronger and more disciplined. Of course, that’s the goal of armed forces as well. Recruiters don’t care; they sign up a volunteer and the rest is out of their hands. It is only after the training begins that problems surface.

But the second part is merely the nature of the military. Its training is down to a science: tear down the civilian and build a soldier in its place. It is an unyielding and tough period for drill sergeants who school for the job and are given the task of training recruits according to a set of rules considered inviolable. There was never room for deviation or special treatment for any one recruit. With the exception of remedial PT (physical training) for recruits who failed the first PT test, everything was the same for everyone, for better or worse.

This strict regimen should quickly root out those unfit for service. Most of the time, it did. Some never made it past Reception because depression and homesickness took root their first night on base.

I’m not sure about now, but when I arrived, all the new recruits arrived in the middle of the night. The purpose is to take away your bearings, disorient you and begin the breakdown process. Hell, I couldnt even tell I was surrounded by mountains.

At Reception, you see some scary things. None of us had haircuts or uniforms yet. We fell out in the morning in bright yellow sweat suits and cadre sergeants called us “Bananas”

My second night there I was aware of more trainees coming in. Being somehow uncomfortable with keeping his hair until we went to the barbershop, one guy took a disposable twin blade razor and shaved his head. He spent all night in the latrine doing it, and in the morning before I saw him I heard people comparing him to Jason. Oh, yeah. That Jason.

I saw the back of his head in the chow line the next morning. He was so cut up that he looked like he’d cut his hair with a lawnmower. He got an Article 15 for that stunt. Nobody gets an article 15 in reception.

A week of getting haircuts, uniforms and shots is followed by the “Duffle Bag Shuffle” in which a short march by a reception sergeant guides company to its basic training area. Once stood in formation, drill sergeants come out of nowhere, seemingly from every direction, infiltrating your ranks and screaming into the ears of E-nothing privates who absolutely don’t know what the fuck is going on.

And the breakdown process has begun. It is designed for mild shock and making privates submissive to command.

Once divided into platoons, the recruits get to scramble into their barracks where drill sergeants are waiting to make the process of filing in beside bunks orderly. No talking and no buddying up. By now they’re rattled anyway. Shaking from head to foot as they stand at attention, not knowing how long they will really be that way. Legs wobble. Eyes water: what happened to my world?

The breakdown process is intensifying. A kid without any vestige of facial hair is berated as a shitbird by a drill sergeant. The guy across from him is told to come forward and dry shave the shitbird. The shitbird is left bleeding. The drill sergeant is pleased.

Back to soldiering. A demonstration on making a bunk and hanging uniforms in wall lockers. Then back out on the quad for basic drilling and marching. To move as one. Fuck up and everyone is “dropped”, meaning that they assume “the front lean and rest position”: ready to do pushups.

A lot of those will follow. Nobody counts. Only the sergeant really knows and he’s got other things on his mind.

Time passes slowly. Sleep is sound and hard. That’s when the mindfuck really begins. Early to bed, and there better not be anyone fucking around, but up at a different time. Sometimes 05:00, sometimes 03:00. Nobody knows anything except it’s dark and they’re tired.

Unreasonable expectations follow. Run this fast, this far. Climb this obstacle in 15 seconds and your feet better be back on the ground on the other side faster than that or you’re doing it again.

Slow to file out after chow? The platoon or company gets dropped for pushups or grass drills. Dinner ends up at your feet when it’s over.

Dress right, dress. Parade rest. At ease. Doesn’t it run together? Yeah. It does.

At some point my company was shipped in cattle trailers up to the New Mexico desert. Winter. Colder than you’ve ever imagined being. In the dark of the morning you’re stood at attention and left there while drill sergeants return to big tents with potbelly stoves. You’re tired, nodding out from sleep deprivation and the cold. You fall asleep at attention. You watch each other in undeclared shifts to make sure no one falls. No fucking talking. They’ll hear you. Drills hear everything. If a private farts in the desert they’ll hear it back at Bliss. You learn to hold it. You learn to hold everything in. No weakness. No doing anything the others don’t.

Sleeping in a two-man tent in bitter cold. Each with full winter gear still on, including boots, pile cap. Sleeping bag zipped all the way shut.

Graduation feels well earned, a day of self-pride that will be with you the rest of your life.

But some didn’t make it, did they? One night asleep in their bunk, which is stripped down to bare mattress the next. Where’d he go? Nobody dares ask a drill sergeant. They know better. We all know better. It’s taboo.

Unless of course something happened when you were there. Guy gulped a can of Brasso. Cut himself with a bayonet. Cried all night and gone before morning chow.

The new statistics are sickening. Alarming. Something has gone wrong. Fort Bliss doesn’t do Basic Training anymore but that’s the rearrangement from long ago. Cost-cutting and shit.

Drill sergeants had no idea outside of training at Jackson what to look for as far as a suicidal private. They only look for the obvious. But the act is very often spontaneous. Thought about as a way out while trying to stay strong. No soldier can be fragile; can’t show it and can’t talk about it. So suddenly it just happens. Then it’s over. Usually the attempt fails. But not always, and every minute from then on, that recruit is in danger.

I’m not encouraged by the report where it states that privates who attempt suicide are closely monitored afterward. I don’t believe that they are ever safe. They cannot be soldiers. It isn’t meant to be. And I dont give a fuck about their “history” not showing mental illness or suicidal thoughts. The Army doesn’t know shit like that and if they did should never have allowed him to make it to Basic in the first place.

Drill sergeants are not psychiatric professionals. That’s not what they do or what they’re for. Sure, troops have to be ridden hard, that’s the process and the procedure. Nobody’s arguing with that. Therefore the problem lies elsewhere.

But going up the chain of command is not the simple thing you think it is because there’s immediate resistance. You’re dissuaded from going for help. You’re not supposed to be fragile. You signed the goddamn contract.

Army chaplains get called in as if they’re any better. They are not. They can be some of the meanest and unforgiving bastards you ever met. I wouldn’t seek help from one of them; they’ll make it worse. As if God expects you to heal yourself and go forth kicking and to kick ass.

Training units have dealt with suicide for right near two hundred years. It is not in their nature to be understanding. A drill sergeant will call you names. The company commander will call you worse names. If that doesn’t stop you then perhaps a visit to the base hospital will. They’ll put you in restraints then walk away and leave you. That just fills you with joy and renews your confidence. Not so. You feel like even more of a failure, a freak. Nurses sneer at you. And they’re officers. You better not say shit. Your world, bleak as it seems, can get worse. Perhaps that dawns on you. Or maybe not. But it doesn’t matter; you’re in a nightmare, a horror movie written by a madman. God has turned and looked the other way.

It could be that the 2019 report wakes up high command. I hope so. People who have the will to serve should be regarded as the assets they are, to be handled and trained by observant and trained staff who won’t insult and do more damage to them if they get into a crisis.

America has a fine military and right now low recruiting numbers show that incentives for enlisting aren’t enough. Stories from veterans dont help. A new approach is desirable and essential. Because nobody who turns out to be fragile is dishonorable, but the way they’re treated is. That raises questions we should all be asking about the future of our military.