The Overlook
By Tom Clavin
“The Overlook” can be found at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is a place from which one can see in several if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). Likes, comments, and shares help with author “discoverability” on Substack.com, and all support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!
The U.S. military has an enemy growing in strength and causing an increasing number of casualties. No, it’s not the Russians or Chinese or ISIS. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Navy announced – no doubt, reluctantly – that it has opened an investigation into the command climate and culture on board an aircraft carrier following the deaths of seven sailors in the last 12 months, including four by suicide.
CNN reported that the investigation will also look at any connections or links between the deaths, which comes after three of the sailors died by apparent suicide in one week last month. The USS George Washington has been in port in Newport News, Virginia, undergoing refueling and overhaul. It had previously reported that the Navy was investigating the deaths of three sailors from the carrier. Two sailors were found deceased at off-base locations on April 9 and 10. A third sailor was found unresponsive on board the ship on April 15 and died at the hospital. The Navy determined that those three deaths were apparent suicides. Investigators have confirmed that a death last December was a suicide. There were three more deaths from the ship in late 2019 and 2020. Two of those deaths remain under investigation, but the other death in December 2020 was also an apparent suicide.
Though based on the West Coast, the USS George Washington has been at Newport News shipyard since 2017 going through its Refueling and Complex Overhaul, a process carried out halfway through the life of a carrier that replenishes its nuclear fuel and updates its systems. The process typically lasts four years, but it has been delayed multiple times by the pandemic and other setbacks.
This “enemy” has not been confined to the USS George Washington. As of April 1, there have been 15 suicides this year among active-duty Navy members. (Yes, you read that right.) The three within one week last month brings the total to 18 suicides.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made addressing the issue of military suicides a priority. In March, he established the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, which will look at Defense Department efforts to deal with suicides among troops. The committee is set to begin its work this month and start visiting bases and military installations later this summer. An initial report with a preliminary set of recommendations is due by early next year.
"One death by suicide is one too many," Austin wrote in the memo announcing the independent review committee. "And suicide rates among our Service members are still too high."
According to the Defense Department spokesman John Kirby, "We certainly want to look at things like the command climate and culture and mission and op-tempo, the tempo at which we're pushing people. All those things are stressors in life. Some of them could contribute to the problem of suicides. But it's a very individual thing.”
Consider this: In 2020, 580 U.S. military members committed suicide, according to the Defense Department. The suicide rate increased in all the military branches over the previous five years. The active-duty Army marked a grim milestone last month as a Defense Suicide Prevention Office report revealed that the service suffered more suicides in 2021 than any other year since the Sept. 11 attacks. The 176 confirmed or pending-confirmation suicide deaths for the service’s active component present a worrying signal that the increase in suicides that began in 2020, which saw 174 suicides, has not abated.
The rate of suicide deaths among active-duty troops also climbed to its highest level since the Great Depression — 36.18 per 100,000 soldiers. The Army Reserve saw a slight increase in suicide deaths, with 45 soldiers dying at a rate of 24.4 per 100,000. The Army National Guard lost 101 troops to suicide, for a rate of 29.92 per 100,000. With suicide rates like these, who needs enemies?
Another question: What the heck is going on?
Although suicide is extremely complex and unique to each victim, last year saw a number of events that could have had a psychological toll on troops, including the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Army officials across the country have been working to address the issue — the service launched a new suicide-prevention program in late 2021 that has been trained down to the small unit level via the “chain-teach” method. Other leaders have crowdsourced suggestions from their troops or promoted new handbooks for unit commanders. But the program’s implementation has gone slower than promised.
The service first declared its intent to write a dedicated suicide prevention regulation in 2020, but that has so far not arrived. S September 2021 release said it would publish that fall. A November 2021 said it would come “in the first quarter of 2022.” Well, that window closed on March 31.
When calculated against the active-duty Army’s end strength, 2021′s 36.18 suicide deaths per 100,000 soldiers is the highest rate of suicides since 1938, according to a Journal of American Medical Association analysis. One of the study’s authors told Army Times that while 2021′s raw numbers “are not the highest annual total, they are obviously too many and tragic.”
It does not get better after taking off the uniform. Suicide among veterans has skyrocketed. Since Sept. 11, 2001, just over 30,000 veterans have died by suicide — four times more than the number of U.S. military personnel who died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan (!). In 2019, the most recent year of data available from the Department of Veterans Affairs, 6261 veterans in the United States took their own lives. That is a 7% decrease from the previous year, but, on average, 17 veterans still lost their lives to suicide every day. That’s a staggering number, particularly when compared to the suicide rate of non-veterans. The VA reports that former service members died by suicide at a rate twice as high as non-veterans, and veterans ages 18-34 died at a rate almost three times higher.
One factor could be that gun sales increased dramatically nationwide in 2020. In Massachusetts, which has one of the lowest gun-ownership rates in the country, firearm background checks increased by almost 25% compared to each of the previous four years, to more than 262,500. Why does this matter? Because firearms are the most common means of suicide in the U.S., with slightly more than half of all suicides occurring by firearm. Nine out of every 10 former service members in this country are men, and 70 percent of male veteran suicides involved a firearm.
However, a firearm is a means to an end, not the cause. Why are so many men and women in and retired from the military killing themselves? How are we failing to protect the hearts and minds of the people who pledged to protect us?
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books. The trade paperback edition of Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier (with Bob Drury) was published last month and this Sunday will be its sixth consecutive week on the New York Times bestseller list, in the Paperback Nonfiction category. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, or BN.com.
We Have Seen the Enemy . . .
A stunning examination of an often overlooked (by the general public) problem. I'm in shock reading this and hope that it will zoom to the top of priority lists for the government and social services. As Tom Clavin points out, these are the people who are protecting us. How can we not be more vigilant about them. And, when considering their general youth, the problem becomes even more urgent and the current outcomes so much more poignant.
Sad story indeed. As a 70 year old veteran I think, how this can be happening? I do believe that our citizens and particularly our politicians do not appreciate our veterans. There is almost zero training for them to succeed in the afterlife of military service. Young people enlist, do their service commitment and believe things are going to be good when they get discharged. Only rarely does your MOS provide you with after military employment. I am fortunate and lucky to be where I am but I also understand that it could have been a a much different road.