Thank You for Your Service (12 page)

Far from ignoring what was going on, the army was trying to make sense of it. Its biggest effort was an ongoing study of the mental health
of some fifty-five thousand soldiers to develop profiles of who would become prone to suicide and who would be resilient. But the study, which was being done in partnership with the National Institute of Mental Health, was going to take five years to complete, by which time both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be all but finished and, at current suicide rates, another thousand soldiers would be dead.

Not that all of them could be prevented—Chiarelli knew better than that—but the idea that some of them could was why the slow pace would get to him at times. “I come from ‘Take a hill by five p.m.’ You are ‘Take as long as you want,’ ” he once said in exasperation to a group of doctors and researchers who had gathered at his invitation to talk about traumatic brain injuries (causing one researcher to whisper to another, “He seems very
proactive
”). They had been discussing an autopsy done on a Marine who had killed himself after two combat tours. The autopsy had shown evidence of a degenerative brain disease that has been associated with memory loss, confusion, depression, paranoia, and problems with impulse control, and has been seen in autopsies of athletes such as boxers and football players who have endured constant head trauma. Could this be why people who had been in repeated explosions in combat were killing themselves? Not because of PTSD, but because of a disease that was overtaking their brain and destroying their self-control? One of the scientists mentioned an effort under way to develop a test for biomarkers that could indicate who would be susceptible to the disease. Excited, Chiarelli had asked how long it would take. Those people could be kept out of combat, put in support roles. Two years was the answer, minimum. There would have to be more autopsies. Protocols would have to be developed. Independent review boards would have to scrub the findings. The findings would have to be published in a scholarly journal. “Good science takes time,” Chiarelli was told, and suddenly he looked like a man driving in Washington traffic.

Now, as the suicide meeting continues, he says, “This, as I’ve said so often, is a very imperfect science, as it stands right now. We just don’t know why people do the things that they do.” But that doesn’t mean they can’t do some things while waiting for bigger explanations, he goes on, and mentions another possible suicidal indicator, only recently
discovered, that people who enter the army in their late twenties are three times more likely to kill themselves than those who enter in their early twenties or late teens. “It’s just counterintuitive to a lot of folks,” he says, “unless you start to unpack it and you say, okay why does a young man or woman decide to join the army at twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old? They’re either a tremendous patriot, or they’ve lost their job, have a couple of kids, lost their medical care, and are coming in as kind of an opportunity to get their life straight again. They come in with all these stressors, and we say, hey guess what, buddy? You’re going downrange in six months.”

Around the table and on the video screens, the generals are nodding. Now it makes sense, and as a result they will instruct their brigade commanders, who will instruct their battalion commanders, who will instruct their company commanders, who will instruct their platoon leaders, who will instruct their squad leaders and team leaders, to pay extra attention to their twenty-eight- and twenty-nine-year-olds who are new to the army.

A lesson learned, then, and as the meeting goes from its first hour into its second, Chiarelli keeps asking for more.

“Sir, lessons learned,” one general says after telling of a soldier who had covered himself with a blanket and shot himself with his rifle. “Better shakedown procedures are needed for soldiers coming off of a range detail. He had been on a range cleanup detail the day before he committed suicide. An incomplete check for ammo was conducted for soldiers on the detail, and it wasn’t done thoroughly enough. After the suicide, the CID conducted an inspection and found significant contraband to include some loose ammunition. So we gotta school our younger officers on procedures for doing that.”

Sometimes Chiarelli listens, shakes his head, and says, “We have got to do better.”

“Sir, our main lesson learned is that though we have a variety of useful tools—the global assessment tool and our unit risk inventory—we really don’t have one that flat-out lets a drill sergeant or a squad leader see that the soldier flat-out has issues,” another general says after describing a soldier who had placed plastic over his head and run tubes from a
helium tank under the plastic. “The two things that came out during the investigation, one that may or may not have been related to it, he broke up with a girlfriend, but it was two years ago. The other was, remarkably, his father had committed suicide about three years ago in a similar fashion. That came to light when the mother spoke with our investigative officer and was unknown to the chain of command.”

Sometimes Chiarelli says, “Yeah, well, this is a sad case.”

“A couple of internal lessons learned, which are very important,” another general says of a soldier whose diagnoses included PTSD and depression and who overdosed on his twelve medications. “He was assigned a battle buddy who lived in the barracks with him. But of note, his battle buddy was also listed as a high-risk soldier, and that policy has now changed. That when we assign a battle buddy, it needs to be a soldier that’s a low-risk soldier.”

Sometimes, Chiarelli says, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Sir, at this time, I’ve got one good news story that might be worth sharing,” a general says.

“Okay,” he says. “Go ahead.”

“Sir, there’s a staff sergeant who recently redeployed, he was having behavioral health problems when he came back. We spotted that in the behavioral health assessment, got him into treatment. His behavioral health specialist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist rather, believed that he was fit to go on leave and signed off on his ability to take leave. Shortly after his departure on leave, a cousin who was also in the military came to us and told us he was very worried about this individual, that he was exhibiting paranoid behavior and acting irrationally. That allowed us to get hold of the soldier’s family. It allowed law enforcement to ping his cell phone. Found out in talking to him that he was portraying himself as being in one place when in fact he was in another, he was headed to near Camp Pendleton. In coordination with the Marines, we were able to gain control of him at Pendleton through the chain of command down there. Got him into behavioral health down there. Got an additional assessment, brought him back here, he’s back in treatment. He was armed at the time and clearly having problems with his schizophrenia, and we feel like the system worked very well there, the kinds of
things we expect people to do. Sir, that completes my presentation pending any questions or comments from you.”

Sometimes, Chiarelli looks like he’s on the verge of saying, “It’s the best I can do.”

“That was very uplifting,” he says.

Sometimes Chiarelli leaves the Pentagon and drives to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to remind himself what all of this is about.

“So how’d it happen?” he says, walking into a room and sitting down so that he is at eye level.

The soldier starts to answer. He was walking down a trail. There was an explosion. He lost his right arm. He lost most of his left arm. He lost his right leg. He lost his left leg. He …

“Oh my goodness,” the soldier says. “I forgot my train of thought.”

“That’s okay,” Chiarelli says, reaching over to touch what remains of him.

He goes back to the Pentagon, back to Gardner, back to another suicide meeting, where some months are better than others.

“I have never seen a downturn in the numbers quite like I’m seeing now,” he announces one month, smiling. “We could be seeing that all our efforts are starting to pay off in lower numbers.”

But then it is another month, a January in fact, the start of another year, and the preliminary numbers for the previous year are in: an increase of fifty-eight over the year before.

“That is, I think it’s fair to say, a huge increase, an increase we are trying to understand,” he says.

He tells everyone not to get discouraged. He says that without their efforts, the numbers would have been far worse. Not that there’s a way to tell, but he’s sure of it. He just is. “I want to thank everyone here for their continued support and everything you’re doing for our soldiers,” he says. “And with that …”

“He’s a twenty-year-old American Eskimo.”

“A twenty-four-year-old Caucasian male, married, three children.”

“Seventeen-year-old, single, Caucasian.”

“Thirty-six-year-old Caucasian male. The soldier committed suicide by hanging in his barracks room.”

“He was found on a boat in the river that runs through his town with a gunshot wound to the head and an empty bottle of vodka.”

“She had asked her daughter to shoot her, but the daughter refused so she picked up the gun and shot herself.”

“Her stepfather discovered her next to the railroad tracks where she had shot herself with her father’s gun.”

“Committed suicide by hanging himself in his mother’s garage.”

“Hung himself with an electrical cord secured over a door.”

“Overdosed on lorazepam, which is used to treat anxiety.”

“A non-swimmer, jumped from a bridge into a lake, drowned.”

“He was found the next morning outside the apartment near the Dumpster with a single gunshot wound to the head. There were really no warning signs, and this is a big mystery.”

“This was a shock to us all.”

“His chain of command was unaware that he had communicated suicidal ideations to his father at least twenty times and had put a gun to his head five times.”

“The unit leadership was totally unaware that he had been diagnosed with bipolar and socio and anxiety disorders by two different off-post providers and was on several medications, including antidepressants.”

“So it really came as a big shock.”

“Again, nobody expected this.”

“So this was a horrific event, I think we can all agree.”

They all agree.

And then they are done.

“I thank you very much,” Chiarelli says, meaning it, “and I’ll see you next month.”

One day, Adam tries to fix a boat.

It’s a little aluminum skiff that he had discovered in some woods, apparently abandoned and being overtaken by leaves. He found it on a hunting trip and left it alone, but when he saw it again on another hunting trip, he decided to drag it home.

He really wanted a boat.

For a brief time after the war, he’d had one, a good one. It was a sixteen-footer that he and Saskia bought the first summer after he came home. It cost $17,000, trailer included, $2,000 down, the rest easily financed for an American warrior, just sign here and thank you for your service, and when Adam and Saskia took it out on the lake, they became for those hours the people they imagined themselves to be. Adam, unbroken. Saskia afloat at last upon the life that was her promise. Zoe, being pulled behind the boat on an inner tube, soaked and laughing. Life was okay. That’s how they felt on the boat. They would pull over at a little beach area and barbecue hamburgers on a cheap grill. Adam would fish, Saskia and Zoe would swim, nobody would fight.

Sometimes, after the boat was gone, repossessed seven months after they bought it, they would see it around town, being pulled behind some stranger’s pickup truck.

“Hey, that’s my old boat,” Adam would say, lighting up as if he had spotted one of his old squad members.

“That’s depressing,” Saskia would say, watching it go by, no doubt on the way to the lake.

But anyway, it was gone, and now Adam is the common-law owner
of a skiff. It has no engine, but he has a trolling motor that will do the trick. The back of the boat, where he will hang the motor, feels flimsy, but he can shore that up with some plywood. The bottom has some gaps in the seams, but he can take care of that with some caulk. He drives to the hardware store and forty-four dollars later is hard at it, filling the street with the screech of his circular saw.

Adam Schumann, Michael Emory, Saskia Schumann

Hours go by. The sun is hot and he works up a sweat. He goes through half a pack of cigarettes and a six-pack of Mountain Dew. Across the street, a neighbor comes out onto his front porch.

“What are you building? The Love Boat?” he yells.

This is Dave, who owns a couple of tow trucks, and when Adam doesn’t answer, he comes over to watch.

“Noah’s Ark?” he asks.

He watches for a while more.

“Ugliest boat ever,” he says.

Not to Adam, who is finishing up. The seams are caulked, and the caulk is drying. The motor is in place, attached to a perfectly cut piece of plywood and connected to an old boat battery Adam had in the garage. It was his father who taught him about boats and about fixing them. He’d had a skiff, too, much like this one, and just before he left, he and Adam had spent the afternoon on it. Now, twenty years later, Adam tests the motor and the little propeller spins to life. With some satisfaction, he steps back to look at what he has done.