Fort Hood Suicides Hit Record Numbers

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) -- Fort Hood officials are investigating a rash of suicides in recent days, including what evidently was a murder-suicide involving a soldier and his wife.

The incidents came as the central Texas Army post reported a record number of soldier suicides.

According to figures released Tuesday, 14 suicides and six more suspected suicides have been reported so far this year involving soldiers stationed at Fort Hood.

Fort Hood reported 11 suicides in all of 2009.

On Sunday, Sgt. Michael Timothy Franklin, 31, and his wife, Jessie Ann Franklin, were found dead of gunshot wounds in their Fort Hood home.

Army officials are investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide.

Two soldiers died Saturday in unrelated incidents that were both evidently suicides.

One of the soldiers was a veteran of four tours in Iraq.

A fourth soldier was found dead Friday.

Comments

[mamacat]

03:46 AM on 10/03/2010

Suicide during and after war is a huge problem. Vets in and out of the service will try to find support wherever they can, and those who realize that a vet is seeking their help, whether openly or without saying so, need to realize that whether they give their compassion, or not, may make all the difference.
I think it is not so much that a vet needs to talk about deep dark secrets, as just to have a friend who cares.

[ctcadguy]

03:00 PM on 10/01/2010

I remind possible recruits that they are being sent off to foriegn countries based on a probable false flag incident designed to get Americans to support occupying countries in the middle east in order to control the oil supplies and natural reources.

They are in fact not there to defend the homeland. In fact- I believe they are on the wrong side of the moral equation.

People need to question the morality of these occupations and conflicts.

[looneydoone]

07:18 PM on 10/01/2010

#20 ctcadguy

[mamacat]

03:49 AM on 10/03/2010

Wars are by their very nature destructive. Wars based on lies or which are the result of false assumptions are destructive without the benefit of the achievement of a greater good at some point in the future.

[mcmutter]

09:47 AM on 10/01/2010

the army never likes to think PTSD is real .....

of course the army doesn't like to 'think' much ......

[Riamac]

07:36 PM on 10/01/2010

The US Army certainly recognizes PTSD as a real and serious condition, and spends enormous amounts of resources both on treating and preventing PTSD and also on suicide prevention. We're pretty much inundated with information on signs and symptoms and where to find help. Heck, the paper grocery bags at the commissary are printed with the helpline number. It's easy to bury your head in the sand and pretend the military is a big dumb organization that never does anything right, but the reality is that they have every motivation to keep their Soldiers healthy.

[dollbaby]

10:54 AM on 09/30/2010

Fort Hood is one of the largest military bases in the nation and is like it's own city. With the Iraq war winding down alot of soldiers have just returned home. If you think you had a hard day at the office when you get home, imagine what it must be like for these brave men and women returning from battle. That is a very hard adjustment to make both individually and with a spouse. War is hell and putting it behind you is more hell. I would think any sharp rise in suicides on a base of this size refelcts the psychological difficulties of returning soldiers. We need to put our emphasis in resources for returning vets.

[Tau Seti]

09:24 AM on 09/30/2010

I know this situation first hand; the soldier told me "They taught me to kill; they did not teach me to survive." His reality is now closed.

These are children of conscience; you have no tools to deal with the ghosts and the blowback. Knowing the reality that you have created, most have no wish to continue in your reality by your rules.

A curse on your waters!

[ProfessorDuh]

07:24 AM on 09/30/2010

Yet another uncounted cost to the ugly, permanent U.S. military occupations on the other side of the world. How they do mount up when you refuse to look at them.

[eilish]

09:05 PM on 09/29/2010

I wonder if Dubya and the Dick realize, what with being such great Christians and all, that according to the rules they are going to the 'speshul he!!'?

[HighDesertBob]

05:47 PM on 09/29/2010

We've had messed up men coming back from every war we've ever fought. This one is no different, in fact it may be worse because we keep sending the same men back into harms way for a year or more at a time; separating them from their families; treating them like some much cannon fodder and then we expect them to come back, re-assimilate into society as if nothing happened. Then we send them back for another year or more.
I suspect for some of them facing yet another tour is more than they can bear and see no other options.

[looneydoone]

07:23 PM on 10/01/2010

In places such as San Diego the majority of homeless are vets.......a military town, Navy & Marine bases, "Fleet Week" and "Blue Angel" air shows.........and our vets are on living on the streets ?
Shame on the USA, and it's bumper sticker patriots (support our troops) !!

[acudoc]

01:24 PM on 09/29/2010

War is obsolete. Only politicians and bankers are behind the curve on this one. The former exist only to play the game "Let's You and Him Fight!" on an international scale (when their shenanigans don't suffice to satisfy them domestically); the latter are mesmerized by the money they can make via war and armaments through their fractional-reserve faux money schemes.

A close reading of American history reveals that NO war was absolutely necessary,

For combat veterans war never ends. A new crop of politicians arises to entice the next generation of idealistic and conditioned youth, even as the preceding generation of youth continues to struggle with their combat nightmares.

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

8 October 1917 - March, 1918
Wilfred Owen

[blueskybigstar]

12:38 PM on 09/29/2010

This is myrrh door. How much you wanna bet that these guys were witnesses to all the scandals that have happened there? What happened to those stories?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeWo-oBwuG0

[AndyWright68]

12:05 PM on 09/29/2010

When you train people to kiII on command this is one of the tragic side effects. Poi.son peoples minds with e.vil and send them to do e.vil creates ev.il people.

[CoastalNC]

04:02 PM on 10/04/2010

These are not evil people, these are people in mental pain.

[hellboundtrain]

10:34 AM on 09/29/2010

A great gift would be to give all of the military the life that they deserve by bringing them home now.
As for me, I saw how nasty ptsd can be in my father with the propensity to rage that drove all of his children out of the home when they reached the age of majority, never to return. And, awareness of the agony that brother lived after Nam, only to starve himself to death in 2008.

People deserve much better treatment than these two men of my family of origin got.

[AndyWright68]

09:47 AM on 09/29/2010

When you train people to kiII on command this is one of the tragic side effects. Poison peoples minds with evil and send them to do evil creates evil people.

[valeskas]

09:12 AM on 09/29/2010

When I read about soldiers are getting killed, my heart goes out to their families. Suicide is another way, of telling us, stop that war. Bring them home and when home, give them proper medical attention, not just for physical wounds, also for mental wounds. Any Soldier that dies from his own hands, does it, because they cannot forget the war and what happend there.

[JDLamps]

09:07 AM on 09/29/2010

I am a volunteer at a V.A. Medical Center and have been a 100% disabled vet since 1972. I see and help Vietnam vets every time I am there.Why not take and post a few HUPO photos of these Vietnam vets who lost their lives and limbs, their minds ripped apart by Johnson's war?

The cost of wars never change, we the wounded were and are handed off to the VA or thrown back into civilian life and told to make it on our own.

On a positive note the vets are getting 1,000 times better care than I received in 1972. If I had their level of care I would have back on my feet 30 years ago.I would not have had to wait until 2008.

BTW: I finished my tour at Ft.Hood, Texas. I would not bury a dead dog at that place.