Mister, can you spare a care—impact of war

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

By the time his brother opened the e-mail, the returned 27-year-old soldier was dead.

After military service, their deaths rise disproportionately. The Bay Citizen published over the weekend Aaron Glantz’s articles on young veterans’ trauma and suicide. Glantz appeared today on Pacifica Network’s Democracy Now program.

Not unlike their treatment of foreigners’ deaths, the U.S. Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs “do not count the number of veterans who have died after leaving [military service].”

Reuben Paul “Chip” Santos was born April 27, 1982 and died October 16, 2009. He was a decorated Army veteran 2000-2008 [with] NATO medals for service in Kosovo, Kuwait, Jordan; a National Defense Medal for service in Iraq. Santos was a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, a creative writing major at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, published writer, screenwriter of ‘Game of Champions’ 2008, actor in other IAIA films.

On his first return from Iraq in October 2003, “his family thought he was fine” but slowly over a six-year period, he “lost his spark,” enrolled in and dropped out of college classes, “stayed home, played violent video games” day and night. In his poetry, “Santos described the games as a way of “‘holding on to denial that is burning cancer into hope.’”

Santos’s girlfriend reflected on his behavior in the two years after he returned from combat in Iraq. He woke screaming in the middle of the night and held her “so tight she felt like she was being strangled.” Behind the wheel of a car, he drove “erratically, sometimes at more than 120 miles [193 kilometers] an hour.” When traffic was heavy, he broke out in a heavy sweat , his breathing shallow; he became “‘completely stone face,’” his girlfriend told the press, “‘and I’d get scared and just be quiet.’”

Six months before committing suicide Santos enrolled in the U.S. Veterans Administration’s cognitive behavioral therapy, a procedure whereby the patient “relives traumatic experiences in an effort to overcome them” [This sounds a lot like compounding trauma]. Santos left the program after nine weeks. Three months after that, he hanged himself.

“I'm tired of fighting this. I feel like I've tried everything but electro shock therapy,” Santos is reported saying in a final email to his brother and girlfriend.

“[Santos] lived with dignity and integrity,” one obituary ends; “struggled to survive war and sadly succumbed to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Syndrome.”

Aaron Glantz’s news articles on veterans were based on reporting conducted by New America Media, a non-partisan news organization, in partnership with The [California] Bay Citizen. The researchers looked at the most recent death certificates filed by coroners, medical examiners, physicians and funeral homes from California’s 58 counties and found that in the period 2005-2008, “veteran fatalities exceeded the number of combat deaths involving service members from almost every county.

“In the Bay Area, 114 young veterans died after returning home, nearly three times the number of Bay Area service members who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts over the same period.

“Suicides represented approximately one in five deaths of young veterans. Many other deaths resulted from risky behaviors psychologists say are common symptoms of post-traumatic stress.”

A retired brigadier general, Stephen Xenakis, who had served as Commanding General of Southeast Army Regional Medical Command told reporters that the stateside death toll will continue to rise because psychological wounds associated with combat may not emerge immediately.

“‘What you’re seeing is young men and women who saw combat in their early 20s, as well as everything else that went on in the theater [of war]; and in their late 20s they get symptomatic.’”


Sources and notes


“After Service, Veteran Deaths Surge: Suicides, vehicle accidents and drug overdoses take lives” (Aaron Glantz), October 16, 2010, http://www.baycitizen.org/veterans/story/after-service-veteran-deaths-surge/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17bcvets.html?_r=1

Reporter with the Bay Citizen, Aaron Glantz’s article “After Service, Veteran Deaths Surge” appears also in the New York Times. Glantz is author of three books including The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle against America’s Veterans.

Aaron Glantz came to the Bay Citizen from New America Media where he covered the economy. Before that, he spent seven years covering the war in Iraq and the treatment veterans receive when they come home.

Obituary at Tributes, http://www.tributes.com/show/Reuben-Santos-87001582

“War’s Hidden Death Toll: After Service, Veteran Deaths and Suicides Surge,” October 18, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/18/wars_hidden_death_toll_after_service

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