While the recently reported increasing rate of suicides in Army personell is disturbing to all of us, and the Army’s programs to address the problem are laudable, I don’t find these figures surprising or something that the Army is likely to be able to do much about. It’s just what happens in protracted, senseless Wars:
| Suicide in the Trenches; | |
| Siegfried Sassoon, 1918 | |
| I KNEW a simple soldier boy |  |
| Who grinned at life in empty joy, | |
| Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, | |
| And whistled early with the lark. | |
| In winter trenches, cowed and glum, | |
| With crumps and lice and lack of rum, | |
| He put a bullet through his brain. | |
| No one spoke of him again. | |
| You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye | |
| Who cheer when soldier lads march by, | |
| Sneak home and pray you’ll never know | |
| The hell where youth and laughter go. | |
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.