Suicide Claims 14th Marine From a Unit Battered by Loss

January 3, 2016 in News by RBN Staff


NY Times

LONGMONT, Colo. — Tyler Schlagel slipped out of his parents’ house while they were asleep three weeks ago and drove through the wintry darkness to his favorite fishing lake high in the Rockies.

Mr. Schlagel, a 29-year-old former Marine corporal who was stocking shelves at a sporting goods store, carried with him the eight journals he had filled during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also carried a .40-caliber pistol.

Under the bright mountain stars, he kindled a small campfire. When the flames grew high, he threw the journals into the fire, then shot himself in the head.

Mr. Schlagel’s death Dec. 9 was the 14th suicide in his military unit — the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment — since the group returned from a bloody tour in Afghanistan in 2008. Many other members have attempted suicide, one just three days after Mr. Schlagel’s death.

The suicide rate for the 1,200 Marines who deployed together — most now out of the military — is nearly four times as high as for young male veterans as a whole and 14 times as high as that for all Americans.

Photo

Tyler Schlagel, a Marine who reached the rank of corporal during his military service, in Afghanistan in 2008.

After a New York Times report in September about the suicides underscored shortcomings in the government’s ability to monitor and treat mental health problems among veterans, members of Congress called for the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs to address the issue. But those efforts have remained halting and incomplete, critics say.

A big part of the problem is that the veterans of the unit, like hundreds of thousands of other young veterans, fall between the cracks of the two enormous institutions. The military’s authority stops when troops leave active duty. The V.A.’s starts only if veterans come in for benefits or medical care — and many do not seek that care.

There is also little formal tracking of suicides among veterans, so although members of other units say they have high suicide numbers like the 2/7, as the battalion is known among members, the extent of the problem remains unknown.

The Marine Corps formed a task force this fall in response to the battalion’s plight, but it has largely focused on how to prevent suicides in future veterans. The V.A. said in a statement that it could not contact members of the battalion and other war-scarred units because some members may still be in the military and therefore outside the V.A.’s authority.

“I don’t understand — they should at least do something,” Madelyn Gould, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who helped create national guidelines on responding to suicide clusters, said in an interview.

Clusters can form in tightknit groups, such as schools or military units, she said, where one death can spur others until suicide becomes what she called “a cultural norm.” She said care providers could intervene to discuss the problem and teach effective ways to respond and cope. But that requires identifying those groups and reaching out to them.

Friends said Mr. Schlagel often dismissed suicides in the battalion — including the deaths of two friends — as cowardly acts. His stance made his death that much more perplexing to the others.

“I didn’t see it coming, not from him,” a battalion member, James McKendree, posted to other members’ Facebook pages the day after his death. “Why our battalion? I’m at a damn loss. The VA can’t fix it. WE have to fix it. YOU have to fix it, and I’m talking to every 2/7 vet out there. You’re not a VICTIM. Quit drinking / pill-popping yourself into oblivion. Pull yourself up by your damn bootstraps.”

Photo

Photographs of Mr. Schlagel were displayed at his funeral in Longmont.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

A few days later, the song of a solitary bugle playing taps floated through frigid morning air at a cemetery near the farm where Mr. Schlagel grew up.

As family and friends gathered in the shin-deep snow, they recalled him as a happy child who had raised prizewinning sheep and pigs when he was not hunting or fishing with his father, grandfather, cousins and brothers.

“He was loved and did what he loved,” said his uncle, Terry Vanzant. “There was nothing in his background that would point to this.”

But after serving in Afghanistan, Mr. Schlagel became withdrawn. He continued to hunt and fish with his family. But he also spent much of his time in his parents’ basement and resisted family pleas to go to counseling.

When the bugle finished, two silver-haired men from the local American Legion post, wearing white gloves, presented a crisply folded flag to Mr. Schlagel’s family, then saluted, standing silently as his mother wept.

“Tyler, he had his ups and downs,” Jo Dee Schlagel, his mother, said later, clutching her arms tightly across her chest. “But after six years, we really thought he was going to be O.K.”

For the dozen Marines who came to pay their respects — roughly a quarter of the platoon — Mr. Schlagel was the last person to suspect was struggling. He had been a squad leader and the platoon’s designated marksman who had taken the most dangerous spot at the front of patrols. He had seemed fearless, joyful, steady. His suicide made some question whether anyone was free of risk.

“He was always the one you wanted there, just a great Marine,” David Gwinn, a Navy corpsman who was one of the squad’s medics, said as he sat at a table in a dim reception hall of the local American Legion post after the funeral.

Photo

Members of the Colorado Patriot Guard Riders march into Mountain View Cemetery to honor Mr. Schlagel. CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

Mr. Schlagel’s best friend was killed by a suicide bomber in a crowded market, Mr. Gwinn said — the body so charred and mixed with civilian body parts that the squad never found the man’s wedding ring to send home.

“Schlagel was the only one who wasn’t crying” when they returned to the base, Mr. Gwinn said while looking down at the table. “No tears. He was just able to deal with things. That is why we are so shocked about this.”

When the battalion came home, Mr. Gwinn tried to kill himself twice by overdosing on pills, and he spent months in military hospitals.

Since then, he has grown a wild beard and long hair. He now has a job and family, and says that he is no longer suicidal, but that finding stability was hard.

“Other people didn’t come home, and you did,” he said. “But sometimes, you wish you didn’t. They set up all these hotlines and things for guys to get help. But what do you do when most of the guys don’t want help?”

Battalion members have built an emergency response network through Facebook to try to stop more suicides. Three days after Mr. Schlagel’s death, it had its latest intervention.

A Marine veteran in Los Angeles texted his friend in Chicago, saying he had just taken a lethal dose of prescription pills and hoped to die. The friend alerted other veterans from the battalion, who frantically called the police and the man’s phone.

David Cergol, a former medic, got through to the man and learned he was driving on a busy freeway, slurring his speech as the pills took effect.

Photo

After the funeral, Jo Dee Schlagel hugs David Gwinn, a Navy medic who served with her son.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

Mr. Cergol talked him into pulling off the freeway, where he crashed on a side road and passed out, dropping the phone by his feet.

Two 15-year-old boys came upon the car and heard Mr. Cergol shouting from the dropped phone. He talked them through clearing the man’s airway and pumping his chest.

Mr. Cergol has not spoken to the man he saved since that day. He was glad he could help, but more than anything, the procession of suicides leaves him angry.

“At the end of the day, I want to punch the guys that do this in the face,” he said. “I get that people are hurting, but use your resources, guys. Reach out to your brothers. There is love there. It makes me mad they wouldn’t do that.”

Battalion members say connecting with other members is the necessary medicine. But many say it seldom happens.

At Mr. Schlagel’s funeral, two Marines from the squad stood smoking outside a bar, talking about how good it was to reunite after several years.

When asked if anyone else in the squad had attempted suicide recently, one man said no.

The second said yes. He paused, then said, “Me … a few months ago.”

Without speaking, the two men fell into a deep hug.