Great story with a perfect ending:
“The two soldiers were in Iraq together with a 10th Mountain Division artillery battery in 2008 when Sanders’ wife said she wanted a divorce, Sanders said.
‘It was mid-deployment. Things were getting pretty hectic at the time, the temperature was rising,’ Sanders said. ‘I would mainly call her to kind of vent. She was the only person I had to talk to. She just said goodbye.’
Sanders told Godding. Godding also noticed Sanders withdrawing from his friends, and recalls Sanders telling him in detail about ways he could take his own life.
One night in August, while they were at a forward operating base in Baghdad to rest and resupply, Godding became concerned enough to remove the firing pin from Sanders’ rifle. The next morning, Sanders tried to shoot himself, he said, but the rifle didn’t fire.”
Godding, who received the Meritorious Service Medal for his actions, credited military suicide education for “making him aware of the danger Sanders was in”. If you want to learn more check out Real Warriors.
Christopher R. Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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That incident really hit me hard. We had a soldier within our battalion (also 10th Mountain Div in Iraq) who did very much the same thing. Sadly, no one saw it coming, so no one could have removed the bolt from the weapon.
Tragically, what happened in your battalion is all too common story. So many military suicides appear to come out of nowhere. There has been a huge push to try to understand and predict suicide risks (rank, service, assignment, relationship, etc…), but so far no big breakthroughs have been made. Personally, I suspect the very characteristics that makes Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines operate so effectively in dangerous environments: stoicism, bravado, determination, etc… also hide many of the symptoms of depression.
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