Jared tried to come to grips with what he'd seen and done on his eight deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. "And there's no way that any God would forgive him - that he was going to hell," says Ashley. "He couldn't live with that any more."
A big, sad, heart-breaking story... But try Googling "Hagemann suicide". You won't find much - just a couple of local news pages and a linkback from Crooks & Liars. And this in a country that supposedly "supports our troops"?
More military personnel like Hagemann have died at their own hands than have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a f*cking obscenity. But where are the media? Where are the armchair warriors who drive round town with their little yellow ribbon magnets? Where is the f*cking president who promised to get our kids out of Iraq and Afghanistan? Yup. Nowhere. And here's how the military reward the family of just another guy they've used and destroyed:
The Army has refused to give Hagemann a memorial service... because it does not want the news media drawing more attention to service-connected suicides.
If our media had an ounce of humanity, Hagemann's story would be top news, not an obscure sidebar. If we as a people had an ounce of compassion, he'd be held up as a real hero by a country that wanted to say sorry from the bottom of its ignorant, ADD heart. F*ck all the phony thank yous, we need to be apologizing like a m*therf*cker to the troops and their families for the hell we're putting them through.
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As a mother and mother in law to military kids, my heart breaks every time I hear these stories. They happen more often than anyone can imagine and leaves a family destroyed. Stronger efforts need to be made to get these veterans and service personnel the help they need to deal with PTSD and to stop the constant deployments. I too am sick and tired of the lip service our government provides on these issues.
ReplyDeleteThat's really sad. . . and pitiful that it doesn't make headlines.
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