Read Online Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism by Jennifer Percy - Free Book Online
Authors: Jennifer Percy
Tags: Religión, General, Social Science, History, Psychology, Military, Social Psychology, Christian Theology, Psychopathology, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Angelology & Demonology, Neuropsychology, Sociology of Religion, Veterans, Psychology of Religion
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southeast Georgia. It was a drab metal thing made grand by the space around it. He’d been building things all his life, unfinished things, trying to make them whole. Caleb relished it, the lives he’d save, the days breaking back, hauling trucks, orchestrating the rise of steel beams. Already he carried notebooks and blueprints; drove a truck with a six-cylinder engine. At night, in his dreams, he saw the vehicles he wanted to build and he gave them names: Brute, Savage, Aggressor. He befriended a broker in Kennesaw, a large bald man named Buck, and convinced Buck to help him write a business proposal for the company. They determined a start-up cost of two and a half million dollars.
It was 2008, and the Department of Veterans Affairs had been caught withholding statistics on veteran suicide from the public. When CBS News began an investigation into the rates, the head of mental health at the VA said, “The research is ongoing. There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.” Then he sent an e-mail to his media adviser with the subject line “Not for the CBS News Interview Request.” He wrote that there were a thousand suicide attempts per month within the VA. He wrote Shh!
Around eighteen veterans were killing themselves every day.
• • •
Private Jonathan Schulze, who lost fifty-one members of his unit in Ramadi and Fallujah in 2004, returned home and told his parents he wanted to die. He was number 26 on the waiting list to be admitted to the VA in St. Cloud, Minnesota, when the police found him hanging by an electrical cord in his parent’s basement.
Army specialist Timothy Israel, who had been awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded by a roadside bomb, hung himself with the drawstring of his pants in a jail cell in Elwood, Indiana.
Russell Dwyer, a former platoon sergeant and cavalry scout instructor at Fort Knox, shot his wife in the head in their front yard in Colorado Springs, and then he lay down beside her and shot himself. She was facedown, he chose faceup.
Lieutenant Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, who served in a company responsible for transporting Iraqi prisoners of war, hanged himself with a garden hose in the cellar of his family’s home.
Private First Class Stephen S. Sherwood, a veteran of the casualty-heavy battle for Ramadi, shot his wife five times in the head and neck with a pistol, then took a shotgun to his own head.
Sergeant Lisa Morales said, in an interview in the New York Times , that she reenlisted because she wanted to go back to Iraq so that the Iraqis would shoot her for what she’d done.
Private Walter Rollo Smith, a Marine Corps reservist who’d marched to Baghdad in the first invasion returned home to his twin duplex in Tooele, Utah, made love to the mother of his children, washed her in the bath, pushed her head underwater to rinse out the soap, and held it there gently until she died. When I called Private Smith’s attorney to see if I could visit Smith in jail, the attorney said I could not. “Everyone already knows he’s suffering from PTSD.”
Caleb was eager to tell his story, but most were not. The first person I called was the mother of Joshua Omvig, whose son is considered the first suicide of the Iraq war. She had a home in Grundy Center, Iowa, half an hour from where I lived, in a spread of quiet cornfields. Specialist Joshua Omvig of the 339th MP Company shot himself in December 2005, three days before Christmas. What happened was he handed his mother a suicide note that she thought was a Christmas list. She set it aside. She’d look at it later. There were dishes to be done. She returned to the sink and started washing. Joshua was in his bedroom, changing into his uniform, the one he wore on an eleven-month deployment in Iraq. When he was fully dressed, Joshua walked past his mother and headed outside. The suicide note was still unread. Still on the counter. Joshua climbed into the family truck, locked all the doors,
It was 2008, and the Department of Veterans Affairs had been caught withholding statistics on veteran suicide from the public. When CBS News began an investigation into the rates, the head of mental health at the VA said, “The research is ongoing. There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.” Then he sent an e-mail to his media adviser with the subject line “Not for the CBS News Interview Request.” He wrote that there were a thousand suicide attempts per month within the VA. He wrote Shh!
Around eighteen veterans were killing themselves every day.
• • •
Private Jonathan Schulze, who lost fifty-one members of his unit in Ramadi and Fallujah in 2004, returned home and told his parents he wanted to die. He was number 26 on the waiting list to be admitted to the VA in St. Cloud, Minnesota, when the police found him hanging by an electrical cord in his parent’s basement.
Army specialist Timothy Israel, who had been awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded by a roadside bomb, hung himself with the drawstring of his pants in a jail cell in Elwood, Indiana.
Russell Dwyer, a former platoon sergeant and cavalry scout instructor at Fort Knox, shot his wife in the head in their front yard in Colorado Springs, and then he lay down beside her and shot himself. She was facedown, he chose faceup.
Lieutenant Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, who served in a company responsible for transporting Iraqi prisoners of war, hanged himself with a garden hose in the cellar of his family’s home.
Private First Class Stephen S. Sherwood, a veteran of the casualty-heavy battle for Ramadi, shot his wife five times in the head and neck with a pistol, then took a shotgun to his own head.
Sergeant Lisa Morales said, in an interview in the New York Times , that she reenlisted because she wanted to go back to Iraq so that the Iraqis would shoot her for what she’d done.
Private Walter Rollo Smith, a Marine Corps reservist who’d marched to Baghdad in the first invasion returned home to his twin duplex in Tooele, Utah, made love to the mother of his children, washed her in the bath, pushed her head underwater to rinse out the soap, and held it there gently until she died. When I called Private Smith’s attorney to see if I could visit Smith in jail, the attorney said I could not. “Everyone already knows he’s suffering from PTSD.”
Caleb was eager to tell his story, but most were not. The first person I called was the mother of Joshua Omvig, whose son is considered the first suicide of the Iraq war. She had a home in Grundy Center, Iowa, half an hour from where I lived, in a spread of quiet cornfields. Specialist Joshua Omvig of the 339th MP Company shot himself in December 2005, three days before Christmas. What happened was he handed his mother a suicide note that she thought was a Christmas list. She set it aside. She’d look at it later. There were dishes to be done. She returned to the sink and started washing. Joshua was in his bedroom, changing into his uniform, the one he wore on an eleven-month deployment in Iraq. When he was fully dressed, Joshua walked past his mother and headed outside. The suicide note was still unread. Still on the counter. Joshua climbed into the family truck, locked all the doors,
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