Don’t Forget These People on Memorial Day

4 or 5 Times the number of Veterans who died in combat kill themselves. And that’s just the beginning.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

More than 30,000 Veterans have killed themselves since 2001. About 7,000 died in combat over the same period. Why those 30,000 aren’t counted as casualties of war, I’ll never understand.

But even if they were, the number would still be grossly underestimated. For every Veteran who killed themselves quickly, there are many, many more that kill themselves slowly.

Too many to count.

They drink themselves to death. They drug themselves to death. They work themselves to death. They drive like maniacs, desperate to feel something, anything, and they wrap themselves around telephone polls and pancake themselves on bridge abutments.

And some, somehow more tragically, live out lives of quiet desperation. And their suffering ripples outwards over the people that love them — parents, spouses, children — perpetuating a cycle, making the decision for the next generation to run off to war and away from home easier than it should be.

What should be a dire and terrifying decision is shrouded under the guise of family tradition, wrapped in red, white and blue, and professed as patriotism when in…