By Mark Ford
Special to the News-Post

One of the most serious threats to life that a soldier faces is not on the battlefield. It’s in the soldier’s own mind.

An internal Army study recently cited in The Washington Post reported that 2,100 soldiers attempted suicide in 2007 — an average of five a day. Of those, 121 succeeded, an all-time record. To put that number in perspective, suicide is the third-leading cause of death among soldiers, after combat and accidents, according to the Army National Guard’s Suicide Prevention Program.

“It’s bad enough when we have to fight an enemy that’s shooting at us,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey J. Giannola, Fort Detrick post chaplain. “We certainly don’t want our own people taking their own lives for reasons that are preventable.”

READ MORE from The Frederick News-Post

By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

Gen. Carter Ham was among the best of the best — tough, smart and strong — an elite soldier in a battle-hardened Army. At the Pentagon, his star was rising.

In Iraq, he was in command in the north during the early part of the war, when the insurgency became more aggressive. Shortly before he was to return home, on Dec. 21, 2004, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mess hall at a U.S. military base near Mosul and killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. troops. Ham arrived at the scene 20 minutes later to find the devastation.

When Ham returned from Mosul to Fort Lewis, Wash., in February 2005, something in the affable officer was missing. Loud noises startled him. Sleep didn’t come easily.

“When he came back, all of him didn’t come back. … Pieces of him the way he used to be were perhaps left back there,” says his wife, Christi. “I didn’t get the whole guy I’d sent away.”

Today, Ham, 56, is one of only 12 four-star generals in the Army. He commands all U.S. soldiers in Europe. The stress of his combat service could have derailed his career, but Ham says he realized that he needed help transitioning from life on the battlefields of Iraq to the halls of power at the Pentagon. So he sought screening for post-traumatic stress and got counseling from a chaplain. That helped him “get realigned,” he says.

READ MORE from USA Today

November 23, 2008 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Fort Leonard Wood – Twelve years after a sex scandal prompted congressional investigations and changes in Army training, Fort Leonard Wood is again dealing with a wave of cases in which drill sergeants have engaged in sexual misconduct with women trainees.

Since February 2007, at least 14 drill sergeants or other trainers have faced courts-martial for having improper relationships with Soldiers undergoing initial-entry training at the sprawling Army post about 130 miles southwest of St. Louis.

READ MORE from The Hanscom Family Weblog

BELLA VISTA – Sweatered, hooded, gloved, about 100 people braved the weather, gathering in a huddled mass against the wind Saturday at the Veterans Wall of Honor.

A good showing compared to recent years, but not for Capt. Mark Golaway, a chaplain in the Arkansas Army National Guard, who longs for a return to the days of parades and nationwide celebrations.

He looked out over the crowd and saw “mostly vets and veterans’ families. “The entire population of Bella Vista, he said, should have been there.

“Have we as a nation forgotten what it is to wave the flag ? “Golaway asked. “Why do we settle, as veterans, for a small group to celebrate those who have gone before ?

READ MORE from The Benton County Daily Record

Since he was a seminarian and student during the Vietnam War, The Rev. William “Bill” B. Leone was never called up to serve in the military.

Leone did, however, see his friends go to war. He saw some come home injured and some who didn’t come home at all.

That’s why, just a few years after being ordained in 1974, Leone jumped at the chance to sign on as a chaplain with the New York Army National Guard.

Leone will get a chance Tuesday to pay homage to those who served their nation when he takes part in Irondequoit’s annual Veterans Day observance.

READ MORE from the Irondequoit Post

Uniformed imposters come to door, claim soldiers killed

A few Fort Campbell military families during the past two months have been getting the worst news they can imagine, only to find out the news was a hoax.

According to a news release from Fort Campbell, two men on Thursday visited a military family living on post to inform them their deployed soldier had been killed overseas.

In fact, the soldier was fine.

The two men came to the home, one dressed in a Class A “dress green” Army uniform and the other dressed as civilian clergy, according to the release.

READ MORE from The Leaf Chronicle

Moody Barker’s transfer from stateside duty to the Pacific in the final days of World War II led to two encounters he considers “divine appointments.” One reunited him with his brother. The other reintroduced him to a boyhood friend who helped usher him into the family of God.

After Barker, who lives at the Christian Care Center retirement facility in Mesquite, told members of his Sunday school class at First Baptist Church in Garland how he saw God at work when he was serving in the military more than 63 years ago, they persuaded him to write about his experience.

As Barker relates the story, he was drafted into the U.S. Army four months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the war. After he completed basic training in Virginia, he was stationed at Norton’s Point in Seagate, N.Y., at the north end of the Coney Island Boardwalk.

Although he was trained as a gun commander on a 90-millimeter emplaced to defend against aircraft or marine enemy, he discovered his primary duty was to check incoming and departing vessels passing through the New York Harbor submarine net.

READ MORE from The Baptist Standard