Photo By Michel Sauret | Dr. Richard Doss, former suicide prevention program manager for the 416th Theater...... read more read more
DARIEN, Ill. – When Dr. Richard Doss entered the room, he could already sense that joke lingering in the air.
Soldiers sat in a circle. There were maybe 20 or 30 in the room, most of them slouching or looking around to avoid eye contact.
Doss always wears a dark, sharply-pressed suit, a clash of clothing compared to the uniforms around him, mostly wrinkled or stained from a recent deployment.
He knows what’s on their minds.
The joke goes like this:
“If I have to sit through one more suicide prevention stand down, I swear I’m going to kill myself.”
It’s not a good joke. Today’s suicide statistics are no laughing matter. In 2013 alone, 57 suicides took place in the Army Reserve, the deadliest count since 2009.
And yet, most Soldiers have either heard or voiced that joke before. Just the word “stand down” is likely to produce groans and rolling eyes from the group.
On a battle assembly weekend, a “stand down” means Soldiers have to drop their entire training schedule for the sake of some hot-button topic. Most of the time, it comes in the form of a lecture or a video that’s already been shown half-a-dozen times.
Doss, a clinical psychologist, knows all this. As a former suicide prevention program manager for the 416th Theater Engineer Command, he traveled the country to visit units after their return from deployment. These conferences are known as Yellow Ribbon events, designed to reintegrate Soldiers back into family and civilian lives.
This was one of those events, and he could sense that joke ruminating before anyone spoke a word. They expected some rehearsed speech or power point presentation.
“This is not going to be that talk,” he reassured them.
He didn’t come with a lecture. He came armed with honesty, a desire to communicate, and a story.
“This is a story I learned of a guy named Jason on a flight I was taking. We were headed to Phoenix. I shared with the person sitting next to me that I was a suicide prevention program manager for the United States Army Reserve, and he told me a story about his best friend who was a saxophonist.”
Jason played the saxophone through high school. According to the friend telling the story, he was good enough to do it professionally. When it came time to graduate, though, he joined the U.S. Marines Band, also known as “The President’s Own.”
“This is like going to the Harvard of schools for a musician. It’s a really prestigious honor. Not everybody gets an opportunity to do that,” said Doss.
Jason’s excitement was overwhelming. He would get to play for the president, general officers, dignitaries, politicians … What a dream.
Instead, he was deployed to Afghanistan.
“They didn’t give him a saxophone. His first assignment was sitting on top of a Humvee manning a 50-caliber machine gun.”
Regardless, he was proud to serve as a Marine. So, though his excitement changed, it didn’t fade completely. Except, on his first combat encounter, he faced an unexpected surprise.
The first enemy who came running out of a ditch holding a rifle was a little boy.
“I don’t want to kill a kid,” he shouted down into the Humvee to his team, hoping for some guidance.
The boy ran closer. Closer. He was armed and had every intention to harm or kill somebody.
“Take him out,” they responded. “Take him out!”
Reluctantly, Jason shot the boy. Then more enemies ran out of the ditch with rifles and weapons. Jason engaged. He “neutralized” the enemy.
“So Jason was a good Marine,” Doss said. “He did what he was trained to do. Now the challenge is that every night when Jason goes to bed, the face that he sees when he closes his eyes is the face of that little boy.”
At this point of his story, a sergeant in the room raised his hand to object.
“Doc, Doc! Rules of engagement, man. He’s not supposed to be shooting at no kid with a 50-caliber!”
Doss doesn’t get a chance to respond before someone else jumped in.
“What did you expect him to do? Put the 50-caliber down and start digging for a side arm, as people are rushing at him?”
The discussion continued among the Soldiers. In a way, these objections reflect the internal turmoil a Soldier might face in the midst of trauma. Like looking for black and white answers through a grey cloud of smoke.
“In battle, sometimes, we make decision that are life and death. Those decisions are made in the blink of an eye,” he said.
Doss knows deployments are not the cause of all suicides. Many suicides come as a result of relationship, financial or legal troubles. Yet, Doss sees a connection between the Army’s culture of toughness with the struggle Soldiers face internally.
“I think the fallacy is that Soldiers have been trained to think that what they experience during war is normal. But the reality is that trauma is trauma however you experience it, wherever you experience it.”
U.S. service members are expected – rightly so – to be tough to do a job almost no other American is asked to do, he said. Doss admires and respects that resiliency. It’s a necessary aspect of the mission.
Yet, that toughness translates into silence. Soldiers are taught that asking for help is a sign of weakness.
“Even early on, what we learn to do is to keep our struggles to ourselves. As boys we are told to get up. Stop crying. Be a man. Boys don’t cry … The military in particular reinforces that idea of sucking it up. Being Strong. Army strong.”
That toughness can be misunderstood, even by the outside world.
“We get a sense that war is glamorous, and killing is glamorous. But the reality is that taking a life is a very difficult thing,” Doss said. “I had one 13-year-old boy (at a different Yellow Ribbon event) say, ‘I don’t want to know if my brother killed anybody. I want to know how many people he killed!’”
That glamor fades with stories like that of Jason. There are plenty more stories Doss has heard Soldiers share. They don’t always deal with combat. That’s one of the keys to achieving personal healing, Doss said, by sharing internal struggles with others. Not letting them fester and take root in the mind.
“My personal and professional belief is that everybody needs to talk to somebody. I think the truth is that we all have issues. We all have what I call ‘stuff.’ … Nobody is immune.”
Doss calls stress an “equal opportunity offender.” It doesn’t matter what color, creed, race or religion a Soldier is. Stress will come.
Sharing stories – even the ugly, most painful ones – can help bring healing.
“The Army does a good job of teaching Soldiers to take care of the mission,” he said. “But who teaches the Soldier to take care of themselves, or who takes care of the Soldier? If you don’t take care of the Soldier, it’s going to be hard for the Soldier to take care of the mission.”
| Date Taken: | 09.19.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.19.2014 10:45 |
| Story ID: | 142702 |
| Location: | DARIEN, ILLINOIS, US |
| Hometown: | OLYMPIA FIELDS, ILLINOIS, US |
| Web Views: | 552 |
| Downloads: | 3 |
This work, In the room: The saxophone player who was issued a 50-cal, by Michel Sauret, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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