Jan 17th 2007

Unfortunate bad news again today, although thank God it wasn't as bad as it could have been...

When I came into the tent to work today, I was told by those I relieve, that there was an attempted suicide in the phone area.

There are several crudely built wooden booths, with a door to provide a minimum amount of privacy while the soldiers are talking with their loved ones.

This afternoon, a soldier was in on one of the phones and those around him heard him pounding like a madman on the plywood walls. It is was this noise that at first attracted everyone in the other phone booths to him.

They said less than a couple minutes later they heard him put a magazine in his weapon and chamber a round.

A couple guys that were in the booths next to him, dropped their phones, opened this soldier's door to his booth and wrestled his weapon from him. They said he was mumbling something about his wife...the soldiers that grabbed him out of the phone booth said it was another "Jody".

A Chaplain and the Combat Stress Unit guys were called to the tent, they talked to him for awhile and then took him away.

I too have known this pain in the past, and it's all about hope.

It's all you have here...hope. Hope that you, and everyone around you will make it home safe. Hope that your life, as you knew it when you left, because of being here, will not change too much, although you know deep down, it will.

You can't lose the hope that the sunshine of tomorrow will overshadow the pain of today and show you a new path of happiness and joy. The hope that things will always get better.

That is the way of the world...that all things...be them good...or bad...do not last forever.

He lost his hope and that's all. Maybe the Chaplain and the Combat Stress guys can show him the way back to the hope that he lost for those few minutes and almost for good...