Profiles In Unnecessary Courage

Howard & Jean Somers with son Daniel (center)

The American tragedy that was 9/11 is now more than a dozen years distant. Approximately 3,000 people died that day, but those deaths were eclipsed soon enough by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were exceptionally long, brutal, and emotionally costly for the service members who fought them.

By 2005, military suicides were a cause for concern, as they tracked with the pace of combat. By 2009, the rate was being referred to as an 'epidemic.' In 2012, eleven years after the events that propelled us to war, a new milestone was reached: Even as the last, lingering war was beginning to wind down, for the first time, deaths of military members from suicides (349) surpassed the number of deaths attributable to combat (295).

In June of 2013 the hidden wounds of Daniel Somers' inner battle took its final toll on him, and the former Army soldier took his own life after writing these words:

“Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war ... not only am I better off dead, but the world is better without me in it ... there are some things that a person simply cannot come back from.”

Daniel's parents allowed the complete text of his suicide note to be published online. The narrative of his emotional state and personal circumstances is both jarring and tragic. Daniel did not get the help he needed or deserved, after bringing the war back home within the confines of his own head and heart.

Howard & Jean Somers, surely never expecting to outlive their child, have honored their son's life and memory by becoming advocates for more and better mental health care for veterans, and long-overdue fixes to Veterans Administration processes and priorities.

Daniel Somers died at 30, an age when most young men are looking forward, not back through a prism of unresolved pain and regret. Like all veterans, he signed a contract to give up his life if necessary in the defense of the United States. But his battlefield was supposed to be over there, not here. Not on a dead-end street in Phoenix, Arizona. His death was preventable; intervention and treatment were possible; if only more Americans had cared enough to defend him, when he came home.