Of Paranoia and Patriotism

When I was stationed in Germany in the 1980s, the armor battalions on our kaserne kept live ammunition on their M1A1 Abrams tanks 24/7, including 120mm depleted uranium rounds, the better to roll out speedily should Ivan come across the Intra-German Border. For that reason, their nightly guard shift also carried live ammo in their sidearms, initially the venerable Colt .45, and later, the Beretta 9mm.

One cold Hessian night, a despondent young private on guard duty in that lonely tank park pulled his pistol, pressed it against his chest, and pulled the trigger, committing suicide.

The next morning, the Armor battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, held a formation and told his assembled troops that he didn’t give a fuck about a solder who wanted to kill himself.

I had a lot of respect for that colonel otherwise, but it goes without saying he was flat-out wrong with that callous attitude, which was colossally un-PC even in the far less enlightened US Army of the Eighties. Many of our soldiers were young men right out of high school (we had no women in combat arms in those days), deployed to a remote part of an allied­ but sometimes still hostile foreign country, and their mental health was of great concern to the unit leadership, or should have been, with suicide in the ranks a serious problem across USAREUR. Today that commander’s opinion…