What Price Manhood?

[FrancoDiSantisxxx]

This is the other side of the coin of "It's A Guy Thing." A very lengthy article, so I have only reproduced the first few graphs here. The entire links is: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-war-suicide16apr16,1,4354422.story

 

The Los Angeles Times requires registration, however it is free and to my knowledge, I have no gotten any more spam or "offers" or the like for having registered.

 

Suicide Too Frequently a Foe for Military

The armed forces' second leading cause of death prompts a call for greater prevention. The Marines have been hit especially hard.

 

By Hugo Martin

 

One of the first casualties of the war with Iraq came more than a week before allied forces dropped the first bomb or fired the first bullet.

 

Marine Pfc. James R. Dillon Jr., who had just turned 19 in the Kuwaiti desert, apparently took his own life, stepping into a portable toilet at a Marine staging area and shooting himself in the head with an M-16 rifle.

 

Dillon, a Pennsylvania native who trained in Twentynine Palms, left his comrades wondering if the pressure of the approaching war had been too much for the young man.

 

The death highlights a problem that has plagued the military, particularly the Marines, for years.

 

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the military and a problem so serious it prompted the Defense Department to call recently for increased suicide-prevention efforts. Accidents, including motor vehicle crashes, are the leading cause.

 

Suicides claimed the lives of 118 active-duty servicemen and women in 2001 -- almost the number of American deaths so far in Iraq.

 

This is the first part of the article, word for word; the balance is available at the link given above.