On the death of two American soldiers

It had been a while since I checked in with Tom Ricks' blog, The Best Defense, and I did on this last Sunday of the summer.

Bad idea.
Truly depressing and distressing stories about two soldiers.

The first one was about a Marine, Tom Bagosy, who committed suicide on May 10th.

Bagosy joined the Marine Corps in 2004 and married Katie in 2005. They have two children.

He was deployed to Iraq in 2006 and promoted to sergeant in 2007. He joined Marine Corps Force Special Operations Command in October 2008 and was deployed to Afghanistan. During his tours he earned several medals including two Combat Action Ribbons and a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, according to information from MarSOC.

But, he was far from healthy inside--severe PTSD ... how tragic ... and a system that couldn't help him despite his wife's pleas:

“I spoke to his psychiatrist and when that didn’t seem to help — at this point I felt the same as Tom that no one was listening to him or cared enough to help — I wrote a letter asking for a new doctor,” she said. The referral didn’t go through until a week after Bagosy died. ...

“I talked to his psychologist and I said that he was suicidal and tried to overdose the day before and had a gun and needed in-patient,” Katie Bagosy said.

When Bagosy discovered his doctors wanted to admit him to the hospital, he bolted from his Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program and headed for the parking lot. Staff tried to stop him and even asked other Marine patients to grab him, but Bagosy got away, according to witnesses and his wife.

“As Tom drove away he called me and said something about pulling a gun on someone and then said, ‘I love you and I don’t think I’m ever going to see you again,’” Katie Bagosy said, adding her husband was crying hysterically. He then hung up on her.

While being pursued by two provost marshals, Bagosy stopped on McHugh Boulevard and shot himself in the head.

Sgt. Tom Bagosy was 25 years old when he died.

In another post, Ricks linked to this story about "the US Soldier Who Committed Suicide After She Refused to Take Part in Torture"

Spc. Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers who died in Iraq. Her death under these circumstances should have drawn wide attention. It's not exactly the Tillman case, but a cover-up, naturally, followed. ...
Peterson, a devout Mormon—her mother, Bobbi, claims she always stuck up for "the underdog"—had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and was sent to the Middle East in 2003, reportedly going in place of another soldier who did not wish to go.

On September 15, 2003, Peterson shot herself with the service rifle because she did not want to participate in the torture practices.

The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she…could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire."

The article includes a note from her brother, and this slide-show narrated by her mother; I doubt if one can watch and listen without getting emotional.

Spc. Alyssa Peterson was 27 when she died.