Why did the 101st Airborne Chief of Staff Kill himself? - OOTF
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This isn't meant to replace our regular OOTF by any measure, but we thought it'd be a great way to answer some comments that we thought were interesting!
This question comes in from Boo Kaufman. Thank you for the question!
He shot himself before the Battle of the Bulge so that would not have been a specific cause.
reminds me of the ballad of the green berets guy who got shot in a cab in south america or the guy that hoover killed Melvin Purvis
I didn’t know this
I like the shorts. Keep them coming.
So you DID answer a question from the comments!
This guy had no jump training, yet he still dropped into hell with his men. Massive respect where its due...
It was either that or die on the beach. Jumping was safer. Anyone with half a brain and access to intel on the German defenses knew that beach landing was a suicide mission.
he could have also screwed up massively and become an embarrassment to the paratroopers. Preparation is key.
Little known that an entire battalion of the 101st came across to France by boat.
Airborne training: Fall down. Don't drop weapon.
This was my thought when he said he jumped without any training.
100% Respect.
Not all wounds bleed
I wonder what the suicide rates were during WW1 and WW2. Those are the best kept secrets of both wars since there's rarely mention of it.
Or, are seen.
I was unprepared and broke down when I read this. I hope you will never know why.
@@Lord.Kiltridge Those who know, know why.
Combat related PTSD has existed as long as combat. It just didn't have a name.
Audie Murphy himself declared that when doing his amazing heroic feats he always felt gut wretching fear. He sufered PTSD for the rest of his life.
Media always portrays them as fearless Rambo super-soldiers. In reality, their fear is what kept them alive.
Bravery is the overcoming of fear.
The absence of fear is usually ignorance or mental illness.
People have done heroic things in battle without realizing it or sometimes even remembering it. It seems everyone experiences bravery a little differently.
Normal people have fear.
Sociopaths ignore it and Psychopaths don't feel it.
@@SidneyBroadshead People are animals that become conditioned to stimuli. Just because some people are better than adapting than you are, it doesn't mean they don't have access to certain emotions.
Jumping on d day as your first jump is crazy
Lot of crazy things happened 39-45
Yeah, and required large balls. Balls so large that they likely needed their own parachute.
"Hey yeah so we are just about to do the largest amphibious invasion in history in the largest war in the history. No pressure. Jump!"
@@diegrinder6851Always with the balls, you people.
@@paddyret7968 yes
After being a paratrooper myself, tramaic brain injuries can cause deep depression. I can see it as suicide after dealing with 3 myself.
Maybe he got a brain injury during one of those jumps? Since all I know on the subject is that alcoholism could be a cause of depression. Or hell maybe the man just snapped after too much war?
@@owenhammond1880 The nature of brain injuries is still not fully known. Seemingly minor bumps can lead to fatal damage. I would not be surprised, but we simply don't know if he was dealing with any other issues.
Spot on, they had no idea about CTE or post concussion syndrome, hell we barely know how to treat it in 2024.
@@BrorealeK He fought during WW2, PTSD isn't something to be outruled either.
@@owenhammond1880 it could also be chronic stress. To high level of stress hormones in the brain gives symptoms as migraine, lack of sleep, reduced memory, reduced concentration, lowered judgement. After months to years, three months and above it can give irreversible brain damage.
This format has a lot of potential for questions that can be answered quickly, while main OTFH episodes do the complex ones.
That's the idea! Thanks for the comment.
Its refreshing to see this format actually being done right. There's too many lazy "Historical fact" shorts that are done by AI and just flat-out inaccurate.
@@WorldWarTwo Some suicides aren't actually suicides. Have you done anything on General Maxwell (the highest ranking US officer killed during World War II)? It would be interesting to see what you come up with.
@@dennisvazquez2140 General Simon B. Buckner Jr. & General Lesley J. McNair were two 3-star generals posthumously promoted to 4-star after both dying during combat. Bruckner or McNair, one or other, was the highest ranked officer depending on source. Bruckner was killed by enemy artillery while in command of all forces ashore at Okinawa. McNair was Army Ground Forces commander (oversaw all army training, his command peaked at 2.2 million in '43), died at the Battle of St. Lo from friendly fire. Couldn't pin down a Gen. Maxwell that died in WW2, would like to learn of his story.
I thought Patton was the highest ranked Death?
Glad this channel has the balls to oppose youtube, and the internet at large's apprehension to talking about suicide using real terms rather than dumb placeholders like "un-alive."
Well, they're already demonitized and age restricted, so no real "sacrifice" is being made by saying suicide.
I loath that "second hand" for kids only jargon that UA-cam enforces. Sam with all the blurry screens.
The reason why suicide isn't talked about openly, at least in the mainstream media, is because it can encourage people who are on the verge of taking their lives to do the same... at least that's the case in Australia. Decades ago, it was noticed that when a prominent persons suicide was reported, there was an increase in the overall suicide numbers.
It's a difficult subject to broach.
In today's electronic world, words--either spoken or written-- can be detected, and the site can do several possible actions against the channel, and demonetization is probably the least of these things.
@@castleanthrax1833that may be, but my honest question to whoever did these studies, is whether reading "unalived" is any better?
My Uncle Robbie fought the Island Campaign in the Pacific from beginning to the Occupation. Was in Japan for about six months before getting out. Never got married after the War as he had horriffic nightmares ever night and was afraid he'd hurt, or worse, his wife should he marry. He didn't have a problem talking about the War and the things he did though, would chat about the most grisly of things like you'd state your breakfast favorites. He passed in 1985. Joined the Marines right out of reform school with my grandmother signing for him. Six feet eleven, a giant of man. Very scary, but never had even a short word with me. I miss him.
Wow. The Pacific island campaigns. Massive respect. I never really appreciated what those guys went thru until my brother and I bought a deep sea fishing charter. As we were preparing to leave several hours before dawn, I was shocked to see a group of old men loading coolers and fishing gear into the ship. I had some fierce words with the captain, as I had expected this to be our private charter, but the old men were coming with us - all day. We soon learned these guys were all Marines from WWII - the Pacific Island campaigns. They smoked and drank beer the whole day. The. Whole. Day. They never got seasick, even when chopping up raw fish for bait. They talked non-stop, remembering by name each of their lost friends, including brutal descriptions of how they had been killed. They told us they stuck together as, if they tried to cope with what they had been thru alone they would have gone nuts. That was 1996. Tough group of guys. I will never forget that day, or those guys. Amazing education. Horrifying stuff indeed.
Sharp Navy salute to your combat hardened uncle. Have you requested his records? It would be enlightening. My uncle is POW/MIA from combat in Pacific Theater, and my father was a combat medic in same area. Their records were ... heartbreaking.
@@ax2usn No sir, I haven't.
My father-in-law was 40 and Jewish when he signed up for World War II because he wanted to go to Germany and kill Nazis. But they sent him to Japan. He brought home a sword from a man that he had killed in Japan and for the rest of his life he carried the man’s picture of his wife and child that was in his wallet.
@@dejablue5746
A very decent man. May he rest in the bosom of Abraham & may the two of them be friends in the beyond. 🌟
Played a key role on planning D-Day
When the Glider he was supposed to use was no longer available he petitioned to go in with the paratroopers.
He and his men were dropped 15 miles off target , he gathered up as many men as he could and led them under fire back to the correct drop zone while vastly outnumbered and outgunned.
During operation Market Garden (his second combat drop) he and his men were shelled continuously for 72 days.
War isn't glorious.
Officers have to give orders that get men on both sides killed.
I don't think he could see that he was a hero , he could only see the bodies.
That kind of shelling for that long, wow. Bet there was brain injury.
This guy was a badass.
We’ll probably never know why he took his own life, but, as another commenter said, not all wounds bleed.
Remember him.
He could have gotten a dear John letter
@@decimated550 my thoughts exactly!
@@ms.sherlock I read a book on the Vietnam war when I was young, just memoirs of soldiers experiences, and one guy opened his mail. Read it, and later that day he just got up from his position and walked towards the NVA lines just trudging toward their lines . his fellow soldiers watched as he was shot down dead
@@decimated550 My husband was a Vietnam vet, field first sergeant- he had PTSD - a lot of anger issues. Sad.
Seemed he really cared about his men. And country.
So maybe his spouse or liver too. Yeah. You go through all that thinking this is what I’m doing this for and then get a letter like that. It would be devastating.
Some did that during the war, my uncle’s CO took his own life a few years afterwards. In WWII and post WWII seeking mental help was considered a sign of weakness and could land someone in a mental hospital for a long long time.
And with that on record, nobody will hire you. The vets just stuck together the best they could after the war, quietly.
@@RW4X4X3006cheap beer at the VFW
And in the 80's and 90's it was still the norm. Probably still is.
@@jad43701 The PR campaigns on PTSD over the past 20 years has society thinking veterans are an insanity factory and a liability for the workplace.
@@jad43701 It's better than it was. Although, the thing that is hurting people now is all the misinformation about the red flag laws. People don't want to lose their basic 2A rights but are afraid that simply asking to talk to someone is going to get them banned. If one party wouldn't be so quick to try to grab everything from people and cause that confusion while we ensure it is ONLY if they are a threat to themselves or others, it might help too.
The answer to the video appears to be “we don’t know either”.
I know, they didn't answer the question.
They just said it was suicide, which isn't an answer, why did he commit suicide
This channel seems to want to just clickbait, never giving the answer to the title. Weak
Honestly him being suicidal would track with risk-seeking behaviors like jumping when not trained properly.
Tragic. No matter how hard you are, there comes a time when you have just seen too much. RIP Colonel salute 🫡
As a child of two WW2 veterans who spent their post war years in and out of psychiatric hospitals (suicidal thoughts/attempts) the answer is obvious. Seeing a lot of death changes a person. (Mom was American Red Cross and up front in Europe; Dad was USAAC - Pacific
My uncle, an infantry company commander, had to call in artillery on his OWN position shortly after D-Day. Though they didn't call it PTSD back then, he must have had it severely as it killed him just a few years after the war, age 48. Silver star for his actions in France.
My dad served in WWII and he really didn't say a whole lot about it. What he did say was that there are somethings you do and see that you know at that very moment will never leave your mind. It will be with you forever. It's only with time, making to the next day and the next day and so on that when you get old you can say to yourself I can't believe that happened like it was another life. But it did and you just keep going on and try not to dwell on it because what else can you do. All bad things that happen in a person's life leave scars but in battle they go very deep.
With Market Garden being a screwup from the beginning and you happen to be put in charge of the airborne force that gets shot at like clay pigeons and your in it with them as it's happening! Now you are down on the ground with all the dead around you and you were the one in charge the one who only hours ago gave these same men a peptalk to get them worked up for battle and they never had a chance! How does one move on from that?
He could have had survivors guilt and felt responsible for some deaths.
Its probably more productive to call it PTSD. Guilt is one of the many symptoms PTSD give and people with PTSD will experience a range of emotions that are hard to pin down like 'he feels guilty being a survivor.' Its more productive to say he went through extreme trauma and was at risk of a number of symptoms including guilt. For me PTSD has resulted in depression and sleeping disorders, but not guilt.
@@BobHooker well I say this specifically because he's a military officer on the field and such mental troubles plauge a lot of them to where they have sleepless nights questioning their decision making "could I have done it better? what if I did this would they have lived?"
Stuff like that. Which leads to hesitancy or extreme guilt and reluctance to lead their men (as they think they will surely get them killed.) It's a hard balance because if you tilt too much the other way with over confidence you get Victory Disease which was common in WW2.
Yes, by all means. Let’s continue to perpetuate the softening and dumbing down of anything that might more truthfully describe what it is we’re trying to help confront and actually face from these experiences. These college psych committees who think that pretending things are less than and denying the reality of it somehow disguises what we feel so we can pretend some more instead of being honest with ourselves. When do we get back to learning coping skills for reality?
Survivor's guilt?? The war wasn't over yet so he still had a chance to die so why would he bother committing suicide 🙄????
@@user-bd3gt9jt1x because PTSD causes irrational self harm
The amount of hell on earth-gore, blood, and death these men had to face head-on is rarely mentioned. PTSD or battle fatigue as it was called then was considered a form of cowardice.
‘He did his first combat jump into an occupied continent with lots of hostiles’
That what a *combat* jump is. I think the point was supposed to be that his first jump was a combat jump
@@Ninja-Alinja *yeah, that’s my point*
As opposed to a combat jump into friendly lines?
@@_ArsNova no getting jump qualified first
So did most of them.
One possible idea. Some of his men died, and he felt intense guilt over it and blamed himself.
PTSD often involves guilt, but it has a wide range of symptoms and can result in a range of conditions that led to suicide.
Losing friends and loved ones is hard enough at the best of times and this was such extremely testing conditions, people talk today about stress but the stress of making decisions that determined the lives of thousands more men is a recipe for tragedy.
You can't keep pushing people until they crack from the pressure.
@@Treblaine Indeed. These things stick around forever. I was speaking to a WW2 veteran the other week, over 100 now, and he said how clearly he felt and remembered his comrades, clear as if it was today. The pain of losing them lasts a lifetime
@@Adonnus100it's crazy they're still alive
STOP IT. You don't deserve to speak of such a man. Go back to your games.
Back then, suicide was considered a moral failing, rather than the consequences of mental illness (+1), so the investigating officers were damn circumscript about the wording they used in their official documents.
Doctors would even state the cause of death as heart failure (which, of course, occurs in every death) & mention "a minor head laceration, possibly from scrapnel", or some such, to protect their family from the disgrace.
Even today, there's a tremendous pressure for serving officers not to mention any mental health problems (+2) in case they're considered weak, or affects their chances for promotion - too often with tragic results.
(+1) - Not to mention be considered dereliction of duty in a serving officer, get them refused a place of honor at Arlington (as suicide considered a mortal sin by the Catholic Church, suicides were prevented from being buried in "consecrated ground") and - most revolting of all - even have their windows refused any benefits.
(+2) - There's also a disgusting amount of deliberate misdiagnosing of discharged officers with PTSD by doctors at the VA (preventing them from getting full benefits), but that's a seperate issue...
I’d be interested to know the toxicology report if there was an autopsy which during a war I presume not for obvious reasons. Was he drinking whilst taking barbiturates? Amphetamines ?This can cause extremely erratic behaviour when alcohol in its own may not . Drug use during ww2 is only just being discussed regularly. Did he have a concussion extant ? So many variables. Wife leaving him ? Sad he sounded like a brave man . Hell, he was a brave man !
It wasn't hard to find a doctor who would have a "here, take this, it'll make you feel better" but with very little regard to the dangers of mixing with alcohol or chronic use, just an attitude of "well, it gave short term benefits, what else do you want?"
I think Richard Winters had the right idea for the grunts at least, have them reassigned where the pressure is taken off them, even for a short time. People need time to mourn.
@@Treblaine agreed .
Yeah, I didn't realize until fairly recently how prevalent amphetamine usage was in WW2. I'm not sure about it's usage on the ground for the allies.
he may have actually been taking pain meds or something to deal with the shock of the landings. that may actually explain it.
Yeah he was probably playing Russian Roulette with a pistol.
I may be missing something here but I think we can definitely classify shooting oneself as a suicide, irrespective of the reasons.
I think the connotation is that suicide due to medical diagnosis (a virulent kind of cancer, for instance), was given a distinction separate from suicide for less tangible reasons. That's what I gathered, at least. It does track with the perceptions of the time period.
If that were the case, I find it strange that he wouldn't wait until the end of the war, at least. Perhaps he was suffering from an illness from around the time of Market-Garden or even before until his death, and so due to a diagnosis he might be worried he'd be relieved of command. In that case, the war would be over for him anyway. This is conjecture of course, but to find out more we'd need recollections about him from those who worked around him - any enlisted personnel that worked in his HQ, his driver or drivers, that kind of individual. They would have seen how he carried himself, would know of there were any scuttlebutt about his health before he died. Perhaps his death was preceeded by a doctor or hospital visit.
There might be records, but due to a massive fire in the 1970's it's just as likely there'd be no still-extant documentation. There's ways of piecing this together for someone who really wants to devote themselves to it.
That's not gonna be my white whale, however.
Oh, also unless it's an accidental shooting - which happened absolutely all the time back then. Negligent discharges were just a fact of life. Can't really call that a suicide if the intent isn't there.
@@fuzzydunlop7928 Suicide is suicide irrespective of the reason and the choice of method.
He means that many (primarily military) sources vaguely reference him dying of "health issues" WITHOUT mentioning that he shot himself.
When I was undergoing training at the Surface Warfare School Detachment in San Diego in 1975, we were told that until recently when someone committed suicide a review was done to determine the state of mind of the person! If it was determined that he was sane at the time of his/her suicide his family would not be given any survivor benefits but if he was determined to be insane they would get survivor benefits.
Imagine doing a combat jump at night with no parachute training.
Well, he had combat related PTSD so that’s what he chose to do. The illness wasn’t understood well during the war. Tragically, he couldn’t get the help he needed.
They had some crude concept of shell shock which they knew very little about. Psychology had not advanced much beyond Freud. It has only been 25 years that the idea that combat could cause mental illness was adopted, before that it was considered just cowardness.
It's still not truly understood today.
Much of what goes on inside our heads is a mystery.
@@castleanthrax1833 Somebody used the analogy of trying to understand the brain is like hanging a microphone in a full auditorium of people on game day and trying to listen to an individual conversation - occasionally your hear parts of a conversation and parts of another.
Fishy like pattons death
And Forrestal's.
High probability this was a cover up
I find it eerily ironic that he commited suicide on the anniversary of the Japenese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Sometimes you just see to much, and do too much. The best analogy I have heard is that every Soldier has a hypothetical "bottle", and in combat they fill up at different rates for each individual, when its full, its full.
Suicide is considered a medical issue
Remember the Patton in Italy incident? Clearly not everybody shared that opinion.
My uncle Joe was 101 airborne.. he said it was a very rough time.. GOD REST HIS SOUL, he passed away a few years ago around 80 years old, can't remember his exact age but yeah he was getting old.. one tough old man..
"Health issues"
Well, mental health *is* health, so they ain't lying
Concussions cause clinical depression. Untreatable at the time.
My mothers cousin died during Operation Market Garden when the transport plane he was in was hit by flak. 13 of the paratroopers escaped before the plane exploded. The aircraft had faulty fuel tanks that didn't self heal like they were supposed too. It was a known issue but the army said use them anyway 😢
That's sad, thank you for sharing that with us.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
He probably had news of his wife cheating on him or something similar. That kind of thing destroys you when you’re so far from home
I haven’t been out that long but I know if sailors completely losing it or even attempting to top themselves at sea when they get bad personal news. I think it’s a result of feeling so powerless to act and just wanting the pain to stop
That kind of thing is kept quiet and you only hear about it from people who were there
True. Some men in WWII spent three or more years as a P.O.W. of the Japanese (who generally allowed no letters, unlike the Red Cross in Germany) only to come home and find their wife had married someone else.
I'd think it was more likely that war was raging all around him and he had to see so many people die.
@@briskettacos he was a staff officer
@johnnytower6169 Hell's Hughway. Look it up. He wouldn't have been immune to death.
First ever jump is a combat jump 15 miles behind enemy lines as an officer, they don't make officers like they used to.
I would like to add that, according to one contemporary source, it was most definitely NOT accidental. He died with his .45 in his mouth. This was a day or two after HQ Master Sergeant David Harmon did the same thing. According to another source close to Millener, he borrowed a razor from this source, so he could shave, just before he did it. Source stated he was not acting like his normal self at the time. This was two of at least three known suicides in that unit around the same time, according to contemporary sources.
That makes me think they where all given some kind of info that didnt sit well with them whether that was new orders or a truth that was revealed we'll likely never know as i imagine the men who had that info have probly passed by now.
@@10Doomhawk My guess is undiagnosed and untreated PTSD. Major Dixon of the 506'th had issues with it, and was constantly drunk for a time, until Colonel Winters got him back and dried him out. He suffered tremendously, having been "in combat" quite often, but never firing a shot in anger or being wounded to prove his bravery - and he had (apparently) massive survivor's guilt over it.
Given the dismal state of "mental health care" of the time, this seems to be the best theory, given other contemporary accounts of similar incidents. Colonel Millener would certainly fit the bill - he'd been in combat and done brave things, but HE was still there, whereas many men under him that he was "responsible" for, were not. If Major Dixon is any analogue at all, it fits like a glove.
A very sad, unfortunate glove.
Of course, one could cast aspersions as well. Anything from devastation Dear John letters, to improprieties occurring within the unit they were involved with, and accepted suicide over exposure. But, we have zero evidence of any of this, and very likely NEVER will, as all involved parties are deceased by this time, and eighty years has passed, obscuring or destroying any physical evidence that might remain.
@@calanon534 did you mean Captain Nixon?
The man was obviously an officer who had guts. It's sad he felt that was his only option for whatever troubled him.
The worst of men start wars, the best of them finish them
At some point, even yhe bravest and most competrnt burn out. It happened to all sides in WW2. Men, with the highest awards for valor, their countries bestowed, froze, and were unable to climb into their aircraft. Humans can only put out 100% for so long. Something has to give, and, sadly, he gave before someone realized he was at the breaking point.
No training, jumped, crazy brave.
Okay, someone help me with whatever I'm missing here:
"He suddenly shot himself... most sources say it was due to health problems, *but* [source] said it was suicide."
Is it ever *not* suicide when you shoot yourself?
Is health-related suicide somehow not suicide?
Am I missing something?
It might have been worded differently. Killing one's self because of incurable health reasons rather than committing suicide because of mental health issues?
Likewise, how does a gunshot happen any way other than "suddenly"?
He means that many (primarily military) sources vaguely reference him dying of "health issues" WITHOUT mentioning that he shot himself.
The sad thing is he undoubtedly had countless reasons and experiences to consider suicide, but given the era he never would have voiced them to anyone. Can’t imagine what that man went through.
I love this format, keep it coming!!
Thank you, we plan too!
As a vet, I can tell you PTSD is rough.
It is. PTSD has ruined my life.
@@badmanskill1112 I am relatively lucky in a sense. I just have trouble sleeping sometimes from having night terrors. Or I don't have a lot of patience dealing with some people. Other than that I can function pretty well compared to many others.
@@nasis18 Good to hear man. A lot of vets have unfortunately ended themselves due to PTSD. I wish there were better resources for vets but the military industrial complex wants all of it.
@@badmanskill1112 Yeah, we're used up and tossed to the side.
Need more facts
Accidental discharge of a fire arm?
An affair?
Maybe it was like Pattons situation. They killed him because he said somthing they didnt like and labled it suicide.
There's always one ... 🤦♂
It is possible
Is this like how Patton died by freak donkey accident?
Patton was involved in a jeep accident. He ended up dying mysteriously when he was alone with a secret service agent. I believe he was assassinated
Patton died as the result of injuries sustained in a auto accident in immediate postwar Germany.
"Self-harm" was a lot more common back then than people think, due to its taboo nature euphemisms were used in official documentation, buddies covered for the deceased, that sort of thing - this makes it difficult to determine when a wartime death was an instance of deliberate total selfdestruction. It makes it next to impossible to determine WHY the deceased chose to do it.
I think it's important to remember that not all instances need to be directly tied to the war, many of the reasons today were just as relevant back then, now place that context within the war where you're working or fighting for the duration, in a system that is only reluctantly dipping its toes into the issue of mental wellness and that will be very quick to forget any of the lessons it learns from this war as it carries out future conflicts.
In these instances, I think it's important to cut all of our postfacto understandings and go right to the source - the individuals living and struggling during that time period. Robert Leckie was fairly forthcoming in his memoir and anyone interested in the subject might find it instructional.
Him jumping into D-Day is actually myth, he TRIED to jump on D-Day but command intervened when the parachute wasn't big enough for his balls
How can it be Bastogne related if he passed on 7 DEC 44? It can’t be.
the 101st was based in Mourmelon-le-Grand and launched for Bastogne. The troops referred to the French town as "Bastogne Command" during the battle . Hence the paratroopers of the 101st asked each other why their chief of staff died just 11 days before they moved out.
He probably thought he’d die on that first jump. Dudes were savages! Total badasses.
This is... so sad. Someone below wrote "Not all wounds bleed." I agree. I hope, wherever he is, he's there in peace.
“Why did a man going through hellish combat kill himself” I can imagine a few reasons
no training, just jumped and sat like a chair. Beastmode
The thought of him doing all those heroic things to end up punching out on his own...a true mystery
The stress of being an officer, in charge of so many lives. Thoughts can weigh heavy on those who makes decisions that can get good men killed. I can't imagine having to calculate for such a thing.
Sounds like a lead from the front hell of a warrior kind of commander. This guy was a hero and there were thousands like him we've never heard of. So sad.
Damn, they didn't cover this in Band of Brothers. I guess it would have made the Bastogne episode just that much more depressing
Will you look into the 511th PIR???
My grandfather served in?
They are the “Band of Brothers” of the Pacific and their story needs to be told.
Mine was there too, but recently the way things are being revealed, and the direction everything suddenly changed to, and even family behaving like an organized cartel of strangers with bad intentions, that maybe someone wasn't who they came home as. My poppa was Robert Meehan, and another relation disappeared on the Titanic too. Maybe no Meehan actually ever made it home.
He was there with my grandpa, RIP.
Legend says he did it because the 101st would rather die than admit they needed Patton’s help in Bastogne.
PTSD?
Most likely. Did he leave a suicide note?
It’s a possibility. He had been removed from combat duty, and PTSD often hits the hardest when a soldier is removed from the daily stresses and demands (and distractions) of the field.
It could also be that he was predisposed towards depression even before the war, and that his experiences, with both the stresses of command and the trauma of seeing people kill, served as aggravating factors.
OMG lol your cadence while reading the question made me think there was an Indy AI now and I was terrified.
Military commanders always look for a way to make it 'not suicide'. To come right out and say it, there must've been corroborating evidence.
Surely combat fatigue, encroaching PTSD? Not that difficult to understand.
Look at our lads that deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan nowadays.
Even the most capable soldiers have a limit.
Worked in a nursing home and one of the guys fought in Korea. He only spoke in a whisper and he slept with his heater on high covered up to his neck.
Uncle Charles died in 1943, in Serbia, which has never been explained, but they buried him with honors. His brother Edwin, died on 1944, at Lemone France. Their younger brother Donald, lived.
Seeing Germans shoot your homies and having to shoot Germans wasn't great for anyone's mental health. He was obviously a high empathy person to have gone to such lengths for the morale of his men. Battles can deeply negatively affect people.
Bro skipped the tutorial
So that's where the Market Gardener gets its name from…
My uncle had a nervous breakdown a few years after the war. He recovered.
My Dad was just weird after the war. Sometimes he's just shutdown for days and not talk to us. He's still go to work but at home he'd just stare at you if you spoke to him. Mom would just call him for dinner. He'd come in wash up, sit down, eat and leave, without a word. Then after a few days He'd start to talk again. It's like he got triggered. Never knew why. Several years before he passed away he would get so paranoid, he was hard to deal with. I'd go to his house, take him groceries, clean, do laundry, dishes, etc. I be there the entire day and he never spoke to me. Wouldn't acknowledge I was even there. Mom was gone by then. I got to the point, I never spoke to him. I'd just finish up. Grab my stuff and walk out the front door.
Sometimes he'd be fine. When he was nice, I'd go get Popeye's chicken and fixings and we'd have dinner. He loved Popeye's. I wasn't going to go get food and sit there and eat in silence.
He ask for regular and then eat all my spicy!
He never spoke much about the War. He was a marine in the south pacific. He did say more as he got older. He had some bad stories of people getting blown up trying to take souvenirs off dead Japanese soldiers.
Invisible wounds left untreated kill. The emitional toll of sending men to their deaths has led many in officer to their own end.
No jump training and two combat jumps.. I think he’s trained
Man was probably fighting 2 different wars :/
I suspect there are a lot of untold stories like Colonel Milner's. PTSD and suicide were both taboo subjects at the time, and remained so for decades.
This guy wasn't a firefighter. He was a scam artist.
Thank you for not saying something stupid like " ceased living" "unalived himself"
The BATTLING BASTARDS OF BASTOGNE
My favorite war movie was Battle Field. I think it was made in 53 or so. Several actors actually fought in or around Bastogne. Aldo Ray maybe. Ill have to look that up..
PTSD? Wife left him? Hundreds of possibilities.
Perhaps he got a " Dear Raymond" letter?..
PTSD is a real thing. They called it “shell shocked” those days.
But even “light” PTSD can trigger suicidal thoughts.
Not with everyone, but with quite a number of people.
In general PTSD can have many other unpleasant effects and behaviors.
Depression
Only thing I can think of is he'd been dealing with severe anxiety attacks privately. Because in those days to this very Day, if you're a Frontline combat soldier you never want to be THOUGHT of as weak or deficient, much less even PERCEIVED as such. He'd been fighting the severe anxiety demon whispers alone, and Had a full blown panic/anxiety attack. As he saw 1st hand how after D-Day the war speeding up faster & men dying faster under his command or another's and he succumbed to the demons voices and took his own life rather than order another man to lose his. This happened in Vietnam with quite a few fresh out of west point green LT's. The Army hushed it up, covered it up and just listed them K.I.A.
I never heard this story either. Thanks Indy!
Seems like a very unlikely time and place
Even if it was due to health problems that’s still suicide.
It’s called these days as PTSD back then they called it shell shock and did absolutely nothing for it
Combat Fatigue was the official name. That replaced Shell Shock. Carlin had an excellent take on it in a standup routine. It's probably online.
I cannot imagine the sense of guilt any officers feel when they lose men under their command. Knowing they issued orders that sent men to their deaths must be an incredible burden.
We really need better mental health support for our military combat troops when they retire from combat. It's criminal and reprehensible how the government treats its combat vets.
I actually also asked this in the comments of that video. Very interesting.
Mourmelon is a place where it's hard to live even for a military...
In the interviews with the actual band of brothers soldiers i forgot if it was shifty powers or sgt Guarneer that said something like this. we were all scared but some of us was still able to perform our duties under those conditions.
Kind of a strange question to ask after all these years.
Big mike ties that star muscle out
My uncle Paul was at Okinawa, Iowajima, shot himself in the head two weeks after he got home!
Subbed. Like your style.
I was in the Army and I had talked to Vietnam Veterans and they said they were not about killing someone. Perhaps that's why.
Originally it was "shellshock", then "battle fatigue" and latterly PTSD. However, concussions from explosions do cause invisible brain damage that often reveals itself as PTSD. So maybe shellshock was the correct term.
between the incredible stress, probably traumatic brain injuries, the immesne physicsl pain he must have been in at the time, and its suddenly not hard to see that he may have lost his battle with some demons of his own.