Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for organizing this very important Special Order. Mr. Speaker, I will tell the stories of three servicemembers that I have known in my time in the Navy, in my work at Walter Reed Hospital: One is of a soldier who tried to kill himself. He put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger. The gun fired, but it didn't kill him. It left him partially blind and with a significant head injury. He struggles through life. He continues to live, but the things that caused him to do that have not left. The second is of a marine that I knew, the son of a friend, who died recently. I went to his funeral and saw him lying there, looking so peaceful. The third, a soldier, I was called upon by the family to go visit him because he had been in his room for months. He covered the windows with camouflage. Bottles and bottles of medication littered his room, holes were punched in the walls, and he felt abandoned. There was nothing more we could do for the soldier who had killed himself; there were some things we could do for the soldier who harmed himself; but there was a lot we could do for the soldier who hid himself. When soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coastguardsmen look down the road to suicide, there are multiple reasons. Very often it is because they have faced those unspeakable horrors of war.…”