Joyce and Kevin Lucey, parents of Jeffrey Lucey, who committed suicide after returning, describe the last months of his life and his unsuccessful efforts to get help from the Veterans Administration. Jeffrey was a Marine convoy driver stationed in Iraq for five months at the start of the war.
After he came back, he told his girlfriend he had done immoral things. “I’ve seen and done enough horrible things to last a lifetime,” he said to her. Jeffrey told his sister he was a murderer. He wore the dog tags of two Iraqi soldiers for whose death he felt responsible. He wore the tags to honor the two. Shortly before he killed himself, Jeffrey asked his father to take him in his lap and rock him, and his father did.
After he died, his parents found a note that read, “I am truly embarrassed of the man I became and I hope you can try to remember me only as a child when I was happy, proud, and enjoyed life.” He was 23.
Eugene Martin is a staffer for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents many Veterans Administration employees. He says the uncertainty of funding undermines the efforts of VA staff to help veterans. Each year, he says, Congress fails to appropriate money on time, and instead passes continuing resolutions with funds for a month or two, which makes planning and filling vacancies very hard. What’s more, funds intended for medical treatment are sometimes diverted to other uses.
Tod Ensign, director of Citizen Soldier and author of America’s Military Today, cites a March 6 Army report that the rate of mental illness and PTSD among soldiers in their third or fourth Iraq tours is one in three.