Soldier Suicides and Military Deaths Continue at Home and in Iraq: Will Media Cover?

By: Greg Mitchell The U.S. military reported last week that, in the Army alone, 18 troops committed suicide in February -- down six from January's shocking high but still above what they expected. They say they are continuing to push forward with more and better counseling but, of course, multiple deployments to war zones continue.

For almost six years, I have covered the disturbing number of military suicides and accidental deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, starting well before most in the media appeared to notice. Many of the sources for the columns were local newspapers, which often embrace the difficult task of looking behind those vague Pentagon announcements of deaths in "noncombat" situations with "an investigation" promised.

In a wild coincidence, two of the cases that most haunted me, involving an Army medic named Roselle Hoffmaster and an Army sergeant, Ryan Maseth, recently received updates on the same day.

In the first case, the Army?s investigation of Capt. Hoffmaster, who died on Sept. 20, 2007, at the age of 32, was finally released. Hoffmaster was a surgeon commissioned into the Medical Corps in 2004. She volunteered to serve in Iraq because, while happily married, she had no children and thought she should take the place of someone who did have kids. She appeared to be widely liked, admired, even treasured.

In December, her husband notified me privately that he had just received the results of the official probe and that her death had been ruled a suicide. A month later, a daily in Massachusetts, The Republican (she had attended Smith College nearby), received the report and posted a recap. It showed that she shot herself in the head while alone in her room.

Just hours before she killed herself, Hoffmaster had been berated by a senior officer, the report discloses. She later told another officer that she "couldn?t do it anymore" and wanted to quit the military. Hoffmaster was found dead on her cot by one of her roommates, whose M9 Beretta pistol Hoffmaster used. One officer told investigators that Hoffmaster was "swamped from the day she arrived at the unit" and "had about four or five months of catching up to do with a new Army program that she was completely unfamiliar with."

Because Hoffmaster was a last-minute replacement for another surgeon who left the unit, she was not able to attend a readiness training center in Louisiana, the officer said, or get acclimated to her new unit. The officer told investigators he felt the Army did Hoffmaster a disservice and called the situation "a ?perfect storm? to create tension and anxiety."

In the second case, an Army investigation called the electrocution death of Ryan Maseth, a Green Beret, in Iraq a "negligent homicide" caused by military contractor KBR Inc. and two of its supervisors. It said the cause of death for Maseth, 24, of Pittsburgh, had been changed from accidental to negligent homicide because the contractor failed to ensure that "qualified electricians and plumbers" worked on the barracks where Maseth died.

Maseth had died of cardiac arrest on Jan. 2, 2008, electrocuted while taking a shower in his barracks in Baghdad. The Army at first falsely claimed he had done it to himself, using a hair dryer in the shower. I have written several columns about the heroic quest for justice by Ryan?s mother, Cheryl Harris, which sparked media, Pentagon and congressional probes revealing over a dozen other electrocutions ? and military action in Iraq to help prevent more such cases.

Last night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow interviewed a former KBR electrician who has blown the whistle on some of the company's practices in this area in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has all grown out of the Maseth case.

In February, Mark Benjamin -- who five years ago penned several groundbreaking pieces on ill treatment of soldiers for UPI, and many others since then for Salon.com -- came out with a gripping multi-part series on suicides, other deaths, and abuses involving GIs at Fort Carson in Colorado.

The Salon series opened: "Preventable suicides. Avoidable drug overdoses. Murders that never should have happened." Benjamin raised this question, food for thought for all newspaper reporters and editors in the years ahead: "President Obama says he wants to bring tens of thousands of troops home from Iraq. How will the government respond when they need help the most?"

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Greg Mitchell is editor of E&P. His new book is "Why Obama Won."