Suicide Rate Now Likely Double or Triple Civil War

Disappointed in this study because they fail to address the fact that during the Civil War most died following amputations and serious wounds while today, they live on. Had more survived during those dark times in our history, there would have been more suicides. Plus the researchers would also have to take into account how news traveled back then.

How do they know? They don't. Read further down and see the word "estimate" along with what their research was.

What do they think "not deployed" means? Do they think the suicide had nothing to do with combat? How about the fact that most killed and maimed are killed by bombs? Do you think that might just be a factor in being so terrified they'd rather kill themselves now? What about Mefloquine? Hazing? Sexual Assaults? Or a lot of other causes for military suicides in the "31%" never deployed but must have passed their psychological tests, meaning they didn't have any issues when they signed up. When you have these kind of numbers coming out on military suicides, it shows how twisted some research can be when they answer the easy questions but never mention the obvious.

They used to shoot a lot of them for desertion too.

New Study: U.S. Military Suicide Rate Now Likely Double or Triple Civil War’s
By BARTLEY FRUEH AND JEFFREY SMITH
Time Battleland
August 6, 2012

Can medical data from the U.S. Civil War help us better understand military suicides?

Your recent Time cover story in the July 23 issue detailed the tragic facts that suicide rates among active-duty U.S. military personnel rose dramatically over the past decade. Military suicide rates doubled between 2001 and 2006, while remaining flat in the general population, with more military fatalities attributed to suicide than to actual combat in Afghanistan during that period.

To make matters worse, we do not understand why. Stressors related to military training, overseas deployment, transition back to civilian life, and combat are widely believed to be major driving factors. However, 31% of soldiers who committed suicide had never been deployed to a war zone. Furthermore, suicide rates in British military forces have also increased recently, though to a lesser degree, and do not exceed the rate of the general population.

Is there a lack of historical context?

Compounding our inability to understand this current phenomenon is the lack of adequate historical data to provide context on whether high suicide rates were typical of prior wars. Review of archival records from past wars might help shed some light on the current military suicide epidemic.

In a recent study (Frueh & Smith, 2012) we reviewed historical medical records on suicide deaths among Union forces during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), a brutal war that many consider the first modern one, and for the year immediately after the war to estimate the suicide rate among its Union combatants. We also reviewed these same historical records for data on rates of alcohol abuse and other probable psychiatric illnesses.
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Civil War hero may yet get Medal of Honor for Gettysburg

Civil War hero may yet get Medal of Honor for Gettysburg
By RICHARD SIMON
Los Angeles Times
Published: June 4, 2012

WASHINGTON — Alonzo H. Cushing is close to receiving the Medal of Honor, nearly 150 years after his heroic actions at Gettysburg.

A little-noticed provision of a House-approved defense bill would waive the time limit for posthumously bestowing the nation’s highest military honor, allowing the medal to be bestowed on the 22-year-old Union artillery lieutenant who died during Pickett’s Charge on July 3, 1863.

If passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama, the measure would end a decades-long struggle by a 92-year-old resident of Cushing’s native Wisconsin.

“I’m glad that it’s finally happening,” Margaret Zerwekh said by phone from Delafield, where she lives on land once owned by the Cushing family.

Her efforts date back to the mid-1980s, when she wrote then-Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis. The campaign to award the medal to Cushing has been championed by other Wisconsin lawmakers.
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Civil War and World War II bronze memorial flag holders were stolen

More than 40 bronze veteran memorial flag holders stolen from Upper Allen Township cemetery less than two weeks before Memorial Day
Published: Friday, May 18, 2012
By DIANA FISHLOCK
The Patriot-News

Civil War and World War II bronze memorial flag holders were stolen sometime overnight Wednesday into Thursday from Chestnut Hill Cemetery off West Winding Hill Road in Upper Allen Township, police report.

More than 40 were taken. The holders, commemorating service in the Civil War or World War II, are each made of about one pound of bronze.
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Civil War soldier gets MoH 147 years later

Civil War soldier gets MoH 147 years later

By Dinesh Ramde - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday May 19, 2010 9:09:45 EDT

DELAFIELD, Wis. — Seven score and seven years ago, a wounded Wisconsin soldier stood his ground on the Gettysburg battlefield and made a valiant stand before he was felled by a Confederate bullet.

Now, thanks to the dogged efforts of modern-day supporters, 1st Lt. Alonzo Cushing shall not have died in vain, nor shall his memory have perished from the earth.

Descendants and some Civil War history buffs have been pushing the U.S. Army to award the soldier the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration. They'll soon get their wish.

Secretary of the Army John McHugh has approved their request, leaving a few formal steps before the award becomes official this summer. Cushing will become one of 3,447 recipients of the medal, and the second from the Civil War honored in the last 10 years.
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Civil War soldier gets MoH 147 years later

Civil War hero from Delafield in line for Medal of Honor

Library of Congress
First Lt. Alonzo Cushing of Delafield (middle, standing) was among Union officers at Antietam in 1862. At Gettysburg the next year, a wounded Cushing refused to abandon his post and was killed. A group has been pushing to honor him.

Civil War hero from Delafield in line for Medal of Honor
By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel
In the hell that was the battle of Gettysburg, in the hailstorm of shells and shrapnel that extinguished so many lives on a hot July day, one bullet struck a blue-clad soldier from Delafield, Wis., in the head.

A shell fragment already had pierced Alonzo Cushing's shoulder and shrapnel tore through his abdomen before the shot that felled the 1861 West Point graduate.

Cushing died July 3, 1863, during Pickett's Charge at Cemetery Ridge next to the artillery guns he refused to leave. It was the third and final day of the Gettysburg battle. Cushing was just 22.

The 1st lieutenant's body was returned to his family and buried at West Point beneath a headstone inscribed "Faithful until death." Cushing's name didn't fade away - it graces a park in Delafield, and a white obelisk monument was dedicated there in 1915.

However, a small but dedicated group wanted more for Cushing; they wanted his heroism recognized with the nation's highest military honor.

Now, it appears that Cushing will be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on that Pennsylvania battlefield 147 years ago.
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http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/88882607.html

VA Selects Permanent Location for Historic Civil War Monument

VA Selects Permanent Location for Historic Civil War Monument



WASHINGTON (Dec. 30, 2009) - Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced today the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has selected the Frazier International History Museum in Louisville, Ky., as the new home of the Bloedner Monument, the nation's oldest Civil War memorial.



The Bloedner Monument was removed from Cave Hill National Cemetery in Louisville in December 2008 and taken to a temporary facility where it was professionally conserved by Conservation Solutions Inc. to arrest further damage.



"The removal of an important monument from a national cemetery is rare and was not undertaken without great deliberation," said Secretary Shinseki. "However, the overwhelming significance of the Bloedner Monument and its failing condition warranted this unusual step."



The monument was carved in January 1862 by Pvt. August Bloedner to commemorate his fellow soldiers of the 32nd Indiana Infantry, all of them German immigrants who fell in the Battle of Rowlett's Station near Munfordville, Ky. The monument's original location was on the battlefield, marking the graves of 13 soldiers who perished there. When most of these remains were removed to Cave Hill National Cemetery in 1867, the Bloedner Monument was moved there as well.



VA historians, in collaboration with the Kentucky Heritage Council and Heritage Preservation Inc., selected the Frazier International Museum as the new home from three interested facilities based on Civil War exhibit plans, controlled environment and security, financial stability, annual visitation and proximity to Cave Hill National Cemetery.



The monument was fabricated from St. Genevieve limestone, with a base of Bedford limestone added in 1867. It measures approximately 5 feet long, 1 foot deep and 3 ½ feet high. The monument is carved on one side with a relief of an eagle and an inscription in German in a rustic script. The text was approximately 300 words and 2,500 characters long at the time it was carved. Because of the poor quality of the limestone and effects of the environment, the monument has lost a significant amount of material. Only about 50 percent of the original carving and inscription remains.



The monument was temporarily relocated to a University of Louisville facility for treatment while VA conducted a thorough evaluation of potential sites. The evaluation process included written proposals and site visits. VA posted information on the Internet, mailed information to Veterans and Civil War heritage groups and held a public information meeting to solicit suggestions.



A new monument, with an interpretive sign explaining the significance of the original Bloedner Monument and indicating its location, will be placed at Cave Hill National Cemetery in 2010.

Historians Press For Access To Files On Civil War Soldiers From Connecticut

If we are ever going to get to the point where no one ever feels ashamed of serving this country and ending up paying for it with PTSD, this is the way we get there. Uncovering what was known way back in the Civil war, what they went through and what happened to them after is vital to illuminating one simple fact, humans go to war and suffer after it. It really is that simple.

If you read the Bible, it's in there. If you read any history books about ancient warfare, it's in there. Talk to any veteran and you'll see it. None of this is new because humans have the same original design they always did. We can talk all we want about what to do when veterans ask for help but getting them to even want to admit they need help is the hardest battle of all to win. You have to take someone that was trained to kill and risk their lives everyday, then ask them to be "weaker" in their own minds asking for help. This is one of the hardest things to get past. If they understood what it was, they would know it had nothing to do with courage or their ability. It only had to do with being human and being compassionate.

Historians Press For Access To Files On Civil War Soldiers From Connecticut

By JESSE LEAVENWORTH

The Hartford Courant

September 3, 2009


HARTFORD — - Historians seeking to probe the mental health records of Connecticut Civil War veterans pressed their case Wednesday at a state Freedom of Information Commission hearing.

The state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has refused to allow researchers unfettered access to records at what is now Connecticut Valley Hospital, formerly the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane.

The main sticking point is researchers' insistence that they be allowed to use individual patients' names in a planned book on Connecticut's role in the war. The state's position is that research could be allowed, but unrestricted use of names would violate patient confidentiality laws.
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Historians Press For Access To Files On Civil War

Confederate flag vs American flag all over again in Homestead FL

If they think this is a way to honor all parts of our history, then fine, but they better find a lot of Native Americans to add their fight against US forces as well as going all the way back to the Revolutionary War and the loyalist that tried to kill the Patriots. It was not just the Civil War that pitted American against American in battle. So why have it that way now?

The Civil war put American against American. Both sides had ancestors fighting and dying for what they believed in this nation divided. Since there are no living Civil War veterans, perhaps the parade to have Confederate descendants in is Memorial Day instead of Veterans Day. After all, this is the one day out of the year that is just for our nation's veterans, in other words, living veterans of a united nation, all serving together, no matter what their ancestors believed in or side they took. Veterans come from all over the nation, every city and town as Americans and this day, this one day, should honor that to honor them.

Amid Confederate flag flap, veterans aim to save Homestead Veterans Day Parade
By TANIA VALDEMORO
tvaldemoro@MiamiHerald.com
The Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 121 has marched in the annual Veterans Day Parade in Homestead for at least a dozen years.

They hope to march this November, too, and that parade organizers can find a solution to resolve the controversy that erupted over a group of Confederate descendants marching with a battle flag for the first time in 2008.

''We don't want the parade to be canceled,'' said Dennis Magno, a member of the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 121.

Since the Homestead/Florida City Chamber of Commerce leaders voted unanimously to disband the parade after the controversy erupted, veterans and residents have been calling the chamber to oppose canceling the parade, said Jerome Williams, the chamber president.

On Thursday morning, officials from the chamber's military affairs committee unanimously voted to defer making any decisions on continuing or disbanding the popular 47-year-old event.
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Veterans aim to save Homestead Veterans Day Parade

Connecticut Valley Hospital holding up PTSD research

Well, that is exactly what they are doing. Privacy issue? These were soldiers in the Civil War for heaven's sake! What if Vietnam veterans decided that they had "privacy issues" and would not participate in any of the PTSD research being done to help them? Did Connecticut Valley Hospital officials ever think of that? Why would they stand in the way of doing something potentially monumental in removing the stigma of PTSD? History has shown this wound down thru the centuries. The more information coming out about our ancestors and the history of this wound, the more the stigma of being a warrior will erode.


PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal events. The men fighting in the Civil War walked among the death fields with their own countrymen, relatives fighting against relatives and dying among other American warriors with just their uniforms to separate them. This is important research and they need to release the records to help heal this nations veterans.

Researchers Want Access To Civil War Veterans' Health Records
By JESSE LEAVENWORTH The Hartford Courant
June 1, 2009
A group of researchers says the state's mental health agency is withholding information about a significant chapter in Connecticut history.

The researchers, who are compiling a book on the state's role in the Civil War, are seeking files from Connecticut Valley Hospital on veterans who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, known in the 19th century as "soldier's heart."

The conflict pits the historians' desire to tell complete stories of those Yankee fighters against the state's responsibility to protect patient rights, extended in this case to the living relatives of those long-dead soldiers.

"The reason that we're pursuing it, we're interested in the lives of these soldiers," said Matt Warshauer, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University. "Over the last 50 years, there has been a real shift in the study of war. It's moved from big battles and the strategies and the actions of generals and much more toward the average soldier. ... People have become tremendously interested in the lives of these soldiers."

How does a man process such a memory and carry on? Some could not. Combat veterans then — and now — suffered deep, sometimes incapacitating mental wounds.

"With all we have learned about PTSD, it makes it that much more relevant and fascinating" to study how the condition was treated 150 years ago and how Connecticut veterans and their families dealt with it, Warshauer said.

The effort to document those individual stories, as well as the extent of PTSD among state Civil War veterans, began last fall. Michael Sturges, one of the book's researchers and a graduate student of Warshauer's, was denied access to the files and told that he would have to get permission from living relatives of the former patients.
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http://www.courant.com/health/hc-civilwar-ptsd-0601.artjun01,0,4233562.story

PBS:Medal of Honor history and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker

PBS film highlights Medal of Honor’s history and its recipients
Providence Journal - Providence,RI,USA

PBS film highlights Medal of Honor’s history and its recipients

07:06 AM EST on Monday, November 3, 2008


Medal of Honor, a PBS documentary that will air nationwide Wednesday at 9 p.m., will present powerful stories of those who have received our nation’s highest military honor.

Produced and directed by Roger Sherman, the 90-minute film traces the medal’s history from its inception, during the Civil War, and profiles Sgt. Paul Smith, the first combatant in the Iraq war to receive it.

Among others profiled in the film are a Holocaust survivor who singlehandedly defended a hill from an advancing enemy force in the Korean War; a Navy SEAL who saved the lives of two comrades by swimming for two hours, while injured, to bring them to safety; and a Marine at Iwo Jima who alone silenced seven Japanese bunkers with a flamethrower.

Only one Medal of Honor has been awarded to a woman: Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War doctor captured and imprisoned as a spy by the Confederates. Her medal was revoked after the war, when the criteria were tightened so it could be awarded only to active-duty soldiers in battle. Walker, however, refused to give it back.click above for more

Life of Civil War veteran linked to living today

A great example of how one life matters to so many.

Kenneth City man discovers a part of himself in a forgotten Civil War survivor
By William R. Levesque, Times staff writer
In print: Sunday, August 31, 2008


KENNETH CITY — A Confederate bullet smashed into Cornelius Ridgeway's left breast and lodged near his heart during an 1864 battle in Virginia, another bloody day in the Civil War.

So many things could kill a person then. Infection. Disease. An operation to remove a bullet long before the days of blood transfusion.

As a Delaware native with a mix of Indian, black and European blood — locals called them Delaware Moors — Ridgeway had been allowed to join only an all-black regiment.

More than a century later, records provide tantalizingly few clues about the then 22-year-old's year in a hospital, except that he survived. A wound like his was usually fatal. If Ridgeway had died in that hospital, much that followed would have been different, much would have been lost to history.

A white Pinellas County resident born long after that Civil War battle knows this well. His name is John Carter.
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http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/war/article791095.ece

Fort Craig Ghosts Of Civil War

Civil War remains dug up as looting reported

By Melanie Dabovich - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Apr 9, 2008 11:55:07 EDT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Working in secret, federal archaeologists have dug up the remains of dozens of soldiers and children near a Civil War-era fort after an informant tipped them off about widespread grave-looting.

The exhumations, conducted from August to October, removed 67 skeletons from the parched desert soil around Fort Craig — 39 men, two women and 26 infants and children, according to two federal archaeologists who helped with the dig.

They also found scores of empty graves and determined 20 had been looted.

The government kept its exhumation of the unmarked cemetery near the historic New Mexico fort out of the public’s eye for months to prevent more thefts.

The investigation began with a tip about an amateur historian who had displayed the mummified remains of a black soldier, draped in a Civil War-era uniform, in his house.

Investigators say the historian, Dee Brecheisen, may have been a prolific looter who spotted historical sites from his plane. Brecheisen died in 2004 and although it was not clear whether the looting continued after his death, authorities exhumed the unprotected site to prevent future thefts.

“As an archaeologist, you want to leave a site in place for preservation ... but we couldn’t do that because it could be looted again,” said Jeffery Hanson, of the Bureau of Reclamation.

The remains are being studied by Bureau of Reclamation scientists, who are piecing together information on their identities. They will eventually be reburied at other national cemeteries.

Most of the men are believed to have been soldiers — Fort Craig protected settlers in the West from American Indian raids and played a role in the Civil War. Union troops stationed there fought the Confederacy as it moved into New Mexico from Texas in 1862.

The children buried there may have been local residents treated by doctors at the former frontier outpost, officials said.

Federal officials learned of the looting in November 2004, when Don Alberts, a retired historian for Kirtland Air Force Base, tipped them off about a macabre possession he’d seen at Brecheisen’s home about 30 years earlier.

Alberts described seeing the mummified remains of a black soldier with patches of brown flesh clinging to facial bones and curly hair on top of its skull. Alberts said the body had come from Fort Craig.

“The first thing we did was laughed because who would believe such a story,” Hanson said. “But then we quickly decided we better go down and check it out.”
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/ap_exhumed_040908/

8th grade class moved by Soldier's Story to do something

Students surrender sweets for soldiers
Book set during Civil War spurs students to donate part of Halloween spoils

By LEIGH HORNBECK, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Friday, November 30, 2007

SCHUYLERVILLE -- Somewhere in Iraq or Afghanistan, a soldier is snacking on Crystal Briere's Halloween candy.

Briere, 13, an eighth-grader at Schuylerville Central School, dressed up as a Gothic sorceress and went trick-or-treating this year, but she didn't keep all the candy. Briere's classmates donated a portion of their goodies and sent them to the Middle East as part of "Trick or Treat for Our Troops."

The initiative took shape after students read "Soldier's Heart" by Gary Paulsen. The book chronicles the experiences of a 15-year-old boy after he enlists in the First Minnesota Volunteers during the Civil War. He leaves the service at age 19, suffering from "soldier's heart," a term used in the book to describe what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Our eighth-graders were so moved by this book and the information on post-traumatic stress disorder that they wanted to do something to help today's soldiers," said Mary Lou Liptak-Masten, a remedial reading teacher who oversaw Trick or Treat for Our Troops.
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Imagine that! A Civil War story so moving it caused this 8th grade class to think of the soldiers serving today. Now this is history come to life!