Suicide is the specter of war, haunting soldiers to the grave.

In Henry IV, Part I, Lady Percy asks:

O, my good lord, why are you thus alone? …
Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee 

Thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep? 

Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth, 

And start so often when thou sit’st alone?
…In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch’d, 

And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars; 

…And thou hast talk’d

Of prisoners’ ransom and of soldiers slain, 

And all the currents of a heady fight. 

Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war
.
And thus hath so bestirr’d thee in thy sleep, 

That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow

Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream; 

And in thy face strange motions have appear’d, 

Such as we see when men restrain their breath

On some great sudden hest.

O, what portents are these? [1] 


Colonel Gregory Lande begins with a statistic. Between 2005 and 2009, in the midst of two wars, 1,100 American service members committed suicide, 1 every 36 hours. This fact and phenomenon is troubling. Thus, he returns to the Civil War to discern its change or continuity.

Felo de se is a Medieval legal and moral term meaning “felon of himself.” If a suicide is determined to be felo de se, he was both sane and guilty, subject to punishment after death.

Lande’s study, titled, “In Felo de Se: Soldier’s Suicides in America’s Civil War,” points to the tension. Following the war, suicide became an epidemic and a social concern. Some viewed it as a moral crime. The other focused on etiology: environment, circumstances, and the inner condition.

Lande reports that during the war, however, soldier suicide, especially in relation to war itself, was not viewed with concern. Between 1861 and 1865, Union doctors reported on suicides, providing a small window into the phenomenon. The data, for white soldiers only, report an average of 5.25 suicides per month.

Suicides followed an annual cycle, peaking in winter and receding again in the spring. The second year saw the greatest number (90), then the fourth (75), the third (59), and the first (41).

Alongside the annual figures, Lande plots a narrative of the individual and the conflagration: the early enthusiasm and patriotism, the war that dragged on, and a soldier’s eroding experiences of extreme violence and boredom, fear and nostalgia, hope and hopelessness.

Yet the connection between war and suicide did not seem to be recognized, or it simply was not acknowledged. Suicides were seldom reported in newspapers unless they were unusual in their specifics or involved an officer, preferably a general.

After the war, suicides increased to epidemic proportions, sparking the controversy and debate. Lande reports, however, that obituaries of former soldiers always note their military service but never draw a connection between “service and suicide.”

They instead “chalked the death up to alcohol use, depression, financial misfortune, or romantic disappointments.” Never to the experience of war itself.

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—
[1] Jonathan Shay draws a connection between this passage and PTSD in Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.
[2] R. Gregory Lande, “Felo De Se: Soldier Suicides in America’s Civil War,” Military Medicine 176, no. 5 (2011).

My dad grew up in Southern California. He was an only child. His mother was slender and pretty as a young woman and turned out to be a cruel, spiteful mother. I remember her as my grandma and a chain smoking hag who berated my dad and demeaned him whenever she could. His dad, my grandpa, is shrouded in legend and mystery.

Legend has it he enlisted in the army at age 15 and fought heroically in the First World War. The story is that he served under General Pershing and was wounded in battle. Legend has it that he also served under Pershing during the Spanish-American War. One of our family heirlooms was a Phillipine sword and scabbard, called a kalis, that my dad believed came from the campaign. The sword was marred and rusted, but we also thought that some of the patina was blood still staining the blade, probably from fierce fighting during the war.

Legend has it that my dad’s father worked as a foreman on the King Ranch helping to build that famous Texas empire. Legend was that he worked a sports broadcaster in Los Angeles and rubbed elbows with the stars of the day, athletes, radio and movie stars. Legend has it that he owned the dog from Little Rascals and rented it out to the studio for the television show. The circle was painted around the dog’s eye.

Legend has it he was a wheeler dealer who owned businesses throughout the San Fernando Valley. Legend was that he spread money around town and drove a big Cadalliac, a new one each year. Legend has it that he was a man of the people who would show up with a truckload of watermelon and pass them out to the colored people on a hot summer day.

Legend had it that he was much older than my grandma. She was a nice piece of ass walking down the street and my grandpa drove his Cadalliac onto the sidewalk in front of her and wouldn’t move until she agreed to go on a date.

The truth is that my dad’s father was never home, and never spoke to my dad or said a kind word, and then he died when my dad was seven years old. The legend is that he left a pot of money when he died including stocks and artwork and precious coins. The truth is that these were all stories my grandma told my dad afterwards as she drank gin and belittled a shy awkward boy who would grow up to be an insecure man in the shadow of his mythical dad. The truth is that my dad spent a lifetime trying to find records of my grandfather — in the war, in Texas, in Hollywood — because he held these stories close to his heart and believed deeply and hoped to learn more about his father. But no records exist.

The truth is that if there was money, and it seems there was some, it was all gone in booze and jewelry by the time my dad finished high school. My dad had become the man of the house who could never do right, and the truth is that when my dad finally left home my grandma punished him to the end for deserting her and being a faithless son.

I knew my grandma from Sunday visits to the nursing home in Southern Oregon where she lived like a scorned mother and exiled queen. The first order of business when we arrived was to hand over the carton of cigarettes to last them week. Give them here, she would say, as if he was somehow withholding her due.

We would all sit around a table in the nursing home dining room, my dad my mom my grandma and me, and play gin rummy. She smoked one cigarette after another and made clicking smacking sounds when she talked. This is the sound you make when part of your tongue has been removed from a lifetime of smoking cigarettes.

The pack of cards was stained with smoke and booze and the crusts of snot that she would deposit from wiping her nose and then handling the cards.

While we played cards old people shuffled all around us. Sometimes someone down the hall would cry out in pain or sorrow. The thick smell of smoke and urine was everywhere. During the card games she would berate my dad for not being a real man, nothing like his father, ignore my mom in the manner of a jealous rival, and make smacking noises at me as her way of doting. And my dad would take it, and my mom would try to say something pleasant, and I would concentrate on rummy. This was our Sunday afternoon ritual following Sunday services at whatever church my dad was trying to start at the time.