'Thrown-Away Hero' Laid to Rest

[unhappycamper]

'Thrown-Away Hero' Laid to Rest
April 10, 2010
Chicago Tribune

His buddies called him "Truck" for his linebacker physique, his fierce loyalty to friends and his determination to forge through pain without complaint while serving as a senior airman with the U.S. Air Force's security division.

But after Sumner Cowan suffered debilitating shoulder injuries during combat in Iraq, the Air Force retired him in April 2009, saying that, at age 26, he no longer was medically fit to be deployed.

Devastated, Cowan found it difficult to return home and redirect his life, family members said. The 2001 graduate of Schaumburg High School had survived roadside explosions and mortar attacks during five years of service to his country. But in the end, he could not live with himself.

On Friday, family and friends celebrated Cowan at his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where he received full traditional military honors despite the fact that he didn't die on a battlefield, but as a civilian on home soil.

His body was found outside a friend's home on Nov. 7. Cowan, 27, had shot himself in Valdosta, Ga., where he was pursuing studies in criminal justice.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/thrownaway-hero-laid-to-rest.html?col=1186032310810



unhappycamper comment: RIP, Truck.

[rpannier]

1. R.I.P.

Very sad ending to a Real Patriot

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. More British soldiers have taken their own lives after the Falklands War

than died in the course of it.

[Bigmack]

3. How many of the Cheney/Wolfowitz/Perle types off themselves? nt

[unhappycamper]

4. None.

They have bucks, they have friends, they have gated communities and (pretty much) immunity from doing bad things.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. GMTA ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=529383&mesg_id=529496

[Berry Cool]

5. Damn, if only he'd had some help.

He set an expectation for himself, an artificially high expectation, that he "should" have achieved more at age 27 than he had. That is effing tragic. He needed a counselor to tell him to give himself a break, to stop placing such high demands on his life, to give himself time to complete his studies and then see what happened. Damn.

When you're 27 you're still a baby. You don't "have" to have achieved ANYTHING yet. Most people with a civilian perspective know that, but war, with the cheap value it places on life, probably made him lose that insight. He must have seen a great deal that made him feel older than he was--people around him dying even younger than he was, making him feel that if he was even lucky enough to make it to the ripe old age of 27, he'd better have achieved something by then other than "potential"--otherwise, it was a waste for him to go on living.

It is a crime that he didn't have help coping with what he'd been through, or the artificially high expectations he had for his life at such a young age.

[amborin]

7. so very sad