Raw Story: One Iraq veteran’s harrowing journey from the battlefield to suicide (Part I)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

One Iraq veteran’s harrowing journey from the battlefield to suicide (Part I)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/iraq-veterans-harrowing-journey-battlefield-suicide-part/

By James Foley
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 -- 8:39 am



“He said three times that he should have just died in Iraq and I would have loved him forever, because he didn't think we were going to get back together,” Krissy Caudill, Sgt. First Class Spencer Kohlheim’s fiancée said after his grandmother found him hanging in her garage less than a month after he returned from Iraq.

What happened in Afghanistan

Soldiers speak of the firefights, of the thrill of getting shot at. In the mountains of Afghanistan a firefight can happen any day, and it can be a powerful, almost drug-like fix.

A fight, no matter how short, fills the void of routine -- of standing at guard, staring at rocks, eating bad food, using port-a-potties and having no Internet. The sounds of incoming explosions, the whizzing of bullets going by and the release of the trigger pull fills a purpose for being deployed.

But IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), planted by insurgents targeting American troops, can be done without. It’s the one attack all soldiers fear. The bombs reach up from the earth and rip your arms from your shoulders, legs from your torso, or if you’re lucky, rattle your bones, inside your head, for days, months, years afterward. Soldiers will tell you they’d rather get shot at any day than deal with IEDs.

Sergeant First Class Spencer Kohlheim was deployed to Afghanistan before Iraq. He saw what IEDs did to four of his buddies there in 2006.

A few years later, he was deployed to Iraq. His vehicle would take direct hits from IEDs in two separate attacks.