Indie Army Wife

Another Spouse Murder at Fort Campbell

Tragically ANOTHER Army spouse was murdered here at Fort Campbell today. In this case the wife was the soldier, and was murdered by her husband who is out of the Army now but previously served.  Her husband then committed suicide. Local news is reporting that:

OAK GROVE, Ky. — A man and woman are dead in Oak Grove, Ky., in a murder/suicide, police said.

At about 2:10 p.m. today, 911 received a call from a man who said he's shot his wife, and was waiting for police to arrive, according to Oak Grove Police Cpl. Vincent Brown.

Police went to the home at 117 Gail St., and found that the man had shot himself as well. Both he and his wife were dead.

The wife is a Fort Campbell soldier, and the husband is a civilian.

The couple's two boys, ages 4 and 6, were in the home at the time. Brown said police don't know if the children witnessed the shooting. The children are in police custody.

The couple's names have not been released. Police are trying to contact their family. The couple has a history of domestic violence, Brown said.

The bodies were removed from the scene at about 5 p.m.

Fort Hood Support .JPG

This Just In - Shooting at Fort Hood, Entire Post Closed

Follow the story on MSNBC here

"WASHINGTON – The Army says seven people were killed and 20 wounded in a pair of shootings at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas. An Army spokesman at the Pentagon says the shootings began about 1:30 p.m. Thursday at a personnel and medical processing center at Fort Hood.

The spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Banks, says two shooters were apparently involved. There is no word yet on who they were, nor on identities of the dead.

Banks says the second incident took place at a theater on the sprawling base.

He says it is too soon to tell whether there is any link to battle stress or repeated deployments. The Army is suffering a record high suicide rate and other signs of stress from fighting two wars."

Please keep the families and soldiers at Fort Hood in your thoughts and prayers and keep an eye out for more information

Now That's What I Call Irony

President Proclaims November Military Family Month

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2, 2009 – President Barack Obama pledged his support of military members and their families and said Americans have a “solemn obligation” to preserve their well-being in his proclamation declaring November as Military Family Month.

The proclamation reads:

“No one pays a higher price for our freedom than members of our Nation's military and their families. As sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and mothers and fathers are deployed, military families endure with exceptional resilience and courage. They provide our troops with invaluable encouragement and love, and serve our Nation in their own right. During Military Family Month, we honor the families of our Armed Forces and thank them for their dedication to our country.

“Though only a small percentage of our Nation's population, our troops bear the great responsibility of protecting our people. They, along with their families, serve us every day with courage and dignity. Ensuring that military families receive the respect they deserve and the support they have earned is a top priority for my Administration.

“The strength of our Nation is measured not just by our success on the battlefield, but also by our ability to support those families who have made so many sacrifices for us. Time and again, military families have shown their heart in the face of adversity. We have a solemn obligation to ensure that while our men and women in uniform discharge their duties, we do all we can to promote and preserve the well-being of their families. We must also support the families of our wounded warriors and our fallen heroes who have paid the ultimate price for the freedoms we enjoy.

“This month, we celebrate the tremendous contributions of military families, convey to them our deepest respect and appreciation, and recommit ourselves to their support.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2009 as Military Family Month. I call on all Americans to honor military families through private actions and public service for the tremendous contributions they make in the support of our service members and our Nation.”

This is What Happens to Military Families After Deployment

I hesitate to even write this, because while it's easy for pundits and advocates to talk about the lack of support for soldiers and how the government and the Army are letting them down it's not so easy to discuss real life situations, especially when it's happening to you.

I haven't written in awhile. There's a reason. My marriage is falling apart. My husband has been back from Afghanistan for eight months. While he has been evaluated and diagnosed with PTSD and TBI he has never received any treatment for those injuries. He was told to wait until the TBI clinic at Fort Campbell calls him to make an appt, and we all know that will happen soon right? There's a months long waiting for appointments at the TBI clinic and at every other treatment facility on post. My husband, like many other soldiers, has been trying desperately to keep it together and act "normal" while working 12 +hour  days five days a week and dealing with the pain and fatigue of physical and mental injuries. In addition there are the normal stresses of life: custody battle, family drama, financial pressure and so on. I'm sure my husband didn't set out to become a basket case, but he is now.

 Army - we are out of time to wait for you to fix my husband's injuries.

My husband chose to deal with his stress by lying to me, cheating on me online and through emails/texts/phone calls with friends, women he meets on the Internet, and God knows who else. This started two days after he got back when he started cheating on me with a married woman, and has never stopped despite his repeated assurances that it did. Before he deployed my husband never would have cheated on me, and I know he would never have considered it. He used to be a good man. If he wasn't I wouldn't have married him. Now though, I don't know who he is.

 He is moody and combative one minute, he is totally disengaged and distant the next, and all he does is work, sleep, and go online. If he does talk to me he snarls at me or tries to give me orders, but most of the time he's just silent. Bullying from his command, the pressures of being forced to do a lot of physical labor even though he has a profile for a serious shoulder wound that needs surgery that of course he has not yet gotten, and a million other factors have exhausted him to the point of mental breakdown, and that has led to the complete breakdown of our marriage.

Thanks to "battlemind" my husband no longer feels empathy or cares about anyone except himself or his fellow soldiers. Ironically the mindset that saved his life in Afghanistan is killing his marriage here at home. He acts without any thought at all for the consequences of his actions on other people, because he simply doesn't care what effect his actions have on other people.  And that is not the man I married. The man I married joined up because he desperately wanted to make a difference in the world. He was honorable and had integrity and wanted to fight for the oppressed and help those who needed it. He became a medic because he wanted to save lives. That was the man who went to Afghanistan. I don't even know the man who came back.

Ultimately he is responsible for his own actions, I know that.  When he first started struggling he should have pushed harder for the care he needed, but he shouldn't have to fight for the care he needs to recover from physical and mental wounds sustained in war. I know soldiers are considered expendable in the Army, but damnit Army you DO have a moral responsibility to take care of them when they come home!

I'm sick to death of hearing about how much the Army respects military families. The Army doesn't give a crap about military families. My marriage is just one of thousands that is failing due to the lack of care given to soldiers when they come home.  I have worked for months to try to deal with the damage inflicted by husband's behavior and now it's just not possible to try to continually apply bandaids to the relationship anymore. The wounds are too deep. The basis of any marriage is respect, trust, and love. When those are gone it may very well not be possible to get them back, and that's where we are at now. Months of lies to my face about other women,  spending money, and other issues have made it impossible for me to trust him. His lack of respect for me, and for our marriage, has made the situation intolerable.

This is what happens  every day to military families. Without support, without treatment, left totally alone to deal with the physical and mental ravages of war marriages end, families break up, and lives are ruined.  I find it highly ironic that the Army can't seem to make a sustainable dent in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan yet they can decimate huge swaths of military families without lifting a finger or firing a gun.

The plain reality is that my situation, as bad as it feels to me, is better than most. Domestic abuse rates are sky high. Soldier and spouse suicides are at record numbers, especially here. Fort Campbell has one of the highest soldier suicide rates in the nation, and that's just the deaths that they will actually admit are suicides. There are many more that don't make the official cut. There have been frightening instances here of murder and assault, like the soldier from Fort Campbell who came home one night and unloaded his weapon into his wife, killing her, because of the problems they had been having. Being married to a soldier isn't easy under the best circumstances, and these days many spouses are trying to hold on to their marriages under the worst circumstances possible.

So I will leave the blog up but posting will be intermittent. I have no idea what comes next for us, or for me. I know that my husband and I need to separate for awhile to figure things out and that hurts me almost as much as my husband's thoughtless actions.  I have always been faithful, I went through a deployment and all the rest of the crap that the Army has done to our lives to stand by my husband and help him help other people. I don't deserve this, and neither do the thousands of other spouses who are suffering the same way I am right now. I was not sure whether or not to post this but I know that we are not the only couple going through this, and I hope that other people who are will push to get help before it's too late to save their marriages.