I only recently learned about this from my daughter's boyfriend who has been deployed to the Ukraine. He has a "Battle Buddy" not to be a friend but so neither of them will commit suicide. And why is that? Because since 2005 the Army suicide rate has exploded.

Among key findings: while suicide rates for soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan more than doubled from 2004 to 2009 to more than 30-per-100,000, the trend among those who never deployed nearly tripled to between 25- and 30-per-100,000.

Rates for a civilian population of similar age and demographics remained steady at 19-per-100,000 during this time. The Army suicide rate, historically far lower than the civilian figure, surpassed it in 2008 and kept climbing.

That was from 2014. Here's an update from a 2016 story in The New York Times:

Hardest hit were young veterans. The suicide rate for veterans age 18 to 29 was 86 deaths per 100,000 for men and 33 deaths per 100,000 for women — much higher than previous estimates, and almost twice as high as all other age groups. The civilian suicide rate is about 14 deaths per 100,000.

Dr. Shulkin said rates had increased across all age groups, but the rise among young veterans was “by far the highest.”

Women were also disproportionately hit. Though female veterans commit suicide at lower rates than their male colleagues, those younger than 30 are more than six times as likely to take their own lives than women in the civilian world.

That suicide rate among younger vets and active military is six (6) times higher than the civilian rate. Before our endless war on terror began it was lower than civilian rate. So what did the Army do? Paired up every soldier with a "Battle Buddy" who are required to check up on each other in an effort to prevent more suicides. Here is how the program was described in 2010:

ACE is a four-hour training that provides Soldiers with the awareness, knowledge and skills necessary to intervene with those at risk for suicide. It includes suicide awareness, warning signs, risk factors and intervention skills development.

ACE stands for "Ask, Care and Escort." It encourages Soldiers to directly and honestly question any battle buddy who exhibits suicidal behavior. The Soldier should ASK the battle buddy whether he or she is suicidal, CARE for the battle buddy and ESCORT the battle buddy to the source of professional help, Cartwright explained.

"This training helps Soldiers and others who have taken it to be aware of warning signs exhibited by a battle buddy who is hurting and ... intervene before a suicidal crisis," according to Lt. Col. Scott Weichl, USAPHC (Prov) chaplain.

You know what would really stop this horrific toll of suicide (and PTSD, depression and any number of other ailments with which they are afflicted) among our Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, Sailors and Vets? Stop deploying them to places where they fight wars for the one percent. Stop deployments to places like Ukraine or Oraq or Syria or god knows how many other countries where their only purpose is to threaten war against other countries, like Russia and Iran. Stop treating them like meat puppets to serve the corporate war machine. Until that happens, more deaths and survivor guilt among our veterans and active serving military population will continue.

Almost every day, Sgt. Stephen Daniel thinks about the last text message he received from his Army buddy Colton Levi Derr, and he wonders: Could I have saved him if I had responded differently?

Sgt. Daniel and Sgt. Derr, who served together in Iraq in 2008, became close friends and shared a bond that can only be forged by wartime service and the shared experience of combat. [...]

Colton, 25, a native of New Underwood who served or led 500 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, texted Daniel to say that he thought his girlfriend was about to dump him, and that he was shaken by it.

"I was in an arms room counting weapons, and I wrote back something like, 'Dude, there's so many fish in the sea; stop trying to chase just one,'" Daniel recalled in a recent interview. "It was a completely generic, non-compassionate answer that I would have sent to anyone."

Not long after, on April 28, 2012, Colton killed himself off base in Fort Drum, New York.

Daniel and many others who knew and loved Colton were left to mourn and wonder: What could we have done differently, what could we have done to stop it?

Time to make the people pushing these useless, criminal wars to send their own children to fight them, or if they are of military age themselves, to join the military and face the same risks. But they don't have any "skin in the game" (I hate that phrase but it is too powerful a metaphor not to use). If they did, you can bet these damn, senseless wars of aggression would end immediately.