Anyone ever experience an individual in their unit taking their own life?

Spent an hour making him laugh and teasing him about cookies. The Next day heard SGT B had killed himself. All the funerals I’ve been too that one was the saddest. There were more tears shed that day than I care to think about. He was very young and it never made sense.

Ive lost 4 close friends in the 6 years ive been in. It hurt more and more each time and the memorials get harder each time.

Unfortunately it’s happened a couple of times. The first time was in 2010, a few months after we got back from AFG. It was actually a member of my squad. Afterwards I spent so much time pouring over his last days, trying to see any signs that it was going to happen. The guilt was unbearable. We lost another Soldier from the same unit a few months ago. I didn’t know her well but it was still a sock in the gut.

Yes. Still remember it 30+ years later

Some units have this occur far more often than is expected. I have known and seen more that many should have to deal with. It affects many in different ways all the way from denial to understanding. Its how we each deal with it and move on.

Yup. A PFC in my platoon in the 29th Sig BN, FT Lewis on Monday night on Columbus Day in 94. Tuesday morning he was out of ranks for PT and his team chief covered for him, he didn't know where he was, and said that he was in the bathroom with "digestive issues". He was found about 1 1/2 hours later dead in his car in the back parking lot with a single gunshot to the right temple. TAPS hasn't sounded the same since then. (There is more to the story, but that's the short version)

My paradigm of PTSD has shifted in regards to PTSD as I have gotten older. PTSD is first a matter of survival. We need to focus on that early on.

A roommate Howard himself in our shared garage, right over the frame and engine of a hot rod I was building... I finally called somebody to haul it away cuz I just couldn't bear to touch it anymore. That was three decades ago and it still makes me feel unreal just to think about it.

I Lost two friends in Korea. It wasn’t suicide but it still tire at my heart. I did have two of my students that I cared for end their own lives. Devastating.

Yes, we lost a Soldier while on deployment to Iraq. No one saw it coming, Soldier was a top performer, well liked by his peers and respected by his NCOs and officers in a great Squad in one of the best companies of the battalion.
The unit was devastated by his loss and the investigation after crawling up everyone's posterior, never concluded what led the Soldier to shoot themselves. The blanket saying that there are always signs didn't hold true at all and the belief in that statement caused the leaders trouble with guilt for years and still causes a couple of them issues to this day 13 years later.