From the Department of Defense:IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No. 1072-07
September 03, 2007
DoD Identifies Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Spc. Travis M. Virgadamo, 19, of Las Vegas, Nev., died Aug. 30 in Taji, Iraq, in a non-combat related incident. He was assigned to the 3d Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 2d Brigade Combat Team, 3d Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.
The circumstances surrounding the death are under investigation.
For more information related to this release, the media may contact the Fort Stewart public affairs office at (912) 767-2479.
That's pretty much all you get from the DoD when it comes to soldiers' deaths. Who he was, where he was, and nothing else. "Non-combat related" means... Hit by a bus? Heatstroke? It may be under investigation, but you'd assume the cause of death would be obvious in such a young man.
It was, according to his local newspaper, the Pahrump Valley Times, "The soldiers who notified Vergadamo's family about his death reportedly said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound." Just another victim of the Army's suicide crisis.
Like all big stories involving huge numbers, we tend to see the Army suicide rate as matter of appalling numbers -- 17.3 per 100,000, up from a low of 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001. They're just numbers and it's hard to see what they really mean. Newspapers turn them into bars on a graph -- they're so much more digestable that way.
We have an inherent fear of suicide -- we don't want to linger over the loss for too long. The survivors recover and the world moves on. The media, for their part, seem to have moved on. After the Associated Press broke the story that Army suicides were at a 26 year high, they moved on to the next story. After all, Paris Hilton probably sneezed or somebody running for president said something stupid. The military suicide rate became a two or three day story, then down the memory hole...
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