Army Recruiter Suicides

[Scimitar]

I consult sales System and Sales Management for a living; I say that to make this point...

When I got married, my best buddy was in the middle of a family crisis and living overseas, although I asked him to be best man, I just didn't have the heart to push the issue and have him fly half way around the world for the wedding. His life was falling apart around him.

So I was left with a problem, who should I have as a best man?

Then I thought to myself…
"Who's the best man I know?"

It was a no brainer…the Station Commander of the recruiting station I enlisted in.

I have NEVER, and I repeat, NEVER, seen a man tackle such an extremely difficult and thankless job, with a smile AND get mission...every...freakin....month. And remember I do that kinda stuff for a living.

SFC Darren Robinson personifies the NCO creed and is a significant reason why I am reenlisting.

When I really sat down and thought about it…the BS I saw him having to pull day-in and day-out…It is one of the few times in my life that I can think of were I have seen true character at work, that and my Father. Funny thing is my Father was a 20 year military man himself, no coincidence there I think.

Recruiting IS like a three year deployment (not that I've deployed, but you get my drift), next time you see a recruiter tell him thanks. Believe me he’s earned it.

S

Originally Posted by 72_Wilderness

I'd say shame on Time Magazine for bringing it back up to the surface. Let the men be remembered the way they should be, with respect.

What would sweeping it under the rug and leaving it hidden accomplish?

[72_Wilderness]

WCH, I wasn't implying that it should be swept under the rug. It being, the stress that is put on the Recruiters and the need for something to change.

I believe that any service member that has a need for any sort of counseling after a deployment should get it. Something more than a standardized block of instruction, for the stress that they are put through I feel if they need it, they have earned it.

I was commenting on the fact that Time Magazine brought old news to the top specifically about two Soldiers in Texas. If Time Magazine would have written the article in late October or November I would not have thought that they were trying to use the situation to meet some desired goal or have an alternate effect. It's been almost six months.

Take into consideration what TR said. I believe this is there attempt to give their claim some sort of backing, however wrong and out of place it may be. We can see through it, but we are not the target audience either.


Monday October 20, 2008

Widow pleads for recruiting overhaul / Iraq vet asks Army to evaluate high-stress duty

By LINDSAY WISE
Staff

Two weeks ago today, Sgt. First Class Patrick Henderson walked into a shed behind his house, locked the door and hanged himself from a rafter.

The 35-year-old soldier was the fifth Houston-based Army recruiter to commit suicide in seven years.

Now his wife - also a recruiter - says she hopes his death will lead to an overhaul of the Army's high-stress recruiting practices.

"My husband was an Iraq veteran, a strong, proud man," Staff Sgt. Amanda Henderson, 32, said this week in her first public statements since her husband's death. "He loved and served his country and went above and beyond the call of duty, and I don't want others to go through this."

Patrick Henderson's suicide came just six weeks after another recruiter, Staff Sgt. Larry Flores Jr., 26, hanged himself in his garage in Palestine Aug. 9. Both men belonged to the Houston Recruiting Battalion's Tyler Company and both were combat veterans.

Flores, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the station commander in Nacogdoches, where Amanda Henderson worked. Her husband was assigned to Longview station.

Douglas Smith, spokesman for U.S. Army Recruiting Command, declined to comment for this article.

In a statement last week, USAREC announced it will establish a Suicide Prevention Board and send a team, including a psychologist and chaplain, to the Houston battalion later this month.

Army officials acknowledge recruiting is one of the toughest jobs in the military, especially at a time when the U.S. is fighting two wars.

Houston battalion recruiters who spoke to the Chronicle said they work 12- to 14-hour days, six or seven days a week. If they don't fill monthly quotas, they're criticized as failures, punished with even longer hours and threatened with losing rank or receiving poor evaluations, they said.

"Some people are really good at recruiting, and I think that's good for them," said Amanda Henderson, who served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005. "But it's not fair to these veterans who are coming back and being treated like crap just because they can't meet the quota."

She'd like to see recruiters treated with more compassion and given better access to mental health care. The Army should also give soldiers more time between combat deployments and recruiting assignments so they have time to re- adjust to society, she said.

..We are humans, too'

"We're recruiters and we have a job to do, and I understand that and I understand that these hours are long, but we are humans, too, and we have families," she said.

The couple met a year ago in "recruiter school" at Fort Jackson, S.C.

"He was always cracking jokes, he was always laughing, and I think what attracted me most about him was that even though he was the class clown, he was strong," Amanda said.

Patrick had already served three years as a recruiter with the Houston battalion before deploying to Iraq in November 2005.

He badly injured his knee in an explosion, but still went on missions with a leg brace.

Less than a year after returning home in November 2006, he was reassigned to the Houston Recruiting Battalion again.

"Even though he hated recruiting he knew he was a soldier and he had to do his job to the best of his ability," his wife said.

The upbeat soldier was a hard worker who helped keep his fellow recruiters motivated, said Staff Sgt. Joe Quinters, who supervised Patrick as a station commander in Longview.

"A lesser person would've quit, but he was always out in the schools, always out in the community," he said. "He was very well-respected and liked, and every person he put in (the Army) had nothing but good things to say about him."

Stress on couple

Amanda and Patrick married Jan. 7. To celebrate, they tattooed their initials linked by tiny hearts on their ring fingers.

But she soon talked to her husband more on the phone than she saw him. Eating meals together was a luxury. They got home so late that they only had enough energy to collapse into bed.

When Flores killed himself in August, the stress on their marriage and professional lives doubled, she said.

"I know after Sgt. Flores' death, Patrick didn't seem like himself," Amanda said. "He took it very badly because he was trying to hold me up. I was having a hard time with it, and I was crying a lot."

Two weeks after Flores' suicide, Patrick threatened to kill himself, screaming that he couldn't take it anymore. Amanda called a friend who came over and talked to Patrick until he calmed down and lay down on the couch.

"I watched him all night long because he slept with his eyes open," Amanda said. "It was the freakiest thing."

The next morning, Patrick was delirious. "He didn't know where he was," Amanda said. "He went from thinking he was recruiting to thinking he was in Iraq."

Patrick spent four days in a Longview hospital before being transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio for evaluation, Amanda said. Doctors prescribed medication for anxiety, depression and insomnia and told him he needed outpatient therapy and marriage counselling, she said. Patrick was taken off recruiting duty and told to report to Company headquarters in Tyler to await reassignment.

"He just kept telling me that he just got to a breaking point and it's over and he wants to go on," Amanda said.

..I think he just snapped'

On Sept. 19, Patrick met Amanda at a bar in Nacogdoches. Amanda later told police they'd argued and she'd suggested maybe they should separate for a while. But by the time Patrick arrived at the bar, they'd made up, she said. "He came up to me and gave me a big hug, and everything was OK," Amanda said. She went to bed thinking the drama was over.

Patrick was found dead the next morning. "I think he just snapped," his wife said.

He leaves behind three children from a previous marriage and a stepson with Amanda.

Now she's on leave, trying to wrap her mind around what happened.

"I liked recruiting in a way because the Army puts a roof over my head," Amanda said. "I just graduated from college with the help of the Army. I've gotten to see the world because of the Army. And I don't mind talking to people about the Army. But I can't force you to do something because I like it."

Her husband, a proud infantryman, felt the same way, she said.

"Patrick always used to say this: ..My career is based on the whims of a 17-year-old kid.' And I can still hear him saying that in my head."

72W

[Firebeef]

I'm not sure how they do it today, but it was a rather lenghty and painful process. They obviously can hold way more over a soldier who volunteered or has converted to a Recruiter MOS. As a command selected recruiter (assigned kicking and screaming), the first month you "roll a doughnut", they usually don't freak out too bad, but they will come in and look at your PMS (Production Mgmt System) which is a system used to track (supposedly) how many phone calls you need to make, how many appts you need to conduct, how many candidates take the ASVAB, etc etc, all the way til enlistment. It;s only supposed to be a "tool" for you to track and plan your own success, but after the second or 3rd bad month, it becomes a club to pummel you with.
Then comes the dreaded "Meeting with the CSM". Man they made that out to be like the end of the world, but having come from a Combat Arms background, I thought it was a pretty wimpy ass chewing personally, worthy of a brand new Corporal or SGT, not a CSM.
Then the RTO (Recruiter Training NCO) comes and listens and watches you make phone calls and conduct appts, and "mentors" you. Of course, there are counselling statements even from the first Doughnut or Zug. If you are trying, or you can convince them you are trying, they'll continue to work with you, and if a soldier just isn;t cut out to be a recruiter (although they never liked to admit that sales wasn't a learnable skill) somewheres around 6 months they will begin relief for cause paperwork. I rarely saw anyone who was chaptered out for just not making quota (mission they call it !!!) There were more than a few meltdowns, though, DUIs in Gov Cars (the dreaded K cars!!) even back in the 80s were a quick ticket to back-on-da-block street. One recruiter in our BN was caught red handed....or assed with a female High School student....in the library...in the act. The Army and USMC recruiters seemed to handle the stress of recruitering pretty well. We had a Navy meltdown in our town about every 6 months or so. Everyone I know who was in recruiting and was relieved, went back to their old MOS to do great things and some even passed me on the promtion ladder. There were times I really just wanted to say "screw it" and let them relieve me, but I guess that good ol' competitive edge or stubbornness of a Scotsman, or maybe I just was an idiot. In any case I ended up surviving, holding my head up, because I never once lied to a kid, or fudged or forged documents or background checks. I actually was awarded the Gold Badge ....the Holy Grail of Recruiting, to those that gave a shjt. I was just happy to have survived, and even though it took me longer, I still made it to SF .....just older and wiser, and probably mostly sorer than if I had done it 4 years earlier.
Maybe someone who was a recruiter can enlighten us to how they do it nowadyas.... I left USARECTUM in Nov 88.
Hope this answers some of your question

[CoLawman]

One of those #$%^@ Army Recruiters got me to sign up for 3 of the most important and transformative years of my life. I'll be heading to the Recruiting Station to chat with the folks, as Firebeef suggested.