The I Got the News Today series memorializes members of the military who do not make it home from combat tours. The series intends to remember the individuals, the human beings, who can all too easily become lost in the numbers of battlefield reporting. The news comes to the family in the form of a knock on the door, as service members in dress uniforms come to deliver the terrible words.
Tonight's story is different from most. It is a remembrance of a young man who returned to the United States from Iraq, but never really made it home.
Patrick J. Gibbs, Jr., son, brother, father, and former soldier, PJ to his friends, took his own life.
Patrick Gibbs was from Davenport, Iowa, one of the Quad Cities, which cluster around the banks of the Mississippi River. His brother was a student of one of our fellow Kossacks, and Patrick himself was a bright and talented youth. He enlisted in the Army in 2005, and during his time in the service was able to earn an Associates Degree in Criminal Justice. This was no small feat, as Patrick's service took him from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Fort Lewis, Washington, to Vilseck, Germany, to Iraq, and then back to Germany, in the less than five years that served.
PJ was a daring young man. Although he loved the assortment of pets he kept during high school--including the parakeets he taught to play hide-and-seek--he was widely known as the driver of a fearsome Mustang at the Cordova Dragway Park. Apparently, that was not the only place that he drove fast, though:
"He plastered all his speeding tickets on his bedroom walls,’’ his mother remembered.
In the Army, Patrick was no less daring. He volunteered for sniper school, and served nineteen months in Iraq.
It was there that he first threatened suicide.
We will never know what caused this young man, only 22 and both a son and a father, to end his life. There is no doubt that he struggled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as many combat veterans do. It may be that his problems grew from his work as a sniper. As one of his fellow soldiers, Michael Jozwiak, said of him:
"He was a member of a sniper team," he said. "There is something a little different from throwing a lot of bullets in a direction and somebody gets killed, and physically looking down a sniper scope and watching it happen."
He told his father of an innocent girl he had accidentally killed, even though the bullet that took her life did not come from an American weapon. He talked of how he had been the sole survivor of a raid on a booby-trapped building that killed six of his friends, even though soldiers from his unit say he was nowhere near that event (those soldiers were remembered by monkeybiz in this moving tribute).
What we do know is that his young life unraveled. His marriage broke up, he attempted suicide, and he became increasingly troubled by his time in Iraq. During his stay in Germany after Iraq, he met and became engaged to Savannah Huelsman, herself a medic in the Ohio National Guard from the outskirts of Cincinnati.
After he left the Army in October, 2009, he went to visit his fiancee. It was while he was in Ohio that he went out for a winter walk and was found by the police lost and confused, calling the names of his friends who had died. The police took him to a local hospital, and he was later transferred to the VA. Diagnosed with PTSD and prescribed antidepressant medication, he seemed to improve.
But by January, when he was back in Davenport, he again attempted suicide by overdose. Rushed to the hospital, given a new prescription, and returned to his parents home, he ended his life the next day. He was buried in Rock Island National Cemetary. The official obituary said that he
passed away Saturday, January 23, 2010 at his residence after a brief illness.
He was, in fact, ill. PTSD is a debilitating and terrible illness that strikes many, soldier and civilian, even here in our community.
Please, if you believe you need help because of this disease, seek help.
Please, if someone you love needs help, help them to find it.
Helping Our Troops
If you wish to assist our military and their families, consider Operation Helmet, which makes helmets safer, or Fisher House, which provides comfort homes for families near the treatment centers for our wounded veterans. Sponsoring a deployed service member at USTroopCarePackage can provide letters or care packages that make a real difference in a military person's life. To assist the animal companions of our deployed military, information is available here.
When our veterans come home, many will need jobs. Please look at the programs of Veterans Green Jobs and Welcome Back Veterans to see if you can help out.
About the IGTNT Series
"I Got the News Today" is a diary series intended to honor, respect, and remind us of the sacrifice of our U.S. troops. Click here to see the series, which was begun by i dunno, and which is maintained by monkeybiz, noweasels, blue jersey mom, Chacounne, twilight falling, joyful, roses, SisTwo, a girl in MI, Spam Nunn, JeNoCo, Janos Nation, True Blue Majority, Proud Mom and Grandma, Sandy on Signal, CalNM, and Wide Awake in KY. These diaries are heartbreaking to write, but are an important service to those who have died, and show our community’s respect for them.
Fallen service members whose names have been released by the US Department of Defense will usually be diaried two days after the official announcement on the DoD website. This allows the IGTNT team to cover each person more fully, but still in a timely manner.
Please bear in mind that these diaries are read by friends and family of the service members mentioned here. May all of our remembrances be full of compassion rather than politics.