There are 54 identification tags displayed on the Battlefield Cross Memorial in the Maine State House. Their chains are draped on the pistol grip of a soldier’s rifle, the dog tags themselves dangling just above a pair of combat boots. A helmet atop the rifle completes the cross.

The dog tags are from all the Maine servicemen and servicewomen who have died while serving in support of combat operations since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The story behind each dog tag is imbued with bravery, sacrifice and valor.

One set of dog tags and the story behind it, however, is different from the others.

The tags belonged to Staff Sgt. Jessica Wing, 42, who took her own life on Aug. 27, 2012, in Kuwait while serving with the 126th Aviation Medevac Unit, based in Bangor. It was her sixth deployment. With 23 years of military duty, she spent nearly all of her adult years in uniform.

When Wing died, the military offered little but the vague description of a noncombat-related death. Two years later, the Maine National Guard is willing to talk about the service of Wing, and the reasons why her dog tags finally were enshrined with those of her comrades.

“That was a conscious decision. I’m not going to tell you that it was not contentious,” said Brig. Gen. James Campbell about the inclusion of Wing’s tags. “The decision was made (that) Jessica Wing was an honorable soldier and her service needs to be recognized.”

Newfound awareness

Wing’s passing, and what has occurred within the Maine National Guard since it happened, underscores the military’s struggle with soldier suicides and how it is addressing the underlying problems that cause them.

Since the Maine National Guard began tracking deaths by suicide within its ranks in 2009, four soldiers have taken their own lives, with Wing’s death in 2012 the last one on record.

While fewer than one suicide per year is low compared with other states, Maine National Guard leaders — and the families and loved ones who are left behind — feel it’s still far too many.

“We have to take action,” Campbell said. “It’s a tough subject, but nobody should be hurting that bad. We have to take care of our own, and that’s why we’re very serious about it.”

High-profile deaths by suicide, such as that of renowned actor and comedian Robin Williams, bring the difficult subject into the public consciousness. Campbell, who is Maine’s adjutant general, acknowledges that what is happening in the U.S. mirrors what is happening within his ranks.

“A lot of the issues associated with (suicide) are murky,” he said. “I’m not really sure we understand the brunt of the problem, (but) we should be talking about it, listening and getting people the help they need.”

This lack of understanding and apprehension are reasons why the military was so hesitant when it announced Wing’s death in 2012 as non-combat related.

Soldiers in Wing’s unit were advised they faced punishment if they spoke about the death outside the official investigation, according to the investigator’s report, which was released to the Bangor Daily News through a federal Freedom of Information Act request.

“We’ve come a long way, particularly in the last 10 years, in the way of thinking,” said Col. Andrew Gibson, a Maine Army National Guard chaplain who has served 27 years. “There was a time when there was a stigma about not only suicide but other behavioral issues, and now we’re looking in a whole new way.”

Culture clash

There were 160 U.S. military suicides in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. The number reached 301 in 2011. In 2012, military deaths by suicide eclipsed the number of casualties in the war in Afghanistan.

In mid-2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order to improve mental health services for veterans, servicemen, servicewomen and military families.

It directed the Veterans Administration and Department of Defense to conduct outreach campaigns, which led to suicide prevention programs being started around the country, including IN Maine, according to Maj. James Brindle, spokesman for the Defense Department.

This outreach targeted a problem military psychologists say is rooted in the culture of the armed forces.

“The military is a warrior culture and to have any sort of behavioral health issue for many would be seen as a weakness,” said Hahna Patterson, Maine Army National Guard director of psychological health. “The No. 1 reason for not coming forward is that belief of seeming to be weak.”

That mindset is changing, and intervention is being prescribed as the best form of prevention, according to Gibson.

“It’s OK to ask for help,” he said.

Few know this better than Col. Jack Mosher, chief of staff of the Maine Army National Guard.

A national advocate for veteran wellness programs, Mosher said he’s driven to learn as much as he can about mental health because his spouse suffered from mental illness. She stopped taking the medications that kept her illness in control, and she took her own life last November.

“What I would say to people [contemplating suicide] is: You are precious, irreplaceable, there is no one like you on this earth,” Mosher said recently at the 240th Regiment’s regional training institute on Hildreth Street in Bangor. “The light of your life here makes the Earth richer for all of us. Never stop fighting for your life.

“Talk to people, talk to your family, go see a doctor. Concentrate on your spiritual and your emotional and your physical and your psychological well-being,” he said. “Be a true warrior and have the strength to go and seek help. Help-seeking behaviors are very important. You’ll get through it.”

‘A different Jessica’

In 2012, there were 319 U.S. military deaths by suicide. Jessica Wing of Glenburn was one of them.

Wing’s final deployment saw her overseeing the young helicopter mechanics in the 126th — nicknamed the “Black Bears.”

Her military career started when she enlisted with the U.S. Army at age 18. Before Kuwait, she served in Haiti, twice in Bosnia and twice in Iraq as a helicopter mechanic. In addition to her Guard duty, Wing also had a second job maintaining helicopters at the Army Aviation Support Facility in Bangor.

She was the go-to person in the 126th, according to the report on her death. When preparing for the 2012 deployment, a new position — senior crew chief — was created specifically for her, and it gave her oversight of all the unit’s crew chiefs.

The 126th left Maine in February 2012. By July, her senior crew chief position was eliminated amid rising tensions in the unit, according to the investigation report. Shortly afterward, she was referred to a behavioral counselor who saw her three times in the month before she died.

A soldier who had known Wing since 2006, and who identified herself as a friend in her sworn statement, told investigators that Wing had lost her mother and broken up with her longtime boyfriend just before deployment. The friend said Wing was “dealing with these pretty well until the point she was removed from her position as senior crew chief.”

Experts caution, however, that taking one’s life is a complicated issue, with inevitably more than one underlying problem. Those closest to Wing, though, had noticed a difference in her dating back years.

Staff Sgt. Christopher Stafford of the 101st Air Refueling Wing, who dated Wing on and off for about 12 years, said something changed after her 2008 deployment to Iraq.

“She came back from her deployment, and it was a different Jessica. She brought work home every day,” he said. “I don’t know what chewed her up over there.”

During Wing’s committal ceremony, four medevac helicopters flew overhead in “missing man” formation and flags were lowered to half-staff in Augusta in her honor.

Public figures in Maine marked Wing’s passing with statements of praise and condolences to her family. Gov. Paul LePage said in a news release that he and his wife, Ann, were greatly saddened by news of Wing’s death.

“Maine has lost a great soldier and a great Mainer,” he said. “We are forever indebted to her for her service to her state and to her country.”

Stafford, who recently left Maine again on deployment, said he knows things could have been different.

Wing’s family has declined requests to speak for this story, both from the Bangor Daily News and conveyed through the Maine National Guard.

“It’s lonely thinking about not having her around,” Stafford said. “If you know anybody in your life contemplating a final solution — I think it’s something that can be prevented. You owe it not only to yourself, but to them, their family and everybody who is special to that person to encourage them to seek help.”

Signs of improvement

The military’s suicide report for 2013, released by the Department of Defense on July 22, shows some improvement. Active-duty deaths by suicide dropped by nearly 19 percent between the peak in 2012 and 2013, decreasing from 319 to 259.

Suicides among reservists and National Guard members, however, increased by about 8 percent, from 203 in 2012 to 220 in 2013.

Those national trends are not reflective of what is happening in Maine, though, with Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery the state’s only remaining active duty base. There hasn’t been a suicide in the Guard since Wing’s passing in 2012.

Guard leaders in Maine credit efforts on suicide prevention for this trend, as well as continued work to reduce the stigma associated with mental health care in the military.

Recently, the Maine National Guard launched a new suicide prevention and awareness website, appointed a suicide prevention program manager and has a director of psychological health available to support soldiers and airmen in crisis, according to Capt. Norman Stickney, spokesman for the Maine National Guard.

Campbell said these intensified efforts are working.

“Although we still have a problem, we’ve really helped with the awareness and identifying people who might be struggling and getting them the help they need,” he said. “By working on that and trying to eliminate the stigma of admitting you might be struggling, I think that is helping.”

Perhaps the highest profile example of eliminating stigma occurred on May 24, 2013, the day Wing’s dog tags were hung on Maine’s Battlefield Cross Memorial. The decision, according to Campbell, was necessary to honor Wing’s decades of devoted service, regardless of how it came to an end.

“Jessica Wing was a good soldier by every estimation. She was selfless. She served honorably,” said Campbell. “She didn’t deserve what happened to her, and neither did we as a military. We need to make sure that it doesn’t happen to any of our people again. We need to do everything we can.”

Veterans, servicemen, servicewomen and their family and friends who need help with a crisis can connect with trained counselors through the toll-free National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 800-273-8255, press 1 for the Military Crisis Line. They also can chat online at MilitaryCrisisLine.net/Chat, or send a text message to 838255 to receive free, confidential support 24 hours per day.

Copy the Story Link