Requiem for a Navy Corpsman

by Larry C. Johnson

I got a real bad kick in the balls today. I spent the day working as a volunteer Chief Range Safety Officer at a Veterans and Cigars shooting competition sponsored by the Meritorious Foundation. Meitorious is a networking platform tailored to military needs, designed by those who understand military culture. It empowers veterans and military spouses through the strength of networking.

One of the RSOs who assisted me, a dear friend named Tank, served as a Navy Corpsman who did four combat deployments with the Marines. His job was saving lives, not taking them. Tank and I have a mutual friend — who I met when he took a Basic Rifle class from me — Jamie Lee Sclatter. Jamie also served as a Navy Corpsman with the Marines, but was qualified as a Marine sniper. Just an incredible guy. Humble, kind and very competent. His focus, like Tank, was on saving lives, not taking them. He talked of dealing with combat casualties, but never talked about killing.

Tank and Jamie hung out together. They were shooting together a week ago. As we left the event, Tank got word that Jamie committed suicide today. Fuck me, that hurts. The kid — yes, I consider 43 year old guys as my kids — is gone in part because of the stupid fucking wars we’ve been fighting for 25 goddamn years. This tears a hole in the souls of those who loved him that is not easily healed.

I met Jamie two years ago. He wanted to become a NRA Rifle Instructor and in order to do that he had to take NRA Basic Rifle. In retrospect, this is a ridiculous requirement for someone with his background. What endeared him to me is he didn’t reveal his status as a certified Marine sniper, despite me asking at the start of the class if he had any experience. It was only at the end of the course that he admitted to his prior expience. In comparison, I was an amateur teaching a professional, yet he never copped the attitude of, “I know more than you do” — which he was entitled to do so by virtue of his experience. When he revealed his status at the end of the class I began breaking his balls, telling him he should have been teaching the course. But he said he actually learned something from me, which humbled and inspired me. It was my honor to certify him later as an instructor. 

I always cite Jamie in my classes with aspiring RSOs as the example of the kind of attitude any instructor worth a damn should have… Humility and a desire to learn something new from others, even if they have less experience than me. What a loss. I haven’t felt this sad since my younger brother died five years ago.

His death, so needless, inspires me to do more to stop needless wars that result in the deaths of men, women and children in countries like Iran, Syria, Vietnam and Iraq. My prayers are with his wife and children.

Since 2001, the United States has lost more than 140,000 veterans to suicide — more than the total American combat deaths in every war since Vietnam combined. Between 6,000 and 6,700 veterans have died by suicide every single year since the War on Terror began, and the VA’s most recent annual report documents an average of 17.6 veteran deaths by suicide every day. Some researchers believe even that devastating figure is understated: America’s Warrior Partnership estimates the true number may be closer to 24 veterans per day when accounting for underreporting, with an additional 20 dying daily from “self-injury mortality” such as overdoses — a combined total roughly 2.4 times higher than the VA’s official count. By 2022, three-quarters of veteran suicides involved firearms, the highest proportion in over 20 years, meaning an average of 13 of the roughly 18 veterans dying by suicide each day were dying by gunshot. 

The post-9/11 generation of veterans carries a disproportionate share of this burden. The suicide rate among veterans aged 18–34 has more than doubled since the wars began, and suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for post-9/11 veterans. Strikingly, among veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who were never deployed have a suicide rate 48% higher than those who were — suggesting the crisis is rooted not simply in combat trauma but in something deeper about the experience of military service, transition to civilian life, and the sense of purpose that evaporates when service ends. This is compounded by a profound sense of moral injury: 73% of veterans polled said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan negatively affected the way they view America’s legacy in the War on Terror — a wound of meaning, not just of memory. Research shows that post-9/11 veterans with traumatic brain injury — affecting roughly one in five of all who served — experienced suicide rates peaking at 100 deaths per 100,000, five times the general US adult rate. For a country that has spent more than two decades asking its military to bear the entire weight of its foreign policy while the civilian population remained largely untouched by sacrifice, the veteran suicide epidemic is both a public health catastrophe and a profound moral reckoning. 

If you or someone you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is available 24/7: call 988 and press 1, text 838255, or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.

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