A Life Saving Golf Date With His Dad

After four deployments to Iraq, this veteran nearly ended it all. What stopped him? The most ordinary diversion imaginable

- David Chrisinger

HE TOLD ME he’d once contemplated suicide. He wasn’t one to open up about himself like that. He could tell a great joke and loved talking about hunting, but forget about anything more personal than that. He’d been a student of mine the year before, and after he’d finished the veteran reintegration class I teach at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, USA, we kept in touch. We’re about the same age, and he and I both have young kids, so I saw him more as a peer than as a student.

He’d thought about suicide after getting home from his fourth deployment to Iraq—the last one. He had been over there so many times that sometimes he struggled with the dates. He’d been part of the American invasion force in March 2003 and ended up in Mosul, and he remembered the Sunni uprising and its violent aftermath. He’s proud of a lot of what he did, but he feels guilty sometimes, too, about some of what he did and saw. Unless he has had a drink or two, he doesn’t talk about that stuff.