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    Whittlesey: Lessons from an Army Reserve hero’s 1921 Thanksgiving suicide

    NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES

    11.03.2014

    Story by Staff Sgt. Neil W. McCabe 

    Army Reserve Medical Command

    NEW YORK - Three years after he came home from horrific combat in France during the First World War, Lt. Col. Charles W. Whittlesey killed himself over the 1921 Thanksgiving weekend. Whittlesey was a successful Wall Street lawyer and as the World War I's first Medal of Honor recipient, a celebrity war hero. His suicide was unexpected, but there were signs that people around him missed.

    Army Reserve Lt. Col. Charles W. Whittlesey joined President Warren G. Harding, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch and dignitaries Nov. 11, 1921, at the Arlington National Cemetery internment ceremony for the first Unknown Soldier.

    Whittlesey was World War I’s first Medal of Honor recipient, and he participated in the ceremony as one of six honorable pall bearers.

    After the ceremony, he told Capt. George G. McMurtry, “I should have never come here. The whole time I kept thinking it was one of my men. Now, I am going to have the nightmares again.”

    Three weeks later, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Whittlesey jumped off the weatherdeck of S.S. Toloa, a United Fruit freighter bound for Cuba.

    The suicide was the front page story in The New York Times and the national story was a shock to friends and family who missed the signs.

    Three years before, in the first week of October 1918, Whittlesey was ordered to advance against German positions as part of the 77th Infantry Division’s push through the Argonne Forest. The Wall Street lawyer was commander of the 1st Battalion of the 308th Infantry Regiment.

    The plan was for Whittlesey to meet up with units on his left and right at a road halfway up a hill, where the Germans had an observation post and artillery battery.

    When Whittlesey arrived there was no one on his left, no one on his right, so he waited. In the morning, he found his 700 men surrounded by German machine guns and barbed wire two miles behind enemy lines.

    For five days, “The Lost Battalion,” held out against repeated German attacks and sustained horrific casualties, including 200 killed in action.

    Historian Robert J. Laplander, the author of “Finding The Lost Battalion,” said, “Whittlesey held his position because he put the mission ahead of his command and he knew his staying there presented a challenge to the Germans.”

    Laplander said when Whittlesey returned from Washington, he remade his will, started staying late in the office to complete his casework and prepare narrative memoranda for each case his was working on.

    Another signal that Whittlesey was not doing well was the next day, when the lawyer paid his December rent telling his landlady: “I would cash that check as soon as possible, if I were you.”

    The first night on board Toloa, Whittlesey joined the captain and another war veteran passenger in the cocktail lounge.

    Laplander said in the cocktail lounge, for the first time in three years, Whittlesey opened up about his experiences in France. Other passengers said he was laughing and completely at ease. Then, at or round 11 o’clock, Whittlesey excused himself and told everyone he was going to his cabin. “He was never seen again.”

    Command Sgt. Maj. Harold P. Estabrooks, the command sergeant major of the Army Reserve Medical Command, Pinellas Park, Florida, said Whittlesey’s suicide is a tragic reminder that suicide does not discriminate.

    “Suicide attacks people across the whole spectrum: Officers, noncommissioned officer, enlisted and Family members,” the command sergeant major said.

    The command sergeant major said, “This is not 1921, it is 2014 and leaders and Soldiers need to know that the Army has the resources available to help them cope with anything they are dealing with.”

    Leaders have to look after all of their people, he said.

    “The holidays are a difficult time,” he said. “Soldiers isolated from family, home and their network of friends - for whatever reason - are vulnerable.

    Leaders need to keep an eye on their people and keep them connected to the rest of the world, so they don’t wander off unnoticed and do something terrible,” he said.

    Joseph A. Walser, the Suicide Prevention Program manager for the Army Reserve Medical Command, said, “Everybody, when they are honest and the veil has been pulled back, has struggled with suicide. In all of us, there is a part of us that wants to live and a part of us that wants to die.

    "Everyone wrestles with this decision about taking our own life or not.”

    A critical factor in military suicide that was a part of the Whittlesey situation is the combination of survivor guilt and that loss of the close bonds Soldiers form in a combat zone, he said.

    “One of the great things about the armed forces is that we form such bonds and connections,” he said. “It just intensifies that reality when somebody dies and you are part of a mission together.”

    The guilt of having someone die in your place or that you were not able to protect your buddy is very powerful, he said. “It is that whole: ‘Why did I survive and he didn’t?’”

    Walser, who has worked as a suicide prevention counselor for more than 15 years, said the key to breaking the code of someone contemplating suicide is listening for ambiguity.

    “Ambiguity shows up in someone saying: ‘I’m extremely happy, but my life’s a wreck’ and it also shows up in obvious behavior, like, ‘I am selling the things that matter to me’ or ‘I am making plans for my death,’" he said.

    “You can pick up those cues in the way they talk in conversation and the way they act, especially, when a person’s happy mood does not match the circumstances of their life,” he said.

    One of the most difficult things is when you identify the signs in a senior leader or prominent person in your life, Walser said.

    Whittlesey was a high-functioning individual, who did not give the outward signs of being depressed, he said.

    Walser said over and over again in his counseling he has worked with very successful people demonstrating the signs of suicide.

    “When I looked them straight in the eye and asked them if they are planning to hurt themselves, the flood gates opened up — I was the first one to ask them and they had been waiting for someone to ask them.”

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 11.03.2014
    Date Posted: 12.10.2014 15:45
    Story ID: 149991
    Location: NEW YORK, NY, US

    Web Views: 208
    Downloads: 0

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