Barack Obama

The legacy of Clay Hunt: Marine recalled in new suicide legislation


Marine veteran Clay Hunt is shown here in Haiti in 2009, two years before he committed suicide. New suicide prevention introduced on Capitol Hill bears his name. (Photo released by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America)

By Dan Lamothe - November 19, 2014

Marine Cpl. Clay Hunt already was a survivor when he deployed to Afghanistan in 2008. An infantryman, he’d been wounded in the wrist by an enemy sniper in Iraq in 2007, just weeks after watching a fellow Marine sustain a mortal gunshot wound to the throat by another enemy marksman.

Hunt didn’t let his wounds in Iraq hold him back, though. He recovered, went to sniper school and then deployed with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, a unit from Twentynine Palms, Calif., that quietly deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, before the troop “surge,” and was spread across 10,000 square miles in Helmand and Farah provinces. Sixteen Marines and a Navy corpsman were killed in combat, and scores were wounded. They eventually were reinforced with more troops sent from the United States.

Hunt left the Marine Corps afterward. He struggled with depression, panic attacks and post-traumatic stress but threw himself into veterans advocacy and humanitarian work, even traveling to Haiti in 2009 with other Marine veterans to help after a devastating earthquake.

Then it was over. Hunt, 28, committed suicide in Houston in 2011. Family and friends said he had been battling the Department of Veterans Affairs to get his disability rating upgraded from 30 percent, as he struggled to find employment and his marriage unraveled. He locked himself in his apartment and turned a gun on himself...

The story goes on to tell of his pro active stance in getting treatment, failures of the system, and resulted in the legislation which should turn a light on mental wounds that have overwhelmed the system of veterans who need healthcare.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/11/19/the-legacy-of-clay-hunt-marine-recalled-in-new-suicide-legislation/

We should remember that we send these young men to war, many of who have the best of intentions and who, in their own way, are there for love. Of their friends, family and fellow soldiers, often times for the people in the other countries they are in. The human mind and heart are complicated things, able to do good and evil. This young man worked in forms of public service we both hate and love. All that, confined within each living body, a universe of possibility, and too soon taken away.

IAVA working on bill:

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The day the bill was signed:



RIP:



When I look at him, I see a child.