Content warning: this story includes a discussion of a suicide attempt.
In this season of Veterans’ Voices, WYSO is sharing the perspectives of people impacted by, and working to prevent veteran suicide.
Veterans' Voices producer Seth Gordon spoke with Danny Eakins, a program administrator with the Ohio Department of Veterans Services. The story begins when Eakins was starting out in the Army in 2003 at Officer Candidate School. He had missed some training due to an infection in his arm that required him to spend several days in the hospital. As a result, he needed to be placed with a new unit, a process called being recycled that was intended to take only a few days.
The following transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Danny Eakins: What I found myself in, because of probably just a lack of attention to detail on the part of the cadre who were running our training unit, was I ended up in that unit not advancing, not being permitted to train with the rest of the troop because I was getting recycled, but it ended up lasting for almost two months.
This isn't a place where I can just pick up a phone. This is an austere barracks. There's no cell phones. There's no, hey, I can go to the colonel's office or something. Your movement is severely restricted. I didn't necessarily understand what my options were. It was very difficult for me to cope with the fact that I was watching all my classmates continue to work, continue to advance, and here I was, in some cases, doing some of the work, but knowing that I was going to have to be recycled at some point.
But also beginning to wonder, at some point, were they ever going to do it. Because we were there, we were present. We weren't allowed to physically train with the rest of the unit for things like physical training and stuff. So I'm doing it on my own in my room.
And at one point it became a level of despair, two months of doing that where I'm wondering, is my Army career going to advance? How do I get out of this company and into a new company so I can advance and continue towards what I'm working towards here? And that's where I experienced my experience around suicide ideation and survived a suicide attempt.
It was my effort to try to take control. All this other stuff I didn't understand what were the levers I could pull. Who were the people I could go to? At one point I did go to the Army chaplain, and quite frankly, it wasn't much help to me and it didn't help me advance my cause at all. So I had that experience, and I remember going through the thinking, and it was obviously a highly emotional and troubling situation, but I remember feeling, at some level, resolved that this was the best way to fix this.
As it was, my attempt did not work and I woke up hours later. One of the things that still bothers me when I think about it today is that I was out for a significant amount of time and no one reported it. People had come through the room at some point and just thought, Eakins must just be chilling out. But I eventually wake up a little groggy and I did resolve in that moment that clearly this didn't work for a reason, perhaps, and so maybe there's some other things I can do.
There are legions of people out there, either professionals, friends, loved ones, that care enough to help.
So I went outside of what I thought my regulations were at the time in terms of my ability to leave barracks and go. And I literally left the barracks and went to a different chaplain office, actually in a different school there at the Army Airborne School in Fort Benning. It's parachute school there, and they have their own chaplain who's called the airborne chaplain. I remember having seen him around base, he was this very active, very outgoing, very engaging personality. I just decided, well, I'm going to go to him anyway because he seems like somebody who might be able to help me. And, obviously he did.
He ended up being a great deal of help, where he sat and he listened to me. I didn't necessarily tell him the whole story but I told him that I'm dealing with this injury, I've been waiting to get recycled, I don't think my chain of command is listening. I just need some help. I don't want to get out of the Army. I want to continue and that's the whole point, is that I don't want to go home. I want to do this. I just feel like I'm being held back from doing it and I don't know why.
He fixed it, essentially. Within a couple of days, I'm getting called into the regimental commander for officer candidate school, I'm going being called into that colonel's office, and I'm getting an apology and that this was unacceptable and we had no idea, that kind of stuff. I was given the option right there, he put the papers down, he goes, if you sign this, we'll get you on a bus, plane, and we're going to send you back home because we've treated you horribly.
I said, no, sir, I, I'm here to accomplish this and to serve and I intend to complete that if I'm allowed to. He goes, absolutely, you can report to this company, this day, this time, and you'll be permitted to complete your training.
Seth Gordon: What would you say to a soldier, guardsman or somebody who's maybe in a tough spot. How would you direct them?
Eakins: I would say, just ask for help, almost anyone. It can be one of the hardest things. But my experience has been that there are legions of people out there, either professionals, friends, loved ones, that care enough to help, and there are opportunities to talk, to get the support you need with whatever you may be dealing with, no matter what it is, honestly.
Every individual's experience is unique. Their experience is real, their crisis, their despair, it's all very real and there's no easy answers. But there are people who will help at the drop of a dime, who will support you in a way that you probably never knew they were capable of. That's been my experience, quite honestly. I've reached out for help and not gotten it. I've reached out for help and gotten more than I ever thought I would. I think we're now in a world where we are reducing stigma to where people can find help.
Veterans' Voices is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. Support for the series comes from Wright-Patt Credit Union.
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a trained listener, call 988 and dial 1 to access the Veterans Crisis Line.
