War and mental illness have a long history

Guest Column | Orlan Love

Editor’s Note: Orlan Love, a Navy veteran and former Gazette reporter and editor, delivers the annual Memorial Day address at American Legion services in the cemetery in Quasqueton, his hometown. This year’s address is below.

One of the best things our Legion post does is provide military services for our deceased comrades. Among the most recent recipients have been Woody Wilson, Marvin Morris, Norm Miller and Conrad Vaupel.

Personally, I think it means more when the services are conducted by veterans who knew and liked their deceased friend. Sort of like when a funeral eulogy is delivered by a person with knowledge of and feelings for the deceased, if you know what I mean.

Sometimes, however, veterans die in obscurity with no military rites and few or none to mourn their passing. Such is the case with 13 veterans who died as patients at the Mental Health Institute in Independence and were buried there with little or no fanfare.

That slight will be rectified with a Veterans Memorial Service at 11 a.m. June 22, thanks to the care and commitment of the Missing in America Veterans Recovery Program. Volunteer Mary Helen Crouse of Indianola sent me such information as is available, which was gathered through genealogy research and public records.

Of those 13 veterans, 10 served in the Civil War, one served in World War I, one was a buffalo soldier with an African American unit in the Wild West and one was a Coast Guard member.

The Civil War veterans include New York infantryman Napoleon Dorsee, Illinois infantryman Michael Shannon, New Jersey infantryman Dr. Silas Tomkins, Illinois cavalryman John Emmert, Iowa infantryman Henry Livingston, U.S. cavalryman Silas Favors, Ohio artilleryman Lucien Harvey, Wisconsin infantryman Dr. Samuel Marston, Maine infantryman Ebenezer Colby and Iowa infantryman Andrew Breaky, for whom my deepest sympathy is reserved.

Ireland-born Breaky, a farm laborer from Cascade, served three years with the hard-fighting 21st Iowa infantry, which distinguished itself in several key battles that culminated in the July 1863 turning point capture of the Rebel stronghold at Vicksburg, Miss.

Breaky was 34 years old when he died at was then known as the State Lunatic Asylum in Independence. He was feeble when taken in and lingered two days without sustenance, his death certificate said.

“It is fortunate perhaps that death relieved the poor man of his sufferings,” said Dr. A. Reynolds of Independence. In death, “he may have eluded the imaginary imps he supposed were vexing him.”

War and mental illness have a long history together. We have no way to know what influence combat may have had on the mental state of the 13 veterans buried in the MHI cemetery. But many of them likely suffered from what we today know as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Psychiatrists did not recognize PTSD until 1980, but its symptoms — flashbacks, panic attacks, insomnia and suicidal thoughts — were common among Civil War veterans and especially those who entered asylums.

What came to be called PTSD was known as shell shock during and after World War I and as combat fatigue during and after World War II. We Vietnam vets were the first to have the PTSD diagnosis applied to us. A 1983 study found that as many as 15 percent of Vietnam vets had PTSD.

Many of the 2.6 million all-volunteer troops deployed in the Global War on Terror experienced traumatic brain injury and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, which often interact and can cause personal suffering and impairment that continues to plague soldiers and their families long after they have left the military.

A 2008 Rand Corporation study found that nearly 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have some symptoms of PTSD.

When we shoot the guns and sound taps at the conclusion of this morning’s ceremony, I encourage you to think not only of all the veterans buried in this cemetery whose names Dave Mueller read this morning but also of the 13 veterans reposing at MHI and of all the veterans coping every day with combat-related mental injuries.