Military Reporter Reflects on Marine Suicide

Dan Lamothe, a reporter for Marine Corps Times, recently wrote what he described as among the “hardest piece of his journalism” in his career on the publication’s Battle Rattle blog. In the spring of 2010 he was an embed in Marjah, Afghanistan. He recently learned of the suicide of one of the Marines he befriended there.

An excerpt: Count me among the shocked. I’ve known Ian for more than a year, and he’d demonstrated all those positive characteristics while staying in touch regularly after we met last year at the Yellow Schoolhouse, a small patrol base in Marjah, Afghanistan.