American Notes Veterans

Although Michael Dean, 43, never saw combat, he served two tours of duty in Indochina and "was always talking Viet Nam," said a neighbor in Lebanon, N.H. Last week Dean's obsession took a tragic turn. In an apparent murder- suicide pact with Caroline Hull, his lover and the widow of another vet, Dean killed himself, Hull and her three children. "We the veterans, widows and children of veterans are a forgotten group," said a suicide note. Coincidentally, a study just published by the New England Journal of Medicine reports that Viet Nam-era veterans are 86% more likely to commit suicide than nonveterans and 53% more likely to die in car crashes. "The casualties of forced military service," write the authors, "may not be limited to those that are counted on the battlefield."