Marine seeks advocates to prevent suicides

A veteran who served in the Marine Corps in Kosovo and nearly took his own life after suffering a psychotic break last year is urging that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) needs to have advocates for veterans to help prevent suicides. "Combat vets coming back from overseas should have an advocate prearranged for them," says Chris Sepsa Altvater, a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe who now lives in Pembroke. He believes the lack of advocates is one of the reasons there are an estimated 22 veteran suicides a day in the U.S.
Altvater served with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Division in Kosovo and Albania in 1999 during the Kosovo War. He says the Marines were sent there "to break up the fighting" between the Serbians and the ethnic Albanians, almost all of whom are Muslims, but he notes that it was a centuries-old conflict. When Altvater got there he saw dead bodies everywhere, and he says Albanian women over the age of 10 were raped repeatedly by men in the Serbian army. At a hospital where he was stationed an Albanian woman was working with a Serbian woman but told Altvater that the woman's husband had killed her son. When Altvater asked how they could work together, she said that having a means to feed her family was more important than having revenge on her co-worker. "I was in awe of her strength."
But he claims the Marines carried out what he considers torture, with mock executions of ethnic Albanians. While the gun battles and reconnaissance missions that he led didn't bother him, the psychological tormenting of prisoners did. He says the Marines would pick up people for looting or for breaking the curfew "or damn near anything," and didn't want any repeat offenders. Of the Marines' presence in Kosovo, he says, "We take our laws with us, and when we instill our laws there in the towns they don't know what to think about them."
According to Altvater, some of the Albanians the Marines had picked up would be made to stand before a firing squad, and sandbags would be placed over their heads so they couldn't see. The prisoners would hear the sound of the rifles being cocked to fire and then would fall to their knees. Afterwards, they were told that if they were brought back in the future they would actually be executed. They were then taken "30 miles into the middle of nowhere" to be left on their own. Altvater says he was one of the Marines in the firing squads.
Mock executions, which are categorized as psychological torture, also were reported to have been carried out by U.S. soldiers during the Iraq War.
In other instances, Altvater relates, Marines would "baseball pitch" meals to prisoners who had their hands and feet tied, so the meals would fall to their feet and they couldn't eat them. "But technically you gave them their meal" and complied with the rules of the Geneva Conventions.
Altvater was the reconnaissance team leader for the 3rd Battalion Landing Team small boat company and also a squad leader, with his orders coming from a captain. "I never imagined I would sign up for anything and do anything so terrible," he says. "That's the biggest problem I have  I followed orders and didn't say no."
He says the actions affected some but not all of the Marines and says he was surprised by the number who took pleasure in other people's pain. "The blacks and brown-skinned guys had the biggest problem with it." He notes that one of the Marines in his squad committed suicide after coming home, leaving a wife and children.
When he first arrived in Kosovo he had a sense of pride, being in the Marines, but while they would be kissing babies on one street, on the next street they would be "torturing" people. He sees "an oxymoron" in being there to stop the fighting between the Serbs and the Albanians while torture was being carried out. "My own actions bothered me; the firefights didn't."
Altvater notes that Native American combat veterans have "a stranger time in our minds" while serving in combat and "not feeling so hot about taking the fight to the brown man. You think about your own people. Combat vets come back pretty confused."
"Many have no one to speak for them when they can't speak for themselves," he says. "It was the worst feeling I felt in my life -- that despair."
He says his experiences while in the Marines were particularly difficult for him to handle, as at least five close relatives -- his grandfather, two uncles, a nephew and a first cousin -- all committed suicide. "My family has been through a lot of pain -- suicide, drug overdoses -- and Huntington's disease runs in the family. To be the guy who instills pain wasn't a good feeling at all."
After being discharged in 2000, Altvater says that at first he didn't think about Kosovo. His actions didn't start affecting him until he was about 35. Then he began having dreams in which he would take the sandbag "off a kid's head and there's my uncle, my grandfather, and I'm executing them. My military experience became confused with my family. I don't know how the wires crossed and got fused together. The brain does strange things." He then would fear going to sleep. "The older I got the more unacceptable my actions became."
Altvater was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 2014, but "I blew it off," he says. The VA clinic in Calais suggested treatment and a doctor would ask him, via videoconferencing, how his medications were working. But it wasn't until he had a "psychotic break" about a year and a half ago that he finally received the right medications and "got straightened out."
He says his situation "blew up" last year. He notes that his wife at the time, Sarah Woog, said "she could tell, because I kept mowing the same portion of lawn over and over."
Woog says she tried to get him help at the Togus VA Medical Center, but she states that doctors there did not see that he needed emergency care and instead had him join a three-day program. But he wasn't able to go by himself and "it wasn't what he needed," says Woog.
"I couldn't think straight to advocate for myself," says Altvater. "I felt like a hot potato, being handed back and forth." Woog then contacted Aroostook Mental Health Center (AMHC), and a case worker immediately came to see him. AMHC found a place for him at Northern Maine Medical Center, where he spent five days and was prescribed an effective medication.
Woog says there was no support from the VA or follow-up about his condition. "His life could have ended in tragedy if I wasn't his advocate. That's not built into the system, and it needs to be," she states. She also points out that preventive care is less expensive than emergency care.
The couple ended up divorcing, and Altvater notes, "It's hard to keep a relationship together when you're like that."
"Without Sarah I wouldn't be here right now," he says. "You saw the dysfunction in my mind that I didn't see."
Now if he feels he is slipping into psychosis, which comes with stress, he says he "pops a pill."
Altvater is trying to spread awareness because many veterans can't advocate for themselves "because of their mental state. They're left to be a statistic -- the 22 a day." He believes it's important for the VA to identify the need for having advocates for veterans, which "will save some lives."
Any healthcare professionals who would like to speak with Altvater about creating an advocacy team can contact him at <altvater76@gmail.com>.