We need to talk about suicide in the military
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Simon Harold Walker, University of Strathclyde
In 1916, a young British private in northern France wrote home to his parents explaining his decision to take his own life. A survivor of the early days of the Somme, considered one of the most brutal battles of World War I, Robert Andrew Purvis apologised to his family before praising his commanding officers and offering the remainder of his possessions to his comrades. Purvis’s surviving suicide note remains one of the only documents of its kind from World War I.
Our research into suicide during World War I has shown that it was not uncommon – although reporting of it was rare. For the armed forces, recognition and support for these cases has been a longstanding struggle. From 1923, the Scottish charter for the honour roll of the fallen explicitly forbade the inclusion of suicide cases, which meant that reported cases from World War II were also omitted from the honour roll in the Scottish National War Museum at Edinb...
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