Suicides casualties of war, too.(Perspective)

Byline: PENNY COLEMAN

My husband Daniel came home from Vietnam in 1969 with what is now known as post traumatic stress disorder and subsequently took his own life. So did tens of thousands of other husbands, sons and fathers whose names are not on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. For those of us they left behind, Memorial Day has a particular sadness. Officially, this is not our holiday because officially these were not combat deaths. Yet the psychic wounds suffered by the men we loved were deadly.

No one actually knows how many Vietnam veterans have taken their own lives. The government refuses to track or count veteran suicides, and then uses the absence …