In a video shot at his home here and released on Dec. 26, the senior enlisted advisor to the Army Reserve Medical Command’s commanding general urged Soldiers to reach out to people who care about them when they feel lonely during the winter holidays.
“It is a holiday season. It's different than the rest of the year,” said Command Sgt. Maj. John F. Hilton, who invited Joseph Walser, AR-MEDCOM's director of suicide prevention programs, to home for the conversation, where the two men sat by a fire in the living room.
Walser started the conversation when he said to Hilton that the winter holidays bring contradictions.
“This is a season where not everybody's jolly, and the pressure's on to be jolly,” said the Marine combat veteran. “I thought I'd just ask you for an opening thought: What do you want to say to our Soldiers and Families?”
“It is the one time a year where you're supposed to be with family and you're supposed to be partaking in all of these traditions that have happened over the years,” Hilton said.
Hilton, who became AR-MEDCOM’s top NCO in February, said Soldiers need to be aware of the natural contradiction between the joy of the holiday season and their own disappointments when their own situation does not match that joy.
“If you have a traumatic event happen or a series of events happen throughout the year that you're struggling with, especially if it's a loss of someone,” said the veteran of deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Djibouti.
“It could be a death of a close family member all the way to the other end of the spectrum being maybe it's a relationship that you weren't ready to leave, but the other person was that alters the holiday traditions, for sure,” he said.
“Some people find themselves depressed, not in a ‘Holly Jolly’ mood, right? If we want to put it that way,” he said.
Hilton, a New Hampshire native, said Soldiers need to know that loneliness is itself a contradiction, because the Soldiers are surrounded by people who care about them—including their battle buddies wearing the same uniform.
“I would tell them, even though they have experienced loss of some sort, they're not alone,” he said.
The command sergeant major gestured to himself and grabbed a piece of his own uniform shirt for emphasis: “There are others who depend on them, and a lot of them are wearing this part-time.”
When that dark mood comes, the Soldier needs to reconnect to the people who care about him.
“If they are feeling that they have those feelings of loss, maybe teetering on hopelessness, just reach out.”
