How We Failed The Missing Marine

LCpl. Lance Hering staged an escape from the Marines 27 months ago in Boulder County, Colorado. He is an Iraq veteran who faced redeployment to the war and couldn’t stand the idea of returning. Lance was apparently so desperate he and a friend staged his “accidental” death from rock climbing in a popular area for climbing.

The friend reported Lance’s fall from the rocks and a large search for him or his body ensued. The local sheriff estimates it cost $33,000 to search for the missing Marine. Rescue teams including several veterans and former Marines came out to search. Eventually the story of the friend unraveled and the public that helped search for Lance became furious that they were duped.

This week Lance was arrested in Port Angles, WA. following an anonymous tip to the Boulder, CO. police. His father was with him attempting to fly Lance out of Washington to a psychiatrist and then to turn himself in to the USMC. The Rocky Mountain News has made this a front page story for the past two days in a world of continued war, financial crisis, the Congo killings and all the other tragic stories of humanity. There is a tone of angry retribution swirling around this 23 year old Marine who was 20 when he was in Iraq.

What most of the angry public fails to realize is Lance was indeed missing and his life was like that of a rock climber on the edge of cliff without ropes or a tightrope walker trying to maintain balance above the deepest canyon. Trying to keep balance becomes tiring and at times the exhaustion makes a person want to let go or give in to a mind and body failing them.

What I’ve really just described is the thinking of a combat veteran struggling with PTSD. The video of horrific acts doesn’t seem to have a pause button. The intrusive thoughts break up friendly family interactions or attempts of intimacy with a loved one. Noises, normal to most, take on far more intensity and create startle and fear. Anger seeps into the soul like a deadly virus and explodes into violent reactions for unknown reasons.

Suicide is a daily thought for many veterans with PTSD. For some it is an hour to hour, minute to minute option. We’re told to carry on and suck it up but the truth is we’ve become tired of living in a skeleton of the person we used to be. Our guilt of seeing the dead friends and dead kids haunt us constantly. Dying seems to be an option that will bring us peace and relief.

There could be no search party on Earth able to find Lance Hering who was so desperate he staged his death to avoid returning to the hell known of the Corps and Iraq. He was lost before he started that day with his friend to find a way out. Lance Hering didn’t fail us. We failed him.

We expected a young man with a scarred mind to forget about things he’d seen and done. And to return to do them again. We failed to look beyond the appearance of a healthy young man to see his thousand yard stare that demonstrated his despair and depression. We failed to recognize we can’t send a young man or woman to war and get the same person to return.

I’m not angry, Lance. I totally understand the despair, the hopelessness and the darkness that leads to doing something to escape. When I was twenty I returned from my war as a Marine. I didn’t face redeployment but I did face remaining 18 more months in the Corps. I faced carrying on like nothing happened to me over there. And I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I left without permission to save my sanity.

What Lance Hering faces is a normal reaction to an insane situation. His mind absorbed insanity on a daily basis and it rebelled against it. He was asked to suppress his moral core to do his duty. He became numb to the holocaust of war. Coming home didn’t turn the switch to normalcy back on for him. It more than likely made things worse because he became a stranger in his own family, regardless of their love for him.

It would be easy to condemn a young man we think betrayed us but the more humane and appropriate thing would be giving him the help he needs to restore some semblance of a normal life. Lance has become a broken soldier/Marine that is no longer of any use to the war machine. Why should we demand a pound of flesh because we broke him? He needs the support given when it was thought he had fallen down a mountain; because he has fallen into the abyss of PTSD and it is a very long climb back up from that dark, dark place.



Wm. Terry Leichner, RN

Psychiatric RN

Combat veteran with severe and chronic PTSD

USMC – Vietnam 1967-1969