Military.com, BEAUFORT, S.C. — Tatiana Sowell held her youngest child as she stood amid the rows of white headstones and stately mossy oaks.
Her late husband, Logan, was buried in this national cemetery nearly four years ago after taking his life and ending what his widow describes as a ruinous tenure in one of the U.S. military’s most iconic jobs: Marine drill instructor. He was 33.
Nearby, her other children spotted a coin, regarded within the armed forces as a symbol of respect, resting atop his grave. Perhaps, she thought, it was left there by someone who worked with him molding new Marines at Parris Island, just south of here.
Sowell, her gaze wistful, reflected on the times she had driven Logan to work. “It was just quiet,” she recalled. “Peaceful.”
Logan Sowell’s suicide in July 2021 is one of at least seven in the past five years involving the Marine Corps’ stable of drill instructors, according to military casualty reports obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2023, three occurred at Parris Island within less than three months.
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A study completed by the Marine Corps in 2019 found that during the previous decade, 29 drill instructors either ended their lives or openly acknowledged they had contemplated doing so — an aberration the study’s authors characterized as startlingly high compared with the occurrence of suicidal ideation among Marines who had never held that job.
Rates of addiction and divorce among drill instructors also were higher, researchers found.
Critics and relatives of those who died accuse the Marine Corps of fostering an environment that contributed to their deaths.
They describe routine 90-hour-plus workweeks, sleep deprivation and an always-on culture that frequently caused the job’s requisite intensity to seep into their personal lives, igniting disputes with loved ones. Others detailed bouts of depression or alcohol dependency …