Army teaching soldiers to take fellow soldier’s firearms from them

Overwatch Project actors perform for Soldiers during a suicide education session on Fort Bliss, Texas, Sept. 5. The Overwatch Project is a peer intervention training and education program focused on firearms suicide prevention specifically tailored to a military and veteran audience. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Justin Smith)

Story by Staff Sgt. Justin Smith

FORT BLISS, Texas – First Brigade Combat Team, Armored Division Soldiers took part in a week-long suicide prevention training exercise conducted by the organization Overwatch Project on Fort Bliss, Sept. 4-6.

The Overwatch Project is a peer intervention training and education program focused on firearms suicide prevention specifically tailored to a military and veteran audience.

This program is modeled after the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk,” only instead of talking about alcohol and vehicles, they are focused on guns and suicide.

Their training programs equip service members and veterans to intervene with at-risk buddies, asking to temporarily hold onto their firearms or to take other protective storage measures to prevent suicide. The program also focuses on building proactive norms for firearms suicide prevention, so that service members and veterans develop plans prior-to a potential crisis.

“Our goal is to empower service members with peer intervention skills that we know save lives, and this scenario-based training allows Soldiers not just to learn those skills but to practice them in real time,” said Casey Woods, Executive Director of Overwatch Project / FORGE, a 501c3 nonprofit.

Through a III Armored Corps partnership, the Overwatch Project has trained more than 7,200 1st Armored Division Soldiers in the past four months.

Soldiers are broken up into groups to participate in the training session which takes around and hour and a half. In the first part, they are educated about facts and statistics related to suicide and firearms.
“Suicide is often impulsive, half the people who attempt and survive said they thought about it for ten minutes or less”, said Woods.

1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division/Overwatch Project

“So having the people around equipped to ask those questions in critical moments is important.”
Afterwards, they observe and participate in a few different scenarios with professional actors who are all also former veterans.

At certain points the scenario is paused by the director who takes suggestions from the Soldiers in the audience on what course of action they should take. Those suggestions are then used by the actors to complete the scene.

The methodology of the training is a bit different from the standard format Soldiers are used to who usually are merely observers and can sometimes find difficulty relating to the subject matter.

“It brought a unique and refreshing angle presenting realistic scenarios that could actually happen”, said Spc. Wystan Winter, a combat medic with Chosin Company, 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, 1AD. “It felt worthwhile and relevant to real life, which I think is the most important part.”

Once the session is complete, participants fill out a short survey, then are given items such as gun safe magnets their peers can put their contact info on should they need to talk, and t-shirts with the Overwatch Project slogan.

The 1st Brigade, 1AD training week is part of a larger III Armored Corps partnership with the Overwatch Project, through which more than 21,000 Soldiers have been trained in the past 12 months.
For more information about the Overwatch Project, visit overwatchproject.org.

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