
During his time as an Army Ranger, Belford completed 12 combat deployments totaling 66 months He plans to publish a book and documentary titled 'The War Inside Me', to tell his story of survival and spread suicide prevention awareness. VIEW ORIGINAL
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WASHINGTON — Jason Belford stood in the living room of his empty apartment. Still in his combat uniform, he stared blankly at the doorway, his mind spiraling.
It would be easier to end his life, he thought as he held his pistol on a scorching September day in 2022.
With a pending divorce, Belford, a first sergeant assigned to the Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia said he had grown weary of mounting bills and paying the mortgage for a house he didn’t live in.
But most of all, Belford said he could no longer bear the loneliness. He rarely saw his six children and hid his problems from friends.
Earning the Ranger tab had been the crowning achievement of his life. He had built himself from a broken man into one of the Army’s elite Soldiers. His peers saw him as the toughest Ranger, he said; a battle-hardened warrior who seemed invulnerable. When other Rangers needed advice on training or deployment prep, they turned to him.
“He's very resilient and adaptable to pretty much any scenario,” said retired Capt. Zack Ciampa, his former company commander. “I would trust him with my kids.”
And then, in the final assignment of his 18-year career, he had to leave the 75th Ranger Regiment behind.
When his time as an Army Ranger ended, it left him in a deepening funk.
“You give your whole life to become something and [then] it’s over,” Belford said. “And you don’t have anything to show for it.”
Like many veterans, Belford had to cope with the return to everyday life away from the war. According to the Journal of Veterans Studies, combat vets suffer from heightened rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
Belford said he had overcome the toughest odds on the battlefield, but he couldn’t overcome this. He decided that his only solution would be to take his own life.

One pull on his weapon would be all he needed, he told himself on that September day. One click could end all his problems.
“I thought everyone would be better off without me,” he said.
Belford took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and pressed the trigger.
Mission-focused
Belford had given nearly 17 years to the war in Afghanistan as an infantryman, sniper, platoon sergeant and Army Ranger. He went on 12 deployments to the country and to Iraq as a member of the 75th and the 10th Mountain Divisions. He accumulated 23 confirmed kills as a sniper over seven years, earning a trove of awards and honors, including a Bronze Star.
He said the missions gave him purpose, but they also took a toll.
“For someone that devoted a majority of his life for that mission and for it all to go away, that was really hard on a lot of guys,” Ciampa said.
In August 2021 President Biden ordered the final withdrawal of the remaining U.S. troops in the central Asian nation, ending the longest war in U.S. history. After the Army reassigned him to his first assignment outside of Special Forces in over a decade, he had to rethink his life. When U.S troops began returning home, the idea of withdrawal perplexed Belford and many others who had fought during the conflict, Ciampa said.
As a sniper, the operations he embarked on were intimate missions by nature. He studied and stalked his opponent, observing their patterns before taking aim. He learned to distance himself from his feelings.
Eventually the deployments and time away from family had lasting impact. He came home on one Christmas to a daughter who didn’t recognize him.
Then Belford faced his first brush with loss in the Afghan province of Logar. Eight months before, Belford had grown close with two of his peers, Sgt. Ronnie Kubik and Sgt. Jay Santora. Belford cracked jokes with the pair and trained and practiced jiu jitsu with them. They harbored mutual respect, Belford said.
During one mission, his platoon had escorted Afghan children and women to safety. Belford and his sniper partner watched from a rooftop for nearby threats.
The allied forces moved into a nearby building for shelter. An insurgent barricaded at the top of the stairs unleashed gunfire on his friends as they entered. Belford looked on as Santora sprang toward a woman and her baby, pushing them away from the onslaught. And in turn, Kubik tried to shield Santora from the gunfire.
The woman and her baby survived. The two Soldiers later died from their wounds.
“They really didn’t stand a chance,” Belford said.
Their deaths left Belford shaken.
“I became the Ranger I became because of them,” he said.
At just 21, Kubik, a New Jersey native, enjoyed playing music in his band, skydiving and whitewater rafting with friends. Santora, 25, of Long Island, New York, had plans to become an Army recruiter.
Belford had one day to grieve his friends and come to terms with the guilt of failing to protect them. Then he and fellow Rangers transported their bodies to Bagram Air Base.
The next day, Belford would board a convoy and return to patrol.
In the years that followed, Belford said he would learn from behavioral health specialists that he compartmentalized his feelings and didn’t face his feelings of guilt.
“Your men depend on you making decisions and being able to overlook things that might emotionally impact you,” Ciampa said. “And you do it over and over again for several years, Those things compound.”

In the small community of the Army Rangers, troops face tremendous pressure to stay in peak physical shape. Seen as the elite unit of the Army, Rangers must uphold the highest fitness and training standards.
Soldiers must be of sound mind to get recommended for coveted assignments like sniper leader, a position Belford held.
“I didn't ever want to let my leadership down by thinking I couldn't handle something based off of my mental instability of what I was dealing with,” he said.
“Like nobody ever expected me of being in that situation,” he said. “Because I was the hard-ass, you know. I was … the funny dude, the sarcastic about everything guy, like nothing bothered me type personality.”
A higher fate
The day that Jason Belford decided to take his own life in 2022, his peers saved him, twice.
On that September afternoon, Belford felt more alone than he’d ever felt since the day his brother Matt, also a veteran, died of leukemia two decades ago. Belford no longer had a wife to confide his frustrations and couldn’t see his kids for another few days.
In the months before, Belford’s life had spiraled. Belford said his true time in the Army ended on his last day as regiment first sergeant in August 2022.
“When I passed my guidon for the last time, I felt like my identity crashed with it,” he said.
Homeless and alone, for four months he’d spent nights sleeping on the flatbed of his truck or on a friend’s couch. Sometimes, he slept in his office.
As a first sergeant of a 200-member infantry regiment, he couldn’t show any signs of weakness, he said.
When a coworker checked on him, he said he would mask his sorrows with a smile or sarcasm.
“I was completely closed off to my best friends,” Belford said.
Eventually, a fellow Soldier helped him get a small rental property on the post. With only a futon chair as furniture, Belford said he would sit alone there, sometimes drowning his depression in liquor.
That afternoon, Belford and his Officer Candidate School class practiced land navigation exercises in the woods of Fort Benning. Belford said he didn’t feel well and asked to go home.
In the silence of his bare kitchen, Belford’s mind fixated on ending his life.
He took a deep breath and held his pistol close.
Click.
Startled, Belford said he looked at the gun. The weapon had failed to discharge.
It couldn’t be, Belford thought. He’d fired the weapon hundreds of times at the range, and it had never failed.
Belford said he still felt the urge to kill himself. But then he recalled what one of his behavioral health counselors had told him; find a place where he felt safe.
Belford recalled one Christmas, where he held his youngest daughter and rocked her to sleep. “It was like the world had stopped,” Belford said.
The memory gave him peace, but only for the moment.
Still panicked, his mind scrambled over who to call. Belford decided to return to the only place he called home.
Belford drove to his old office at the 75th Ranger Regiment. It had been months since he’d left his post as the unit’s first sergeant.
There he planned to meet with his behavioral therapist, Therese Arreola, whom he had been seeing to deal with his depression and PTSD. Once again, fate intervened.
Arreola scheduled a dental appointment on the day that Belford drove to the Regiment. But because of a heavy work schedule, she made the rare decision to cancel.
“If she hadn’t been there, I would have tried [to commit suicide] again right there in that parking lot,” Belford said.
Arreola walked Belford into the building to talk to him about his suicidal ideations and why he had been hurting.
“They just dropped everything to take care of me,” he said. “And I haven’t been alone since.”
Later that night around 10 p.m., Belford sat in the back of his pickup with a fifth of whiskey in his hand. Again, his mind drifted toward taking his life.
Then he heard his phone’s alert.
His best friend Dave Elder, a civilian, had texted him.
“I just wanted you to know I’m thinking about you brother,” the text read.
Belford texted back that he was struggling. Concerned, Elder called Belford and listened as Belford talked about his feelings at that moment.
The two continued chatting for several more hours before Elder finally ended the call, hoping that Belford had heard enough encouragement to make it through the night.
“The moment when you think you don’t have anybody, is really when you have everybody you ever needed,” Belford said. “All you have to do is ask for help.”
Healing
In the days that followed, the Army sent Belford 700 miles west to Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, a 29-acre, ranch-style facility in northern San Antonio. During the 30-day inpatient program, he sat with counselors and told them why he had been hurting.
Belford worried that he would be the only former Ranger admitted for treatment. To Belford’s surprise, he said, he found other Special Forces troops being treated at the center; Navy Seals, Delta Forces troops, Marines and other Rangers. The other patients shared their battles with PTSD, alcoholism and marriages.
“It gave me relief to know that I’m not alone,” Belford said.
Belford, now fights a different war.
He travels the country appearing on podcasts and YouTube videos to share his story and give other Soldiers and U.S. service men and women hope. He paints the personal details of his life to help others find hope in resources available to them. Belford’s hope: that he can save the life of another Soldier from the decision he nearly made.
Like he did as a Ranger, Belford still wants to bring every Soldier home.
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