Content Warning: This article contains references to suicide, which some individuals may find distressing.
Kyle Darden was cleaning his weapon in the barracks when a concerned drill sergeant walked in with a somber message: Another Army recruit and his M-4 rifle were missing.
The basic trainees at Fort Benning, Georgia, were divided into platoons to search the area. At the last second, a drill sergeant instructed Darden and others to explore the nearby tree line.
“Halfway through, I started thinking of the worst-case scenarios,” said Darden. “I just swallowed that and went through with it, and I ended up seeing a pair of feet sticking out from the other side of a tree.”
As he approached the feet, he saw that the missing recruit had apparently died by suicide. Darden was six weeks into basic training. Understandably shaken, he was told, “Nothing is going to change.”
“Basically, I had to get over what happened, and people die all the time,” Darden said. “I was told it doesn’t stop anything.”
That was in 2018, the beginning of Darden’s Army career.
Post-traumatic stress disorder took hold and followed him to Fort Bliss, Texas. The nightmares began during his job training to become an M1 Abrams tank maintainer. He sought help only after arriving at his permanent unit, the 1st Armored Division.
He met with Army mental health providers who provided little to no relief. “I just felt like I was looked over,” he said. “Because it was in training and not war.”
But trauma is trauma, and despite a lack of resources or treatment, Army doctors diagnosed him with PTSD. The Army made a chaplain available, whom Darden spoke to for 20 minutes. So when he separated from the Army in 2022, he was still without much understanding, recognition or justice for what he had endured.
Darden submitted a claim with the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2023, which it denied, leaving him crestfallen. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I just kept going about my life, until I was told about DAV,” he added.
In January 2024, he sent a message to the DAV national service office in St. Louis. He then went to see benefits advocate Michael Franko, who, after reviewing Darden’s file, noticed an error in his claim decision. “Not only was it a clear error, but it was also just hair-pulling in terms of frustration,” said Franko.
The denial was based on a lack of a diagnosis of PTSD, despite Darden receiving one on active duty and confirmed by a VA compensation and pension examiner. The VA also said it couldn’t verify the traumatic event. “I told Kyle, as bad of a situation this is, it’s 100% correctable,” said Franko.
Another error Franko unearthed was a discrepancy with the deceased’s name. The name on the Defense Department’s casualty report was similar to but not exactly the name on the obituary Darden provided.
Franko opted to submit a higher-level review, one of the three main processes that allow a veteran to appeal a VA decision by having a more experienced VA employee review the file. He also requested an informal conference with a VA decision review officer and for the VA to contact Franko, not Darden.
“It’s already a sensitive situation, and I don’t want a VA employee who doesn’t know Kyle from Adam to call and spark some adverse thought,” he explained. “I can speak on behalf of a veteran as somebody who can set aside their emotions.”
That review officer called on May 1, 2025.
With the names, dates of birth and locations the same, Franko proved to the review officer that it was the same individual. Darden’s claim was approved that day and backdated to November 2023—the month of his original filing.
When Franko called Darden to break the good news, Darden was full of emotion. “He wasn’t just thankful for the free service we provided, not just getting an error corrected, but sitting there and talking to someone from one vet to another, not just a service officer to a client,” added Franko.
Darden is now receiving VA care and seeing a mental health provider every week. “She’s awesome, and I’ve learned a bunch of different techniques,” he said. “If I’m feeling anxious or a lot of anxiety or irritated or agitated, or even if it’s just nightmares, I have learned how to cope with a lot of that.”
