Ilona Meagher Moving The Nation To Care

A lot of Vietnam vets suffered from PTSD, but nobody took the time to understand or help them. Now some of those guys are living on the street. You look at their situation, and you think about what they did for their country and where they are now ... and it hurts. -- Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller

LA Times Photog Offers Heartbreaking Update On Marlboro Marine
by ilona
Mon Nov 12, 2007 at 10:01:38 AM EST

At the end of April 2006, I returned home from a few days of down time with my husband to a surprising email from a small New York publishing firm. Ig Publishing said that they were interested in putting out a book on combat PTSD. Would I write it?

The following month I set about fashioning a proposal for what would eventually become Moving a Nation to Care and began reaching out to possible interview subjects for the project.

It didn't take me long to know without any hesitation whose story I needed to open the book with: James Blake Miller, aka the Marlboro Marine.
go here for the rest
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/11/12/33326/990


25 years ago there were very few of us taking on Post Traumatic Stress. We were just beginning to understand the term. My father, a Korean veteran, said the Vietnam vet I brought home had shell shock. Back then, I didn't know what it was. Jack told me about nightmares he had. He told me about his life, but very little about Vietnam. His eyes told the rest of the story. I fell in love, not just with him, but with all Vietnam veterans.



Jack is 8 years older than I am. When we met, I didn't know much about Vietnam at all, but being curious by nature, I had to know all I could. It was then I knew there was a name for the ghost haunting him. By 1984 I was determined to make sure the wounds they carried in them were known. I wrote this poem.

IN THE NAME OF GLORY
The things I’ve seen and done would boggle your mind.
I’ve seen the death and destruction created by mankind
in the living hell that I walked away from but could not leave behind.
It all comes back to haunt me now and makes peace impossible to find.
The ghosts of the past that find me in the night
make me wonder if my life will ever be right.
I have tried to forget what I have done,
and now there is no place left to run.
All this in the name of glory!
There is no end to this horror story.
It still does not make sense even now that I am older,
why, when I was so young they made me a soldier
and why I had to be a part of that war
when I didn’t even know what we were there for.
At eighteen I should have been with my friends having fun
not patrolling through a jungle with a machine gun.
I did my part just the same, just for my country
and stood helplessly watching my friends die all around me.
I felt a surge of hate engulf my soul for people that I did not know
and saw children lose their chance to grow.
All this in the name of glory!
There is still no end to this horror story.
There was no glory for guys like me
only bitter memories that will not set me free.
I can never forget the ones who never made it home
some of them dead and others whose fate is still unknown
and the stigma that we lost what was not meant to win
most of us carry that extra burden buried deep within.
All this in the name of glory!
Will there ever be an end to this horror story?

I signed the poem W.T. Manteiv for We Trusted backwards Vietnam. 1984

Vietnam became my battle to fight because Jack couldn't fight for himself. There were very few fighting for them but they began to fight for each other. The Wall, stone cold black, rising out of the ground awakened the hero in these veterans that lived on past the battles with bullets and bombs. Their common enemy was claiming the lives of their brothers when they should have been safe back home. Too many brought the battles back with them.

By 1978 (one year after I graduated High school) the DAV found there were 500,000 diagnosed cases of PTSD but the media had very few reports on it. Tens of thousands became chronically homeless until they reached over 300,000. Several studies undertook putting a number on the suicides placing that count between 150,000 and 200,000, fully acknowledging there were many more simply because too few would connect the veteran to what they carried with them.

Vietnam Veterans of America also took form in 1978
Welcome To Vietnam Veterans of America
Founded in 1978, the VVA is dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families.

On line groups began to form and to this day, Vietnam vets are still reaching out to find those they served with as families search for understanding on sites like Lost and Found.
http://grunt.space.swri.edu/armylf.htm They also have links for the other branches of service. They embraced technology because they knew it was a lifeline and a way of banning together for other veterans.

I don't have to tell you this fight has been lonely for those of us trying to remove the stigma and provide the knowledge to all of them. In my husband's case, as well as too many others, by the time they received help they were already chronic. PTSD claimed too much of them to reverse the damage. Yet even as bad as his life turned, with treatment he is living a life again instead of just existing in it. We've been married 23 years now and to this day, we still hold hands. All of us understood that the sooner treatment began the better the recovery. We saw the clock ticking away as the media ignored our screams for publicity so that no veteran would be left suffering in silence or thinking there was no hope for them.

Today we have networks across the country where people are taking action. From veterans of Vietnam to the Gulf War, to Afghanistan and Iraq, they are fighting for all veterans. We have people like me who ended up fighting the battles for our the war our husbands fought in. And we also have angels like Ilona out there. She didn't have "skin in the game" but what she has managed to do, very few have even come close to. Because she cared, men and women across the nation are becoming more aware of PTSD. She didn't just start when she wrote her book. She began years ago with
PTSD Combat : Winning the War Within
Combat PTSD blog featuring research, news, resources, and events for returning veterans coping with post-combat reintegration and/or post-traumatic stress ...
www.ptsdcombat.blogspot.com

Ilona's love and compassion has reached countless people across this country and because of her, there are more understanding PTSD is not their fault. Amazing people like Ilona bringing this to the attention of the media and the conscience of this nation will be instrumental in removing the stigma of PTSD once and for all. With more and more veterans from past wars and today's wars understanding the wounds they carry are no different than a bullet wound or any other combat wound, there will also be more seeking help as attitudes toward PTSD change. The compassion of the American people will take over dismissals of their suffering as they are moved to take action.

For all these years, we have accomplished very little up until the last few years. I have never seen so many reporters covering this as I have in the last two years. Because of people like Ilona, I have so much hope that the stigma of PTSD will be removed and I will stop getting emails from veterans around the world still not knowing what PTSD is.

Along with Ilona there is Paul Rieckhoff of IAVA and Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense. We also have Lily Casura www.healingcombattrauma.com

All of us know that if we fail our veterans, if we fail to care for all the wounded, we do so at our own peril. It is the hero within the men and women serving this nation, no matter what reason is provided, that we have the rights and freedoms under the Constitution they take an oath to protect and defend. American generals going all the way back to Washington understood the need to care for the veterans who fight for us. To have one single combat veteran without a roof over their head, one veteran having to fight for the care they would not need had they not served, is a national disgrace and a detriment to our security.




Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com