Camp Lejeune job fair aids wounded Marines

This is a wonderful idea! It should be repeated across the country. If they can work, give them jobs and really welcome them home to a new future.

Fair aids wounded Marines
This time, it's civilian recruiters with prospect of jobs at Lejeune event

Jay Price, Staff Writer
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CAMP LEJEUNE - A pair of rocket-propelled grenades saddled Pvt. Robert Wild with back, neck and leg injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury. None of that discouraged 45 employers Tuesday at Camp Lejeune's first job fair for injured troops.

Such job fairs are new for the Marine Corps. The Corps held the first two in Virginia and California this year and plans to make them regular events, said Richard Waller, a civilian Marine Corps worker who came to Lejeune to help organize the event.

"Instead of making them go looking for employers, we wanted to bring the employers here to them," said Waller, who is with the Virginia-based Wounded Warrior Regiment, to which injured Marines are assigned while they recuperate and prepare for discharge.

Nearly all 42 Marines in Lejeune's Wounded Warrior Barracks attended, some hobbling from booth to booth or cradling an arm in a sling. Many, including Wild, wore "smart phones" on their belts, programmed to alert them to appointments because brain injuries had damaged their short-term memories.

Wild was injured when his unit's small outpost south of Fallujah in Iraq's Anbar province was attacked by insurgents. In less than two weeks, he will leave the service and he had little idea what he would do next, until the job fair.

"It gives you hope that once you get out, it's not the end of the world, that there are people out there who want to hire us," he said. "Until I came here and talked to some of these guys, I didn't know my options."
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