Vets’ advocates want to pass PTSD law on federal level

Vets’ advocates want to pass PTSD law on federal level

by DENNIS GEISINGER
published July 7 2008

“I was part of a house cleaning operation on Jan. 24, 2004 in Iraq,” First Sergeant Hector Matascastillo told officials gathered in the Hennepin County Board Room, while downtown on June 19 for a conference on veterans’ justice and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). “I was going door to door looking for enemy combatants in residential houses with a pistol in each of my hands,” Matascastillo said.

Matascastillo, 35, a member of the Minnesota National Guard, had been deployed several times and was an infantry company senior NCO in Iraq with the 3-194 CAB, which stands for Combat Action Badge (awarded since 2001 to soldiers performing duties in an area with hostile fire or imminent danger). He works now as a veterans employment representative, assigned for the last five months at the Minnesota Workforce Center at Lake and Chicago.

“I was exiting a house when I saw an enemy in front of me with his gun pointed directly at me. I didn’t raise my weapons because he had the drop on me and any attempt to use my weapons would have been useless. So I was stopped without cover in front of the house, wondering why I didn’t see my partner, and why the enemy soldier didn’t fire on me,” Matascastillo recounted.

“My training had taught me that when faced with an armed enemy, to kill him immediately, and I wondered why this enemy combatant did not do the same to me,” he said, recreating the pulse-quickening tension of the moment. “I maintained my position with my weapons pointed down, still looking for my partner and still with the enemy backing away from me.”

“Suddenly,” said Matascastillo, “the soldier tripped over the curb behind him and he fell backwards. It was then that I heard my ex-wife scream, ‘He doesn’t keep ammunition in the house!’”

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