America's message to veterans, "Sorry wrong generation."

by
Chaplain Kathie

Last night I was watching a great documentary on FDR. While the program focused on his presidency and suffering, there was great footage of men in uniform lining the streets in New York as his motorcade passed by. It seemed as if there were an equal amount of them mixed with civilians. This was a different country back then. It seemed as if the entire population of America was involved with WWII. Every household had someone serving or had a close personal relationship with someone deployed.

They watched and waited for news reports. They gave up some luxury items and some food was rationed. They bought war bonds. The economy wasn't great back then either. Somehow they managed to take care of the veterans, offered training for jobs, construction for homes they could afford were sprouting up across the nation and they felt America was in fact connected to them. Everyone was doing their part.

A few years ago when the news media focused on PTSD and TBI, the government was forced to ramp up services to take care of them. We heard all kinds great amounts of money being devoted to taking care of them with government funds. We heard about all the hiring going on for mental health workers and claims processors. We thought everything was fine and went on with our lives facing our own problems.

The problem is that we were living in fantasy land and it was easy to pull off since no one was really watching. Much like the $700 billion funneled into the banking industry, supposedly intended to enable the banks to lend out money again, what we were told would happen, didn't.

There is a backlog of claims over 800,000. Two thirds of the American public still have no idea with PTSD is. Jobs, well, jobs for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are even more scarce than they are for the rest of us. A lot of employers don't want to hire veterans. Because of PTSD, which again they really don't understand, and because of the fact if they happen to be members of the National Guards or Reservists, the employers don't want deal with having to face them being redeployed and filling their jobs.

The lucky ones are able to go to college and be trained for new careers but they have problems too in an atmosphere of disassociated students unwilling to even acknowledge they are attending classes with someone that was willing to die for them. They just don't want to hear it.

A couple of years ago I presented the documentary "When I Came Home" about homeless veterans along with a video of mine about PTSD. It was advertised in the Orlando Sentential and by several churches in their news letter. The church I was working for was kind enough to donate the use of the fellowship hall for the event. I had the past national commander of the DAV along with someone from the VA there to answer questions. We were all there to provide much needed information. The problem was, we only had about 20 people show up.

Considering right here in Central Florida we have over 1,200 homeless veterans and there are over 400,000 veterans in Florida, you'd think that at least the families of the homeless veterans and veterans of all wars would be at least interested enough to show up, but then you'd have to think they thought the newer veterans were worth their time showing up and eating a free lunch. Yes, that's right. We even provided a free lunch and we still couldn't get bodies into the chairs.

It's still going on even though the numbers of the wounded by PTSD are rising. Read this.

Veterans in need return to a nation in the red
Baltimore Sun - United States
Mental health, job services could shrink as demand grows
By David Wood
December 14, 2008

In Baltimore and across the nation, officials are bracing for new waves of war veterans to return home - amid worries that federal and state budget cuts will threaten programs that offer a lifeline for those facing health and career problems.

Demand for jobs and mental health services among veterans is swelling as public and nonprofit organizations struggle to build and maintain a support network to address issues that might not emerge for months or even years.

More than 1.8 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating a need for veterans' services not seen since the World War II generation came home six decades ago.

There are 480,000 veterans in Maryland, and their ranks are growing as troops return from the two battlegrounds.

Yet after several boom years for veterans, there are just barely enough services to care for their needs. And trouble is brewing.

"I anticipate we are going to have difficult times," said James A. Adkins, Maryland's secretary of veterans affairs.

At first caught unprepared, federal and state veterans departments have responded in recent years with a smorgasbord of new and expanded programs for tuition assistance and financial aid, employment counseling, and physical and mental health programs.

The demand for mental health services is especially troublesome, and officials are warily awaiting what might be a tidal wave of new claims.

According to a Defense Department Mental Health Advisory Team study released earlier this year, as many as one in three of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have been exposed to blasts from roadside bombs, rockets, mortars or suicide bombers.

About 590,000 such soldiers reported outright injury, short-term memory loss or being in a dazed or confused state that prevented them from completing their mission.

One of them was Aliyah Hunter, 27, who grew up in Baltimore before she joined the Army. Her base in northern Iraq in 2004 was hit almost daily with mortars and rockets. Car bombs exploded outside the walls. She was terrified, with reason. One day, a suicide bomber got into the mess tent and detonated his charge.

Her world turned orange. She was flung away through a jumble of bodies and smoking wreckage. Friends and tent-mates were killed outright. Their bodies were set aside while the wounded were taken away. Hunter staggered out with perforated eardrums, a concussion and back injuries.

Her troubles really started when she got home to Baltimore after completing her tour. It seemed that nobody understood or appreciated what she'd done, what she'd gone through, what she'd lost. Life for others went on as before. She felt betrayed for being unprotected.

She didn't have the words to make people feel what she felt.

You return from that experience, she said, "speaking a foreign language."

After two years of spasmodic white-hot anger, broken friendships and family bitterness, Hunter sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder.
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26 years ago, I decided to do something about the Vietnam veterans suffering and attempted to provide the education to others I had to struggle to find. I knew what they were going thru because of my own Vietnam veteran husband and a lot of his friends. 16 years ago, I was doing it online. A lot of good it did back then. I was not thinking about the fact I was beating my head against a wall.

In 2004 we moved from Massachusetts to Florida so that I could afford to work part time and do this full time. I just couldn't keep up with what was going on trying to work a full time job on top of it. So we moved, I worked for a couple of temp agencies until I landed the job at the church. I kept trying to get the Orlando VA to start support groups for the families and use me, but they were not interested. In January of 2008, the church eliminated my job because of the budget. I became a Chaplain, hoping it would open the door to the VA so that I could do what I had been doing all along only finally get paid for doing it so that my family didn't have to suffer financially. The door was slammed shut. I wasn't their kind of Chaplain because I did not have a degree from a seminary.

I am a member of NAMI, but that didn't help either. They won't use me either.

The videos I do are all over the web and free to use. I get a lot of emails about people wanting to use them for outreach work from all across the country and several other countries. I ask for donations to keep this work going and cover the costs of making the videos, especially when groups request DVD's of them. I can tell you by name how few groups and individuals have donated. Most of the donations have been $20.00. They have not even covered what it cost me to become a chaplain or begin to cover the cost of the traveling I do. Psychologist are using my videos but not one of them have donated even though they are being paid to do the work I've done for them.

So many mornings I wake up and feel like a fool trying to move mountains when I am just a regular person with absolutely no luck at all. Then I'll get an email from another veteran or a spouse needing help and I know why I do this.

I have plenty of contacts with groups but it's almost as if they are competing with each other instead of working with each other. No one wants to join forces because they are all struggling to get enough donations to survive. The money that was all over the media supposedly to cover this kind of work, apparently ended up only going to select groups and the rest of us were shut out.

It's not that there are not plenty of people trying to take care of the needs of the veterans, it's that there is not enough money to do it and keep going. I'm lucky in a way because I am by myself. I don't have people to pay or overhead other than my house, travel, the Internet connection and web site. My brain doesn't cost anything. Yet when you read about people trying to supply tangible goods to the troops unable to keep doing it, it should break your heart.

When you think about the troops deployed, the disconnect between them and the public is so vast its nearly impossible to overcome. When you read the following, maybe you can turn around and contact your congressman to find out exactly what they are thinking when it comes to taking care of the men and women serving and the veterans that came home to feel as if they are speaking a foreign language. Remind them of how the WWII veterans were treated when they came home and then ask them why they have not done the same for our veterans today. I would but they ignore me too. Had this been back when the WWII veterans came home, none of us would be flat broke doing this work. We'd have donations from coast to coast. Back then the veterans really mattered. Now the message is, "Sorry veterans, you're back in the wrong generation."

Donations Dwindle as War Becomes an Old Story to Many
By PETER APPLEBOME
Published: December 13, 2008

NEW WINDSOR, N.Y.

The other day, Lucy Mercado got an e-mail message from a woman she didn’t know. She wanted to find out if Mrs. Mercado could help ship a sliver of Christmas to her husband, a noncommissioned Army officer stationed near Baghdad on his fourth tour of duty.

Given the date on the calendar, the message noted, the realization was sinking in that the officer and his men would not be home for the holidays and that their next redeployment back home was months away.

And so, it went on to say, “if you know of anyone who could buy some cheap Christmas candy, put it in a box and send it to my husband so he can hand out to his soldiers, I know this would perk morale up a lot.”

Mrs. Mercado gets a little help. A former Marine named John Hamernik has bought hundreds of hand warmers — it gets cold there in the winter. A car auction company, Manheim New York in Newburgh, N.Y., has put out donation boxes instead of holding a bake sale, as in the past. But donations are about half what they used to be. And other than what she can beg and cajole, which she does with a grim urgency, there’s not much. She put a donation box in a local church. No one donated anything. She has spent $1,000 out of her own pocket.

The war, or the two of them, after all, are old, old stories. And, of course, there’s the economy. In an endless universe of hurt, there are just too many others in line. So this year the garage is just about empty — some cookies and granola bars donated by the Nabisco plant in Newburgh, some bottled water and energy drinks lined up against one wall. Plenty of room for those two cars.

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