USA LZ Agony

USA LZ Agony

by
Chaplain Kathie


Back home from combat the Landing Zone, the place where they are supposed to feel safe again after putting their lives on the line, has been turned into a nightmare for far too many combat veterans. The VA figures that 18 veterans a day commit suicide and 12,000 try to take their own lives every year. When you stop to think that these men and women had been willing to lay down their lives for the sake of this nation, for the sake of their buddies, it should be stunning to hear that kind of numbers. The truth is, if the American people knew one tenth of what the veterans come home to, there would be a thunder of feet taking to the streets that would deafen any politician not paying attention.

They were sent into Afghanistan without anything being prepared to take care of the wounded in 2001. There were less doctors and nurses working for the VA than after the Gulf War. A normal response to sending men and women into combat would be to prepare to take care of the wounded but no one thought of them. This was at the same time the majority of the American people approved of sending them to Afghanistan in response to the attacks of 9-11. They simply assumed any nation so able to claim how much they support the troops would have really meant it and did something to take care of all their needs. This assumption not only made an ass out of all of us, it endangered their lives.

This wasn't bad enough. Then came the invasion of Iraq. Still no one planned on taking care of the wounded. March 2003 they were sent in but when they started to come home from Iraq with wounded bodies and minds, there was a long line ahead of them waiting to be taken care of. Claims were deep and getting even deeper because the media finally began to pay attention to PTSD. This meant there were more and more older veterans finally being told what had been wrong with them for over 30 years. They began to flood into the VA for help to heal and compensation. This was at the same time the survival rate was at an all time high with technological advances in trauma care. More and more were surviving with horrific wounds that would have killed them during past wars. Still no one cared to prepare to take care of them.

As reports came out about the suicide rates going up, the homeless veterans population going up, divorces going up, incarcerations and accidents going up, the VA was slow to ramp up and the congress was slow to ask tough questions. The congress was not acting to demand accountability for the lack of care any more than they were ready to increase the funding of the VA so they could hire more people. This didn't begin to happen until 2006. As it was it was too little too late to really matter. Since then they have been trying to take care of a flood while there is a tsunami offshore of wounded needing to be taken care of.

We don't hear anything about any of this on the cable news stations and hardly hear enough on the local TV stations. We do see from time to time one of them being honored as their flag draped coffin passes by a sea of red-white and blue flags while neighbors show up to pay tribute to the life lost, but the same people showing up to show they care know nothing of the suffering of others living on their own street. No one told them.

When they come home, they are supposed to be able to concentrate on healing and reconnecting with their families. They are supposed to not have to suffer for being wounded risking their lives doing what we sent them to do, but they suffer all the same. So do their families. They are not supposed to have to fight to have claims honored any more than they are supposed to have to wait to have their case heard anymore than they never made us wait to go where we were sending them. They were not supposed to have to end up jobless or homeless because they put their personal lives on hold, left their families and friends and risked their lives. Their lives were supposed to matter to all of us and all of us would know that if we bothered to pay attention and find out what was going on. We didn't and they ended up suffering because none of us were demanding CNN, FOX and MSNBC stopped talking about celebrities as if they were bought out by the Star or the Enquirer. We didn't demand we were informed about how many were wounded. We didn't demand to know what happened to families after someone they loved took their own lives because they managed to survive combat but couldn't survive coming back to the USA and landing in the zone of agony!

Whatever suffering their going through is our fault because we didn't want to know enough to make sure we did. Now they come home just as the Vietnam veterans did. They come home to a nation detached and avoiding the reality they live with. We claim we learned something from Vietnam and never again will we take out our feelings of the combat on them, but reality sucks and at least we cared enough during Vietnam to feel one way or the other but now, no one even wants to know. Shame on us! We hardly learned anything at all. We've spent so many years trying to make it up to the Vietnam veterans for the way we treated them but when you get right down to it, we are still treating all of them as if they don't matter because we are neglecting them when they need us.

This leaves us with this question. If we have failed them so badly, why would anyone want to still serve? Read the following and keep in mind that this man wouldn't need to smoke pot if he had the help he needed to heal but since no one demaded they come up with programs that actually work, it happened to him because he was too afraid to talk to his buddies. See, no one told them what PTSD is or what causes it. So this is going on in every state and they come home wondering why they are suffering and no one seems to care.

Corpsman turned to pot to deal with stress

By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Apr 12, 2010 9:00:03 EDT

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — The enemy’s bullet tore into his arm, knocking Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class William Osborn out of commission during a firefight May 4, 2009, in Afghanistan.

Just six days later, Osborn was back in action, operating as the team medic with his Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command unit and completing a seven-month deployment.

The events of that day and the totality of his combat tour weighed heavily on him well before he left Afghanistan.

“After I was shot, things obviously changed,” he said. “Psychologically, it starts taking a toll on you.”

Nights were spent tossing and turning. He became moodier. Facing near-death experiences in combat, Osborn, a single father, often thought of his three children. “A lot of rough nights that I still don’t want to talk about,” he said.

But in a spec-ops unit and community known more for its machismo, intense drive and universal strength, he felt that to tell teammates of his struggles — even men with whom he shared a tight brotherhood — would be to admit that he’s less of a man than the rest of them.

“I wasn’t going to tell my team of Marines, of special operators, that I had a depressive disorder,” he said.

So he did two things that would get him in trouble. He self-medicated with antidepressants, which he later confessed to his superiors. Then, while his case was being processed, he began smoking marijuana at home to help him sleep.

In early March, he popped positive on a random urinalysis for the key active chemical in marijuana. For his two transgressions, he said, instead of preparing to advance to first class petty officer this year, he’s at Camp Pendleton, Calif., busted in rank to E-4 and serving his punishment of 45 days’ restriction along with loss of half his pay for four months and 45 days’ extra duty as he awaits the Navy’s decision about his administrative discharge for smoking pot and taking antidepressants.

He hopes that publicly drawing attention to his use of marijuana to treat PTSD will change the law on how the Navy and Marine Corps handle service members who struggle with ways to live with PTSD.


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Corpsman turned to pot to deal with stress