National Guard soldiers given "bum's rush in favor of regular Army troops"

There are so many secrets this country has, it is hard to know where to begin. It isn't that no one is talking about these things, but too many are dismissing them as just rumors. Nothing new really. Considering when veterans of wars going back to the Revolution, came home with what we call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder today, up until 40 years ago, no one was doing anything about it other than looking for excuses to ignore their pain.

They used to shoot the wounded for being cowards. Reports have come out going all the way up to WWII.

It is not a unique problem to the USA. The UK dealt with soldiers in pain by shooting them as well.

Pardons Granted for Shell-Shocked WWI Soldiers
Shot for Cowardice or Desertion
Friday August 25, 2006
By Angela Morrow, RN,
Soldier’s Heart=Shell Shock=Combat Fatigue=War Neurosis=PTSD

Nearly 90 years after their deaths, 306 soldiers who were shot for military offences during World War I have been granted posthumous pardons from the British Ministry of Defense. These soldiers were executed between 1914 and 1918 for breaches of military discipline that included desertion, cowardice, quitting their posts and casting away their arms.

Many men of the men executed for cowardice or desertion were suffering from "Shell Shock" after enduring months of military combat and horrors during WWI. British Defense Secretary Des Browne said these men were "as much victims of World War One as those who died in the battlefield." The group pardon recognizes that the men were not "cowards" or "deserters" and should not have been executed for military offences. This group of soldiers has been upgraded to being "Victims of War." Not one of the executed soldiers would have been executed today, since the British military death penalty was outlawed in 1930.

Many family members are glad that their ancestors are finally receiving these pardons and official vindication after all this time.

Recognizing Soldier’s Heart, Shell Shock or Combat Fatigue as PTSD
Shell Shock is the terms used during World War I for what is has been termed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder since the 1980’s. During the Civil War, the condition was referred to as "Soldier’s Heart." During World War II Shell Shock went by several names including "Combat Fatigue," "Traumatic War Neurosis," "Combat Exhaustion" and "Operational Fatigue." However, it wasn’t until after World War II that psychiatrists started to recognize that the symptoms of Shell Shock were not due to an inborn mental illness, such as depression or schizophrenia. Instead they determined that this form of psychological dis-ease was caused by too much exposure to war trauma.

According to the National Center for PTSD, studies have shown that the more prolonged, extensive, and horrifying a soldier's or sailor's exposure to war trauma, the more likely it is that she or he will become emotionally worn down and exhausted. This happens to even the strongest and healthiest of individuals, and often it is precisely these soldiers who are the most psychologically disturbed by war because they endure so much of the trauma.

When they came home, they were still haunted by what they saw with their own eyes as their minds tried to come to terms with horror movies playing with their nerves. Wives would hear their screams in the middle of the night. Kids would learn quickly they couldn't make any sudden moves and they were terrified of Dad lashing out because something they did surprised him in a bad way. Families were reluctant to let anyone outside the family know the war came home long after peace was declared by the governments and the powers ordering them to kill.

How does one declare peace of mind? How does a family explain to the rest of the population the war is still going on? There is a story being told all across this country from Vietnam Veterans when they are asked "When were you there?" and they respond with "Last night." More and more are talking about it but it was no less real when no one else was.

Now we have a new secret tied to war. As bad as it has been for regular military folks coming home, it's been even worse for the National Guards and Reservists. First, we need to begin when they arrived in Iraq as reports came out about how they were belittled by the active military. No one wanted these "weekenders" there. They were regarded as more trouble than they were worth. That attitude held. The National Guards and Reservists families knew about it, but they wouldn't talk about it. They just sucked it up. That was not the last insult to their service. That came after they were back and needing help to heal, just like the regular military folks but as we focused on the trouble they had getting help, we ignored the worst of their problems. The "weekenders" were getting even less help.

They were told to just go back to their lives, back to their families and jobs. Too many ended up risking their lives back home after risking them over there. Not just on jobs with law enforcement or in fire departments as many think, but risking them while carrying their own secret war just as every other generation had waged.

They were easy to ignore. Less than one percent of the population of this nation has served in Afghanistan or Iraq. Even less were "weekenders" expected to take off their boots and put on work shoes or college sandals. The regular military folks, well they suffered too, but they had the rest of their unit to lean on. Guardsmen came back to a nation filled with more people knowing who was winning American Idol more than they knew troops were still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the media spent more time making celebrity "heroes" out of people like Sarah Palin and her every tweet along with other famous idiots last scandal, they just didn't have time to cover anything about any of this.

As 18 veterans committed suicide on a daily basis families knew what was going on. More and more of them began to talk about it openly but the media had other things to report on cable TV for.

Now we have this fantastic look inside one National Guard unit painting the picture crystal clear so that the whole nation can see it, feel it and understand how real all of this is but I doubt you'll see it on CNN, FOX or MSNBC. The less than one percent serving can't compete with the budget battle, or if the Idol judges are "too nice."

These are our neighbors coming home. These are our coworkers. They go to our churches. They shop in our stores. They are suffering and they have been screaming for help but this is one more case of ignorance. Instead of shooting them for being cowards, we let them suffer to the point where they regret surviving.

Brandon Barrett's War
The Army didn't tell anyone about a disturbed AWOL soldier until it was too late.
By Rick Anderson Wednesday, Apr 13 2011

Two of Spc. Brandon Barrett's fellow Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers were killed and more than 20 wounded in three major firefights and suicide bombings the 5th Stryker brigade endured during its year in Afghanistan. Between the summers of 2009 and 2010, Barrett and his colleagues came under fire from snipers, mortars, and roadside bombs in sparsely-settled Zabul province, bordering Pakistan, and, to the south, in the Taliban-controlled Helmand province.

One particular firefight between the Taliban and Barrett's 5th Stryker detail lasted five hours. "His unit saw some of the worst combat in Afghanistan," says Barrett's brother, Shane, a Tucson, Ariz., police detective. Firefights were so intense the Lewis-McChord soldiers were sometimes known as the Shit Magnets. "If it was bad and it happened," a grunt told a reporter last year, "it happened to us."

Brandon Barrett, who killed at least two enemy fighters during his year-long tour, didn't seem to fare badly, however. During a post-deployment health screening last summer, he told doctors only that he was a bit nervous, could be startled from time to time, and had seen lots of dead people. Otherwise, he was fine, he added, and certainly not suicidal. But doctors, according to a 200-page Army report on Barrett's case obtained exclusively by Seattle Weekly, worried he was keeping his real feelings to himself. He denied having any medical or mental-health issues, doctors noted, although they did refer him to the service's substance-abuse program.

The base also was in turmoil over claims that it mistreated members of an Oregon National Guard team that was demobilized at Lewis-McChord after returning from Iraq last year. Madigan Army Medical Center officials handled them as second-class soldiers, Guard members told reporters, citing a briefing held by Madigan staff to prepare for the unit's arrival. It included a PowerPoint presentation that showed a ball cap emblazoned with the words "Weekend Warrior," and a staff advisory that suggested Guard members might try to game the system to extend their active-duty pay. The soldiers say they didn't get necessary treatment, and were given the bum's rush in favor of regular Army troops.

Spc. Nikkolas W. Lookabill, 22, was shot to death by Vancouver (Wash.) police outside his house four months after he was processed at Lewis-McChord. He was killed September 7 after refusing to put down his gun.

Army veteran Robert Quinones, 29, armed with four guns, held three hostages at gunpoint at a Fort Stewart, Ga., hospital, threatening to kill them as well as President Obama and former President Clinton. He pleaded for mental-health treatment, then surrendered. Injured in Iraq and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Quinones had recently been medically discharged from Lewis-McChord.

"Who'd miss me anyway?"

Spc. Dustin Knapp, 23, got into a fight with his uncle, stormed out of his Wisconsin home, and was struck and killed by a car as he walked down a two-lane road at 4:30 a.m. His August 16 death, two months after he returned to Lewis-McChord from Afghanistan, was ruled an accident, although there was speculation he'd jumped in front of the car.

read more here
Brandon Barrett's War