Many Wyoming veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan go without care they've earned

Many Wyoming veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan go without care they've earned
The Trib.com
By CHRISTINE PETERSON and BENJAMIN STORROW
Star-Tribune staff writers
1 hour ago

The week before Halloween, Adrian Najera had a flashback. He opened the doors of Liesinger Hall, but instead of finding himself on the Casper College campus, he was back in Kunar Province.

Back picking through the rubble of a bombed-out building. Back searching for any bit of intelligence: A body to photograph, a finger to scan, anything that might prove a top-level target had been hit in an airstrike.

“That’s how it happens to me. One minute I’m there and then I take a step and it’s like, boom.”

He snapped his fingers.

“As soon as I stepped outside those doors it hit. There were bodies, man.”

The challenges Najera faces are not unique among the soldiers returning home from more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many former soldiers are going without the care they are entitled to, veterans advocates say.

Nationally, only a third of veterans who fought in recent conflicts participate in U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs programs. The figure is similar in the Cowboy State, where approximately two-thirds of veterans are either seeking care on their own or going without.

Experts blame a range of possibilities for low enrollment, including a social stigma associated with seeking help or the general feeling that help is not needed. But the stakes of solving the enrollment quandary are high.
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