Strange Story of Joseph Benjamin Noil Canadian with US Medal of Honor

UPDATE
Headstone fixes error for MOH recipient more than 140 years after rescue

District of Columbia Executive Director of the Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs Tammi Lambert, left, and Director of the Department of Behavioral Health Tanya A. Royster, right, unveil the headstone of Medal of Honor recipient Joseph B. Noil during a ceremony Friday, April 29, 2016, at St. Elizabeths Hospital Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Noil received the Medal of Honor while serving on USS Powhatan, but his headstone did not recognize his award because of a misprint on his death certificate.
ERIC LOCKWOOD/U.S. NAVY

Nearly forgotten, a sailor’s heroics are now forever etched in stone
Washington Post
By John Kelly Columnist
April 26, 2016

When Joseph Benjamin Noil started to lose his mind, it was agreed that the best place for him was the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. That’s where the Navy sailor went on June 3, 1881.

“Paralysis” was the vague diagnosis. Today we might call it post-traumatic stress disorder. Noil did little more than stare into the distance.

Living in New York City and working to support their two daughters, Noil’s wife, Sarah Jane, was too poor to visit him, but she wrote the hospital regularly to check on his condition.

Joseph Noil was a hero. He joined the Navy in 1864, possibly earlier. On the day after Christmas in 1872, he was aboard the USS Powhatan, a side-wheel steam frigate, off Norfolk. A boatswain named Walton fell from the forecastle into the ice-cold water and was swept under the bow.

Upon hearing the cry, “Man overboard!” Noil bolted from below deck, took the end of a rope and leapt into the sea. He caught Walton and held him until a boat came to their rescue.

For this gallant conduct, Noil was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Noil was unusual for many reasons. He was Canadian. And he was black.
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John McDermott's exhibition aims at healing invisible wounds in UK

John's exhibition aims at healing invisible wounds
Express & Echo
ART is always very personal, both to the artist and the viewer, so to look at some of John McDermott's paintings makes for a slightly uneasy feeling of intrusion into his mind, as his work is about his experiences in — and after — conflict.

John studied art in Glasgow before joining the Royal Navy, where he was to spend the next 27 years before settling in Exeter. He has seen conflict from two angles — mainly from being on active duty in conflicts around the world, including the Falklands, the Gulf and Bosnia, but also as a "man in the middle" as a UN observer in Cambodia in the wake of the killing fields.

It is apt, then, that his exhibition at Exeter Castle, as part of the Exeter Festival, is entitled Aftermath; he hopes it will raise awareness of the terrible problem of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among servicemen and women.

John, himself a PTSD sufferer, is passionate about getting the message across to the public that there are servicemen who have been in conflict non-stop for ten years, from the first invasion of Afghanistan, and the difficulties many of them will subsequently face in assimilating back into civilian life. "This is twice as long as the Second World War lasted," he says.


"One of the big issues we have with war-related trauma is the stigma surrounding it. We are getting better at understanding mental health, but our people are going through life-changing situations almost daily.
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John McDermott exhibition aims at healing invisible wounds

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Day in New Mexico

It would be great to have this in every state!

Memorial sets day for PTSD awareness
Sun-News report
Posted: 02/19/2010 12:00:00 AM MST
SANTA FE - April 28, 2010 will be designed as "Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Day" in New Mexico under a memorial sponsored by Rep. Nathan Cote, D-Las Cruces and passed by the Legislature.

"April 28th provides veterans, health-care providers and others to prepare awareness projects and publicity in regards to PTSD," Cote said. "Our population suffering from PTSD continues to grow because of the nature of the illness. Those inflicted may go underground and not seek treatment or may find themselves in trouble with the law. Let's all learn to recognize the nature of this illness."


http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_14431680

Military needs new mindset to help soldiers adjust

They need to not only think outside of the box, they have to first know what filled the box in the first place. Over thirty years ago, they had a better understanding of PTSD than ever before even though under different titles, it was the same wound mankind has suffered from since the beginning of time. The difference was Vietnam veterans were not about to return to their homes and suffer in silence with it. They had done enough suffering already. Their fathers came back from WWII with it and their grandfathers came back from WWI with it. Their cousins and older brothers came back from Korean with it and they were not about to just "suck it up" and "get over it" the way the other generations did, or thought they did, because it was clear they were not the same person they were before they went into combat.

A lot of them raised hell over it and made sure the VA took care of them, all of them. The problem was even though people in the mental health field knew what was going on, the general public didn't. Too many Vietnam veterans and their families never got the word and never had what they needed to know to heal this wound caused by trauma. There are still Vietnam veterans showing up at the VA for the first time because they either finally know what caused their suffering or they were forced to face it. Even some WWII and Korean veterans are presenting for the first time seeking help and this is a good thing but the bad thing is they are sent to the back of the line so that the newer veterans can be treated first.

Back when the Vietnam veterans pushed for changes, there were veterans centers across the country offering counseling viewed as "friendly" and not part of the VA. The veterans felt more able to talk because they didn't trust anything associated with the government. Considering what happened when they were serving, it would have been very hard for them to trust anything connected to Uncle Sam. The government understood this and supported the centers. Even organizations like the Disabled American Veterans were not turned to at first because there was the assumption they were connected to the government instead of just able to deal with the government. There was also the issue of them not being welcomed back then by the established organizations. They turned around and started their own organization much like today's veterans are beginning their own.

VA clinics and hospitals ran support groups for the families of the PTSD veterans before book were in the self-help sections of book stores. There was a lot being done back then and now that the need is so great, better reporting by local newspapers offering accounts of PTSD and more accessibility to information on the Internet, they developed their own communication system to support each other. This has been going on since before most of the "experts" on PTSD were even born.

So it would be a great start if they finally figured out what we already know and then maybe someone could ask us what mistakes we already made so we can stop being disgusted they are making the same mistakes we already learned our lessons from. A new mindset? Oh please, try the old one first because we already figured out what works!

Military needs new mindset to help soldiers adjust

A column by Kevin Leininger
of The News-Sentinel
Just days after an Army sergeant killed five fellow soldiers at a military stress center in Baghdad, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen acknowledged the obvious need to “redouble our efforts in terms of dealing with” the psychology of modern warfare.

But Leslie Haines fears those words will ring dangerously hollow unless the military fundamentally changes its traditional response to mental illness – an approach that subordinates the well-being of individual soldiers to the needs of the unit.

The epiphany came earlier this month while attending a seminar in Bethesda, Md., for mental-health workers dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder but, to Haines, the source of the inspiration was as surprising as it was disappointing.

“A chaplain said, ‘We don’t need to send (soldiers with PTSD) home. We can fix it in the field.’ That made me realize his primary client is the military and its need to keep boots on the ground. But if nothing changes, what kind of soldiers will we have on the ground?” said Haines, an Army reservist and founder of the Lutheran Military Veterans and Families Ministries. The year-old Fort Wayne-based organization provides Christ-centered counseling to veterans and their families.

The realization that war inflicts invisible scars is nothing new, as evidenced by the evolution of terminology from shell shock, to battle fatigue, to PTSD. But the changing nature of warfare and the military have conspired to create a unique mental-health threat that demands a new and more individualistic response, Haines said.
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Military needs new mindset to help soldiers adjust