Was WWI veteran Josef Prusek's death suicide or murder?

Suicide or murder? Death of Iowa veteran in Montana in 1921 raised questions

The Gazette
December 31, 2019

“A wound made by a large caliber bullet extended clear through the skull, there were no powder marks and the coroner expressed the opinion that it would have been impossible to have held a heavy revolver far enough away from his head to have left no powder burns. The bruised condition of the man’s knuckles indicated he had been in a fight,” The Gazette reported.

This April 11, 1921, Gazette story was headlined, “Evidence points to murder of Prusek.” One of Joe Prusek’s brothers went to Montana, attempting, without success, to get more details about his brother’s untimely death. (Gazette archives)

Josef Prusek had lived in Cedar Rapids since 1890. He built a two-story family home at 1601 N St. SW, where he died April 24, 1915.

At the time, his daughters Mary, Lillian and Harriet and son Milo lived in Cedar Rapids, but his son Joseph Jr., or “Joe,” had moved to Montana in 1914.

Joe staked a claim near Briley in south-central Montana near Big Timber.

He joined the Army’s 88th Division in 1917 during World War I and went to France. He was assigned to the 77th Division, where he was part of the Lost Battalion that was surrounded by German troops in the Argonne Forest.

The battalion was rescued Oct. 7, 1918, after enduring more than four days without food or water. Attempts to get water to the soldiers were met with sniper fire, so the troops subsisted on leaves. At one point, they were targets of friendly fire until a message delivered by homing pigeon alerted the Allies they were firing on their own.

Having survived that horrendous ordeal, Joe was discharged and returned to his Montana home. That’s where he was when, at age 32, he died from a gunshot wound to his head.

His body was found April 5, 1921, outside his Montana cabin.
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World War I's shell shock is today's PTSD

VERHULST: World War I's shell shock is today's PTSD
Grand Haven Tribune
By Mike VerHulst
January 26, 2018

For as long as humans have walked this earth, there has been a risk that they would experience a traumatic event. For some, traumatic events create psychological effects that will last for months after the initial event.

Photo courtesy of TCHM

The "Courage Without Fear" exhibit is now on display at the Tri-Cities Historical Museum, 200 Washington Ave. in downtown Grand Haven.

Today, this is commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to the American Psychiatric Association, about 3.5 percent of adults in the U.S. will experience PTSD in a given year and 9 percent of people will develop it at some point in their life.

For those who have served in the armed forces, that number is even higher. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 10-18 percent of veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan are likely to develop PTSD after coming home. For some, PTSD can lead to substance abuse or other issues. The good news is that veterans are now seeking care more than ever.

Earlier this month, the Tri-Cities Historical Museum opened a new exhibit titled “Courage Without Fear: The Red Arrow Division in World War I.” This new exhibit uses first-hand accounts to tell the stories of local soldiers who braved muddy trenches, attacks on machine gun nests and hours-long artillery barrages during the war. Men from the Tri-Cities saw combat in some of the most intense battles of late World War I, including the famous Meuse-Argonne offensive that sealed victory for the Allies.

In 1915, the British Army Council gave in to the doctors and public sentiment and officially declared shell shock as a wound.

Early on in the war, British doctors tried a variety of treatments, including hypnosis, in an attempt to keep as many soldiers on the front lines as possible. As the war dragged on, the British Army continued to change procedures for how doctors could diagnose and treat shell shock. By 1917, soldiers were treated by being assigned to a rearward trench where they could get a break from battle, sleep and eat in relative comfort. After a short break, they would return to the front. A full evacuation of a shell-shocked soldier was only considered if no improvement was seen after several weeks of treatment. This style of treatment was used until the end of the war in 1918 and was seen as effective by the medical community and the army alike.

Unfortunately, following World War I, there was a collective silence in regards to shell shock. Many of the survivors feared a rekindling of their symptoms if they discussed their war experiences. In the medical community, hardly anything was published on the causes of shell shock or ways to improve treatment. It wasn’t until decades later, in 1952, that “gross stress reaction” was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In the 1970s, PTSD became the commonly accepted term.
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WWI Battle of The Somme Chronicle of PTSD

How shell-shock shaped the Battle of the Somme
The Telegraph UK
Taylor Downing
16 APRIL 2016

'The dreams sir, I dare not go to sleep because I dream so of…’

A shell shock victim staggers back from the front and needs help to work.

CREDIT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

Private Arthur Hubbard, a clerk from Streatham in south London, went over the top at 7.30am on 1 July 1916, the bloody first day of the Battle of the Somme. What he experienced over the next few hours changed him forever. He and his unit, the 14th London, a Pals Battalion, got into the German lines that morning.

They had orders not to take prisoners. When three wounded Germans, badly bleeding, emerged from a dugout Hubbard finished them off. Then a British officer was shot by a sniper as he stood by him. Later that afternoon as he withdrew to the British lines, a mass of soil from a nearby shell buried him. His mates eventually dragged him out and back into the lines.

Hubbard’s family next heard from him in a convalescence hospital in Ipswich. He told his mother not to worry, that he was a bit shaky and suffering from 'severe headaches’ but otherwise he was fit and well and would make a quick recovery. Unfortunately Private Hubbard did not recover.

If the daytime was bad enough, at night it grew even worse. Victims would whisper to Steadman, 'The dreams sir, I dare not go to sleep because I dream so of…’ and he would describe the horrific sights he has witnessed, of mates being blown to pieces alongside, of being buried under debris during one of the massive bombardments.

The worst thing for Steadman was having to send the men back to the front when they seemed to have calmed down. He wrote: 'You cannot help them long, just a few days and then back they must go. If they were kept long the hospital would be absolutely crowded out. There would be no men to fight.’
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DAV “We’re Just Disabled Vets Trying to Help Each Other”

Veterans who helped take victory in Europe in WWII need help 
Charleston Daily Mail
by Tyler Bell, Police Reporter
May 7, 2015

“We’re just disabled vets trying to help each other,” he said. “We had to fight for this stuff to get it.”

TYLER BELL/DAILY MAIL A.J. Brooks, a 90-year-old Army veteran of World War II, suffered from battle fatigue, what now is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, following his service in the European Theater of the war. He now relies on the Disabled American Veterans’ van program to get to VA hospitals for care because he doesn’t drive anymore.

The world stood together in celebration 70 years ago today, when the battered remnants of Adolf Hitler’s war machine officially surrendered and the European portion of World War II ended in Allied victory.

It’s easy to forget, however, that many of the men and women who slogged through the bloody sands of Normandy and huddled together for warmth outside of Bastogne are still alive, and in their old age are increasingly in need of help.

“The thing that bothered me real bad at the time, they called it battle fatigue,” said A.J. Brooks, a 90-year-old World War II veteran living in the Lewisburg area. Brooks served in the Army’s 3rd Armored Division during the war, following the division through its campaigns in France, including the Normandy Invasion, France, Belgium and eventually Germany.

He joined when he was 17.

“I was going to whip the war by myself,” he said with a laugh.

Brooks is one of the 6,892 World War II veterans living in West Virginia, according to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics. The majority of those veterans are upwards of 90 years old and just as susceptible to the strictures of aging as anyone else.

Brooks, like many veterans, relies on VA Medical Centers for his health care. But as he ages, he’s become reliant on others for transportation.

“I can’t drive and I don’t drive,” he said. “I always get my friend here to drive me.”

Brooks is talking about Mike Dawson, an Adjutant for Disabled American Veterans in West Virginia. Dawson, a disabled veteran himself, helped organize a van program to ferry veterans to and from VA Medical Centers statewide.

“We’re just disabled vets trying to help each other,” he said. “We had to fight for this stuff to get it.”
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Talking About War Helped WWII Veteran Come To Terms

Keep in mind that when WWII veterans came home, they didn't talk about PTSD but others knew they were living with "shell shock."

If you want an eye opener on war from Providing For the Casualties of War The American Experience Through World War II

And The Army Nurse Corps in World War II

Visit to WWII Museum in New Orleans an eye-opener
Watertown Daily Times
By JILL SCHENSUL
RECORD (HACKENSACK, N.J.)
PUBLISHED: SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 2015

In the darkness of the theater, the numbers appear. They come at you, really, daring you to absorb them:

Soviet Union, 24,000,000

China, 20,000,000

Poland, 5,600,000

Japan, 3,100,000

U.S.A., 518,000

Germany, 8,800,000

These are the number of dead, by country, in World War II. A total of 65 million, more than all other wars to that point combined.

Another exhibit gives visitors a sobering taste of submarine warfare with the interactive “Final Mission: The USS Tang Experience.”

And “Beyond All Boundaries,” the much-praised film that is a centerpiece of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, slaps you into awareness. Awareness of a reality that, as the “Greatest Generation” veterans slip away, we are in danger of forgetting.

The movie, narrated by Tom Hanks, its executive producer, is in “4-D.” The 3-D is accomplished without needing those special glasses, and the fourth D reaches into the audience — wind blows, the theater’s seats shake, smoke billows. The movie, like the museum, wants to engage all generations; that’s why you need that extra “D” these days.

MEETING THE MEN WHO FOUGHT
Right next to the Higgins display was a long metal table, and near the far end sat two men, one sporting military medals, the other with a gray, unruly beard. Behind the man with the medals was a sign: “I was there! Meet Forrest Villarrubia, USMC, WWII veteran. Pacific Theater.”

Both men were veterans, willing to answer questions, or welcome other veterans, to the museum. On the table beside them was a photo of a man who had just died. I asked them about Thomas Blakey.

Blakey was an Army paratrooper who landed behind enemy lines early on D-Day to capture and hold a bridge to keep Germans from sending reinforcements to Utah Beach.

He was 94 when he died, Villarrubia said. He had logged 15,000 hours as a volunteer at the museum.

They didn’t tell me that Blakey had been one of the legions of veterans who had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. It was something you didn’t talk about at the time.

Blakey was haunted by what he saw behind enemy lines and was only finally able to drive away the ghosts when he became a volunteer.

Sharing his stories. Talking about the war, in all its aspects, helped him come to terms with the past.
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WWII Navy Nurse Veteran Had Life From Hell After VA Lobotomy

Lobotomy

Dorothy Ludden, Survivor of VA Lobotomy Program, Dies
One of the 2,000 World War II veterans who received the procedure
Wall Street Journal
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
Feb. 23, 2015

Mrs. Ludden married after her brain surgery and raised three sons. Her volatile temper, odd behavior and limited emotional range left scars on her family that lasted decades.

Dorothy Ludden, one of the last survivors of a government program that lobotomized mentally-ill World War II veterans, died on Monday. She was 94.

During the war, Mrs. Ludden served as a Navy nurse in stateside military hospitals. She was hospitalized for psychiatric reasons soon after her discharge from active duty in 1946. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, she underwent a lobotomy at the Veterans Administration hospital in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

The Tuscaloosa facility was one of 50 VA hospitals that performed the controversial brain surgery to treat intractable mental illness among veterans. Some 2,000 veterans were lobotomized by the government before the first antipsychotic drug, Thorazine, came on the market in the mid-1950s.
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Explore more

The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans — and likely hundreds more — during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal.

“They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy,” Roman Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot, told the newspaper in a report published Wednesday. “To hell with them.”

Tritz said the orderlies at the veterans hospital pinned him to the floor, and he initially fought them off. A few weeks later, just before his 30th birthday, he was lobotomized.

Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals, according to the report.

Tritz was one of roughly 2,000 World War II veterans lobotomized during and after the war, a recent Wall Street Journal investigation discovered. The procedure, once lauded as a "miracle cure" for nearly all types of mental illness, has since fallen so far out of favor in the medical community that it's rarely even discussed, said Mario DeSanctis, medical director at the Tomah VA. Vet one of thousands lobotomized by government after WWII, La Crosse Tribune, Wis., By Allison Geyer Published: February 8, 2014

DEC. 7, 1941 Day of Infamy

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 7, 2014

Here is part of the speech FDR gave to congress and the American people on December 8, 1941

"As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God."

Can we actually win the battle our veterans fight back home? Are we determined? Are we committed? This enemy has claimed more lives after combat for decades.

DEC. 7, 1941 Witness to a Day of Infamy
Hampton woman recalls watching attack on Pearl Harbor
Seacoast Online
By Suzanne Laurent

The wreckage of the USS Arizona burns after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
U.S. Navy photo

HAMPTON – Ramona Otis vividly recalls the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when she was awakened by a loud pounding on the door of her living quarters in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, around 7 a.m.

“A young boy was yelling, ‘The Japanese are bombing Hawaii!’” Otis, 97, recalls. “I couldn’t figure out why they would do that as the Island of Hawaii didn't have any significance.”

Her husband, Donald, was a lieutenant in the U.S. Marines 6th Defense Battalion, then stationed on Midway Island in the North Pacific Ocean in an advance detail to set up defenses.

Otis was living with another Marine couple, Zelma and Gene Boles, because military housing was scarce at the time. Just 24 years old at the time, Otis had her first child with her, 7-month-old Nancy, when she arrived from San Diego, Calif.

“I woke up the Boles after the boy came to the door, and Gene told me to go back to bed, that the boy was ‘hopped up',” Otis said. “After a while, there seemed to be a lot of commotion outside, so I turned on the radio.”

Otis said the governor of Hawaii was urging everyone to stay calm and stay indoors. Otis recalled the governor’s voice was shaky.

“I looked out my kitchen window toward Pearl Harbor and saw all the little planes with the orange suns on the side flying over and the bombs dropping and plumes of smoke,” Otis said. “I just sat there with Nancy on my lap.”

“After the first wave, there was a pause, and then the second wave came over to finish off any ship that had survived,” she said. “After that, we all sat around and waited to be invaded. Why we weren’t, I’ll never know. I’m sure the large Japanese population in Honolulu would have welcomed them.”

The barrage on the naval base at Pearl Harbor lasted just two hours, but the Japanese managed to destroy 21 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and 188 aircraft, according the Navy History and Heritage website.

More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including 68 civilians, and another 1,178 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
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George William Davis entered the Army three days after Pearl Harbor and served for nearly four years in battles against the Axis powers in North Africa, Sicily, France, Belgium and Germany.

He received a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in battle, as well as Campaign Stars for Algeria-French Morocco (North Africa), Sicily, Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes and Central Europe (Germany).

He was granted an honorable discharge and received the Good Conduct Medal, a special Belgian award (the Belgian Fouraguri) and he also received a Silver Star for gallantry, seven Bronze Stars and a Bronze Arrowhead.

Davis kept his actions from his family until his son-in-law wanted to find out about what history had to say.

A Camp Pendleton Marine who joined the Corps in 1942, retired earlier this month (Feb. 2014)from his civilian job at Camp Pendleton.

Sgt. Maj. Walter Valentine, 89, served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam over three decades with the Marines and then spent another three decades helping comrades make a smooth transition into civilian life when they retire.

After Valentine finished boot camp at Camp Lejeune, NC in 1942, he joined the 3rd Marine Division and headed for combat in the Pacific as a scout sniper.

He was in the assault landing of Bougainville, now Papua New Guinea, in November 1943, then headed to Guadalcanal for more combat training. Later he participated in the assault landing that recaptured the island of Guam and fought in the battle of Iwo Jima, where he earned a Purple Heart.
“I will never forget the flag rising at Iwo Jima,” Valentine said.

Donald Lesch, a veteran of three wars, said his wife knew to wake him carefully, and only by shaking his left foot.

“It was the method we had in World War II to wake each other safely when changing sentry guard duty,” Lesch said.

Lesch, 91, was awarded the U.S. Army Combat Infantryman Badge, Bronze Star, a number of battle stars, and decorations from the Vietnamese and Korean governments for his service in WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

“I have post-traumatic stress disorder mainly from WWII, but actually from all the wars, and I was exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. I have a 100 percent service-connected disability,” Lesch said.

He said he may have survived three wars, but he still keeps the curtains drawn at his northeast Ocala home because of a deep-seated fear of sniper fire.

It is hard to believe all that is going on right now actually could have been worse. What we now call PTSD has been studied for 100 years.

Doctor Thomas Salmon, a civilian psychiatrist who voluntarily went to the front during WWI to study, diagnose and treat mentally broken soldiers. He's the first U.S. Army psychiatrist and the first to recognize PTSD."

By the time soldiers were being evacuated for psychological problems during WWII, there were 300% more of them from WWI. Seems the military learned little from WWI.

It isn't that they were not suffering from the same thing Afghanistan and Iraq veterans face. It was just called something else. "Shell shock" is the term used back then. With WWI it was "war neuroses" but as the term changed with generations, the fact remained that war came home with them.

During the Korean War they tried something different and clinicians were sent with the troops so that as soon as they started to have problems, they were pulled out of combat zones, given therapy and sent back to duty. Only 3% of the evacuations were for psychological reasons.

With Vietnam it was the one year deployment and then back home. Very little time to understand PTSD setting in and even less time to do something for them.

With WWII, everyone was involved. If they were "able bodied" they went. Either they joined or they were drafted. If not, then they were working jobs devoted to backing up the soldiers. Everyone had something to do for the "cause" and they paid attention to everything going on so far away from here.

With Korean and Vietnam, things were a lot different. Few paid the price along side of the men and women sent aside from their own families.

The Gulf War was over so fast no one was really asked to do much other than stick up a yellow ribbon sign on their business window. With Afghanistan, it was another attack on this country that started it but while it seemed everyone was flying their flags on their homes, sticking magnets on their cars and singing about being proud to be an American, they lost interest.

FDR said December 7, 1941 was a day that would live in infamy. I doubt he knew how right he actually was. We have learned so much those days but most of it was forgotten.

The Presidential Address to Congress on December 8, 1941. Known as the Infamy Speech, it was delivered at 12:30 p.m. that day to a Joint Session of Congress by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one day after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii. Roosevelt famously describes the previous day as "a date which will live in infamy." Within an hour of the speech, Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan and officially brought the U.S. into World War II. The address is regarded as one of the most famous American political speeches of the 20th century.

We can defeat PTSD but only if we are committed to doing it. If not, then more generations will pay the price for what we refuse to do now.

Louie Zamperini WWII Veteran "Unbroken"

If you have PTSD, then know this, you are not broken either. You changed the same way all men and women do in combat. Some just change more but that is because they feel things more. In other words, strong emotional core. It is never too late to get help to heal.

Unbroken Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Angelina Jolie Directed Movie HD
Unbroken Official Trailer #2 (2014) - Angelina Jolie Directed Movie HD

The Story of Unbroken
by Laura Hillenbrand
Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.

It was a horse--the subject of my first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend--who led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an amazing odyssey in World War II.

I knew only a little about him then, but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. After I finished Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.

Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.

On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.

That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.

The culmination of my journey is my new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie’s life as I am.

Case 1 of Shell Shock 100 Years Ago

100 years since the first case of shell shock, it’s time to prioritise mental health
It’s 100 years since the first documented case of shell shock today. What progress should we be making a century on?
New Statesman
BY DAN JARVIS PUBLISHED
31 OCTOBER, 2014

Since "Case 1" of shell shock, we still need to make far more progress.

Photo: Getty

One hundred years ago today, on the morning of the 31 October 1914, a 20-year-old private ventured out into firing line of the First World War for the first time.

We know from frontline reports that he and his platoon had just left their trench when they were "found" by the German artillery.

The explosions sparked chaos and confusion as everyone dived for cover. The young soldier was separated from his comrades and became tangled in barbed wire.

As he struggled to free himself, three shells rained down on him, missing him by only a few feet. Witnesses said it was sheer miracle that he survived.

But when the young man was admitted to hospital a few days later, it was clear to the medics that his close brush with death had left a mark on him the like of which they had not seen before.

History hasn’t remembered the young private’s name. Today we know him only as "Case 1" from a seminal report published early in 1915 by a Cambridge professor and army doctor called Dr Charles Myers.

It detailed the first documented cases of what Myers came to describe as "shell shock".

More than 80,000 members of the British Army had been diagnosed with the disorder by the time the First World War came to an end, including the famous war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.
read more here

SHOT AT DAWN:WWI 15 Welsh Soldiers Executed for Shell Shock

Shot at dawn: The 15 Welshman executed during the First World War - by their own side
Wales Online
By Rachael Misstear
Oct 05, 2014

A picture of Private William Jones (left) with an unidentified soldier

Private William Jones was one of as one of 306 young British soldiers who received the ultimate punishment for military offences

Private William Jones was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) induced by the horrors of the Great War.

But after deserting the young solider turned himself in – and later found himself blindfolded and put before a firing squad.

The young solider from the Vale of Neath was one of 306 young British soldiers – 15 of them serving in Welsh ranks – who received the ultimate punishment for military offences such as desertion, cowardice, falling asleep or striking an officer. They were all shot at dawn.

In 2006 a blanket pardon was issued for the men who died this way following a petition in the years after the First World War.

Now a new book by Neath author Robert King, who campaigned and supported the petition, portrays the brutality faced by the 15 Welshmen who all faced this terrifying end.

Shot at Dawn looks at how during the First World War the concept of ‘shell shock’ – now known as PTSD – was not known and was not accepted as an excuse for desertion or any of the other offences which resulted in men being shot.

“Jones was a stretcher bearer in France who went missing on June 15, 1917, after taking a wounded soldier to the dressing station.

“The job of a stretcher bearer entailed going out into no-man’s-land collecting wounded and dead soldiers and their body parts and returning them to the dressing station.

“It was a horrendous duty for such a young man and it could have unhinged him, causing him to desert.”
read more here

Dr. Keith Ablow insulting article on PTSD veterans

Returning home from D-Day when PTSD did not exist
FoxNews.com
By Dr. Keith Ablow
Published June 06, 2014

To do what they did, they had to withstand crashing waves of the fight-or-flight neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine. Yet they ultimately had to control their fears, with millions of neurons in their brains pouring out substantial amounts of the calming neurotransmitter serotonin. If their minds were made of muscles, theirs were running the equivalent of a full marathon.

Just because he doesn't know something was going on doesn't mean it wasn't. The government had been doing all sorts of things to WWII veterans.

After WWII, vet endured a life of shell shock
By Elizabeth Shestak
Correspondent
Posted: Monday, Jan. 09, 2012

When Bill Johnson returned from World War II, his family immediately knew there was something different about him.

In letters his mother wrote to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, she spoke of his restlessness, inability to hold a conversation, difficulty making friends, and new behavioral ticks.

"If you could know this boy now and before he went in the service, you couldn't believe it was the same boy. It is hard on me to watch him every day with no improvement. I have hoped so hard," she wrote.

She wrote this in 1950, nearly five years after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army after serving a tour in Italy. His family, namely his mother, spent decades petitioning the U.S. Army to acknowledge the changes in Johnson and claim them as service-related. It seemed simple to them - he was one way before entering the army, and another afterwards, going from "normal" to debilitated and dependent.
read more of this here

WWII Shell Shock YouTube videos has plenty of videos you can see. Another movie to watch about this is The Best Years of Our Lives from 1946.

My husband's Dad and his uncles fought in WWII. One was killed at the age of 19. Another was on a merchant Marine ship hit by a kamikaze pilot. He ended up with shell shock but back then veterans like him were given a choice. Be institutionalized for the rest of his life or go live on a farm with other veterans. He picked the farm.

My Dad was a Korean veteran but my uncles served in WWII as well. They understood PTSD and combat. The night my Dad met my husband he said, "He seems like a really nice guy but he's got shell shock."

Here is yet one more story to show that Dr. Ablow owes PTSD veterans an apology, but I doubt they'll ever get it.

Report: VA lobotomized 2,000 disturbed veterans
Army Times
December 11, 2013

The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans — and likely hundreds more — during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal.

“They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy,” Roman Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot, told the newspaper in a report published Wednesday. “To hell with them.”

Tritz said the orderlies at the veterans hospital pinned him to the floor, and he initially fought them off. A few weeks later, just before his 30th birthday, he was lobotomized.

Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals, according to the report.
read more of this here

This WWII veteran on ultimate wait list

This WWII veteran on ultimate wait list: He gets benefits after 68 years
FOX News
Cristina Corbin
May 29, 2014

"What drove me crazy was that they had the same information in 2008 and they denied me," he told FoxNews.com. "That’s what blows me out of the water. Ever since 1974, when I first asked for benefits, they've had the same information."

The Veterans Administration is under fire for its long waiting lists, but it's unlikely any of America's service members can match the claim by Milton Rackham: It took 68 years before he was given the benefits he earned in battle.

The 89-year-old Rackham, of Belding, Mich., lived for decades without any benefits because the VA told him his records were lost in a fire in Missouri, the World War II veteran and Purple Heart recipient told FoxNews.com.

"They always said, 'we can't help you,'" recalled Rackham, a former engine mechanic with the U.S. Navy who suffered injuries during the war and later struggled to find work.

"It made me feel like I was worthless," he said.

In 2011, Rackham's friend, Myrl Thompson, began writing about Rackham's war stories, and arranged meetings between the veteran and VA officials over the benefits he allegedly never received. Roughly two months ago, Rackham claims he started receiving $822 a month from the VA as well as $7,000 in back-pay.
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Ohio veteran finally applies for benefits at 106

This one explains part of what was going on back in 2008.

PTSD:WWII veterans first time claims rise
Still fighting war stress: VA granting more first-time disability claims to veterans in their 80s than ever before
The Press-Enterprise
By JOE VARGO
April 13, 2008

They beat Hitler, turned back the tide of Japanese imperialism and when the war ended, returned to civilian life to forge careers and raise families while seemingly unfazed by the horrors of combat many witnessed.

As World War II veterans have aged, and reflected on the dreadful experiences of war and carnage, more and more exhibited the symptoms of a malady unheard of when they went off to battle 65 years ago: post traumatic stress disorder.

And now, as they finally seek counseling and medical treatment, the department of Veterans Affairs is receiving -- and granting -- more first-time disability claims to veterans in their 80s than ever before.

Since 2000, the number of World War II veterans collecting disability from stress-related causes has risen 50 percent -- from 16,914 to 24,268 -- despite the deaths of 2 million veterans in that time.

In recent years, Veterans Affairs has established outreach programs to locate and assist aging veterans, set up vet-to-vet self-help groups and doled out disability payments, said Peggy Willoughby, spokeswoman for the VA's National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Willoughby, speaking by telephone from the center's headquarters in White River Junction, Vt., said Veterans Affairs doctors can't identify one overriding reason why World War II servicemen are coming forward now. She said she believes it's a combination of better information, outreach and counseling.

Guys like Gene Davis, of San Jacinto, say it's about time.

"We were done wrong," said Davis, 85, who spent almost a year in a German prison camp in 1944-45. "We didn't get what we deserved. There was no understanding of what was going on."
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As you can see, there has never really been a time when all of our veterans were taken care of enough.

"Miracle Cure" injured mind of an American hero

The injured mind of an American hero

Vet one of thousands lobotomized by government after WWII
La Crosse Tribune, Wis.
By Allison Geyer
Published: February 8, 2014

Tritz was one of roughly 2,000 World War II veterans lobotomized during and after the war, a recent Wall Street Journal investigation discovered. The procedure, once lauded as a "miracle cure" for nearly all types of mental illness, has since fallen so far out of favor in the medical community that it's rarely even discussed, said Mario DeSanctis, medical director at the Tomah VA.

LA CROSSE, Wis. — Roman Tritz dreamed of flying.

Gripping the yoke of a four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress was excitement and adventure for the boy who was born in Portage, Wis., in 1923 and left school after eighth grade to help his father with the dairy cows.

"What did I like about flying?" A distant smile brightens his watery blue eyes. "Everything ...."

It was duty to his country that brought him to enlist in what was then known as the U.S. Army Air Force after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The oldest of 10 children on the farm, Tritz "figured he should be the one to go" and shipped off to England in fall 1944 to join the 728th Squadron of the 452nd Bombardment Group.

"That was the way it was," he said.

He flew 34 combat missions, including one that took him deep into enemy skies so thick with German anti-aircraft fire that he and his crew had to sign an affidavit swearing that they weren't forced to go. Halfway there, some wanted to turn back. Tritz told them to be brave.
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Report: VA lobotomized 2,000 disturbed veterans

Report: VA lobotomized 2,000 disturbed veterans

UPDATE
House Lawmakers Press VA on Lobotomies
Agency Is Asked to Reassess Living Veterans Who Received Procedure Around World War II

Now I know how lucky my husband's uncle was after he ended up with shell shock during WWII. He was given a choice to be institutionalized or go live on a farm for the rest of his life. He picked the farm.

Report: VA lobotomized 2,000 disturbed veterans
Army Times
December 11, 2013

The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans — and likely hundreds more — during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal.

“They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy,” Roman Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot, told the newspaper in a report published Wednesday. “To hell with them.”

Tritz said the orderlies at the veterans hospital pinned him to the floor, and he initially fought them off. A few weeks later, just before his 30th birthday, he was lobotomized.

Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals, according to the report.

The VA’s use of lobotomy, in which doctors severed connections between parts of the brain then thought to control emotions, was known in medical circles in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and is occasionally cited in medical texts. But the VA’s practice, never widely publicized, long ago slipped from public view. Even the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says it possesses no records detailing the creation and breadth of its lobotomy program.

The Wall Street Journal’s reporting series began with Wednesday’s Forgotten Soldiers and included a documentary, archived photos, maps and medical records.
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WWII veteran proves PTSD is not new even tough it is news to some

WWII veteran proves PTSD is not new even tough it is news to some
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
February 12, 2013

Before the cable news stations started running 24-7 news cycles, before the PCs and Macs started showing up in every home providing the public with a way of reading news from around the world, veterans were coming back home from war with what has been termed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

For some reason the younger generation of reporters have come to the conclusion that this is some kind of new illness no one ever heard of before. They believe they can get a scoop so they go to great lengths to get military brass to sit down for an interview. Unfortunately, they don't seem too interested in doing research on their own to even know what kind of questions to ask or follow up with what they were told with facts. This is why there is so much disinformation out there topped off with thousands of Facebook users mucking up what researchers discovered over the last 40 years.

Combat PTSD is not new. It is not the same as what civilians get from a one time event. It is not even the same as what survivors of abuse get after a lifetime of having their lives threatened. It isn't the same as emergency responders and firefighters get after many times of putting their lives on the line taking care of the citizens in their communities. It is close to the type of PTSD law enforcement officers get for the simple reason of being part of the traumatic event itself. They are not just responding after it happened. They are taking an active role in it, often meeting it with deadly force.

Still even that type of PTSD is not the same as Combat PTSD. For the men and women in the military, they are not just responding with deadly force, they live with the threat of dying on a daily basis for as long as they are deployed. They do not get to go home at the end of the day, back to where it is safe. They can't take a shower and wash the stench of war from their bodies or chill out in their favorite chair watching their favorite mindless TV show. They can't drive down the road to the next position they were ordered to without having to fear an IED blowing them up.

No, none of this is new. It has been called many things. During WWII it was called "shell shock" but the results are the same no matter what it is called by experts. It is a term that went back to WWI. To them it is simply hell.

Shell shocked During World War I, some people saw shell shock as cowardice or malingering, but Charles S. Myers convinced the British military to take it seriously and developed approaches that still guide treatment today.

By Dr. Edgar Jones
June 2012, Vol 43, No. 6
Print version: page 18

By the winter of 1914–15, "shell shock" had become a pressing medical and military problem. Not only did it affect increasing numbers of frontline troops serving in World War I, British Army doctors were struggling to understand and treat the disorder.

The term "shell shock" was coined by the soldiers themselves. Symptoms included fatigue, tremor, confusion, nightmares and impaired sight and hearing. It was often diagnosed when a soldier was unable to function and no obvious cause could be identified. Because many of the symptoms were physical, it bore little overt resemblance to the modern diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Shell shock took the British Army by surprise. In an effort to better understand and treat the condition, the Army appointed Charles S. Myers, a medically trained psychologist, as consulting psychologist to the British Expeditionary Force to offer opinions on cases of shell shock and gather data for a policy to address the burgeoning issue of psychiatric battle casualties.

Myers had been educated at Caius College Cambridge and trained in medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Shortly after qualifying as a physician, he took an academic post at Cambridge, running an experimental psychology laboratory. However, at the outbreak of the war, Myers felt compelled to return to clinical practice to assist the war effort. The War Office had turned him down for overseas service because of his age (he was 42), but undeterred, he crossed to France on his own initiative and secured a post at a hospital opened by the Duchess of Westminster in the casino at Le Touquet. Once Myers was there, his research credentials made him a natural choice to study the mysteries of shell shock in France.

The first cases Myers described exhibited a range of perceptual abnormalities, such as loss of or impaired hearing, sight and sensation, along with other common physical symptoms, such as tremor, loss of balance, headache and fatigue. He concluded that these were psychological rather than physical casualties, and believed that the symptoms were overt manifestations of repressed trauma.

Along with William McDougall, another psychologist with a medical background, Myers argued that shell shock could be cured through cognitive and affective reintegration. The shell-shocked soldier, they thought, had attempted to manage a traumatic experience by repressing or splitting off any memory of a traumatic event. Symptoms, such as tremor or contracture, were the product of an unconscious process designed to maintain the dissociation. Myers and McDougall believed a patient could only be cured if his memory were revived and integrated within his consciousness, a process that might require a number of sessions.

While Myers believed that he could treat individual patients, the greater problem was how to manage the mass psychiatric casualties that followed major offensives. Drawing on ideas developed by French military neuropsychiatrists, Myers identified three essentials in the treatment of shell shock: "promptness of action, suitable environment and psychotherapeutic measures," though those measures were often limited to encouragement and reassurance. Myers argued that the military should set up specialist units "as remote from the sounds of warfare as is compatible with the preservation of the ‘atmosphere' of the front." The army took his advice and allowed him to set up four specialist units in December 1916. They were designed to manage acute or mild cases, while chronic and severe cases were referred to base hospitals for more intensive therapy. During 1917, the battles of Arras, Messines and Passchendaele produced a flood of shell-shock cases, overwhelming the four units.

The bulk of the reporting done has been about OEF OIF servicemen and women suffering from PTSD and far too many taking their own lives however none of this is new. Good reporters manage to point that out so that new newer generation of war fighters take comfort in the simple fact while they are unique among the general population, what they are going thru is far from "new" to veterans that fought our battles long ago.

At the age of 87, WWII veteran Glenn Chaney finally received his PTSD claim of service connected disability from the VA. "Nearly 70 years later, Chaney is among the dwindling number of South Carolinians who fought in World War II. And at 87, he may be among the oldest to receive post-traumatic stress disorder benefits for it."

The truth is they were coming back home with the same enemy inside of them as this generation is. The difference is they came home, suffering in silence and isolated from others with the same list of symptoms. They did the same things this generation is. They just didn't get the attention from the press. No one cared. Long after the parades and cheering ended, their battles went on but no one noticed.

It happened to Korean War veterans. It happened to Vietnam veterans and Gulf War veterans and every other combat operation. The information was all out there but few knew about it.

This is why advocates are so frustrated. The research has been done for generations but instead of moving forward from what has already been learned, they repeat the studies and doom generations to suffer the same outcomes.

Combat survivors spouse surviving guilt

Combat survivors spouse surviving guilt
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
January 19, 2013

The subject of "survivor guilt" has made the news lately and rightfully so because it is a huge part of Combat PTSD. What does not get talked about is when the spouse ends up with it because the veteran has committed suicide or they had to end their marriage. Most of the time they had no knowledge of what PTSD was, what it was doing to their veteran and family other than it was being destroyed by the veteran. The more I learned, the easier it was to stay with mine.

Like many my husband enlisted in the Army, left for Fort Jackson and ended up with the 101st in Vietnam. He left as a civilian even though he came from a military family. His Dad served in the Army in WWII along with three uncles. The uncle he's named after was a Marine, killed in Saipan My husband did not come home as a civilian. He came home as a combat veteran with a year of memories from Phu Bai. By the time we met, he had been home for 10 years. He was also getting divorced from his first wife.

For me, my uncles served in WWII and my Dad was a 100% disabled Korean War veteran, so when he met Jack, he spotted what came home with him. My Dad called it "shell shock" so I did my research and understood what it was. No amount of research told me that mild PTSD would get worse untreated. He didn't want to go to the VA no matter how much my Dad told him he needed to. He wouldn't listen to me. He was listening to his Dad. His Dad said the "VA is for guys that can't work" not for him. Back then, he could work. He was doing ok with the nightmares and flashbacks, the twitches and mood swings. Then the secondary stressor hit pushing his mild PTSD into full blown.

Back then, families like mine suffered in silence. It was something no one talked about. It was something even less understood. What wives like me were told was just get a divorce. Veterans like my husband were thought of as just being "jerks" "druggies" and "alcoholics" destroying their families. My Mom knew that part well since my Dad was also a violent alcoholic until I was 13.

You need to remember that no one knew what was going on from state to state because no one had computers to read any news reports. Isolation was easy because Vietnam was not like WWII when everyone knew at least one veteran. Few knew a Vietnam veteran and what they ended up reading in the newspapers was usually bad. After all, reporters had no clue what life was like for them so when they were arrested, committed suicide or got divorced, they got blamed and no one blamed Vietnam. Extended families blamed them for marriages falling apart and many wives had no support to understand what was going on, so they blamed them too.

Even today with all the reports and research done on combat and PTSD, too many are left with little understanding. They still don't have what they need to get through all of this. I get emails and phone calls from spouses and parents. They tell me they just didn't know about any of this and then they feel guilty they didn't do things differently. They had no choice. No one gave them the information to have options and tools to cope. They made things worse because they didn't know any better. The mistakes I made with my own husband are too many to count but the more I knew, the more I understood and the more I was able to help him and in turn, myself. Everyday I do this work because I remember what it was like when I had no one to talk to, no place to get support to do it and above all, felt totally alone. For every veteran I help, I'm helping my husband when no one else would. When I help a family I am helping my own when no one else would.

This report from Mother Jones goes a long way toward bringing understanding for the forgotten warriors in all of this. The families on the front lines of the home front.

Is PTSD Contagious?
It's rampant among returning vets—and now their spouses and kids are starting to show the same symptoms.
Mother Jones
By Mac McClelland
January/February 2013 Issue

BRANNAN VINES HAS NEVER BEEN to war. But she's got a warrior's skills: hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers. Super stimuli-sensitive. Skills on the battlefield, crazy-person behavior in a drug store, where she was recently standing behind a sweet old lady counting out change when she suddenly became so furious her ears literally started ringing. Being too cognizant of every sound—every coin dropping an echo—she explodes inwardly, fury flash-incinerating any normal tolerance for a fellow patron with a couple of dollars in quarters and dimes. Her nose starts running she's so pissed, and there she is standing in a CVS, snotty and deaf with rage, like some kind of maniac, because a tiny elderly woman needs an extra minute to pay for her dish soap or whatever.

Brannan Vines has never been to war, but her husband, Caleb, was sent to Iraq twice, where he served in the infantry as a designated marksman. He's one of 103,200, or 228,875, or 336,000 Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and came back with PTSD, depending on whom you ask, and one of 115,000 to 456,000 with traumatic brain injury. It's hard to say, with the lack of definitive tests for the former, undertesting for the latter, underreporting, under or over-misdiagnosing of both. And as slippery as all that is, even less understood is the collateral damage, to families, to schools, to society—emotional and fiscal costs borne long after the war is over.

Like Brannan's symptoms. Hypervigilance sounds innocuous, but it is in fact exhaustingly distressing, a conditioned response to life-threatening situations. Imagine there's a murderer in your house. And it is dark outside, and the electricity is out. Imagine your nervous system spiking, readying you as you feel your way along the walls, the sensitivity of your hearing, the tautness in your muscles, the alertness shooting around inside your skull. And then imagine feeling like that all the time.

I don't usually leave comments on websites unless they write something that hits me hard. This is one of those times.

You did a great job on this but a couple of things need to be pointed out. Less than half of the veterans needing help for PTSD seek it and the reported numbers leave out thousands of veterans along with their families. I am glad you mentioned Vietnam Veterans because Point Man International Ministries focused on them back in 1984 when they established Home Fronts to help families along with the Out Post for the veterans. I wrote my book in 2002 because I saw what was coming for the veterans and their families because reporters like you were nowhere to be found. No one cared. It is happening to this generation of families just as it happened to ours. I am glad you care enough to to do something for us, the forgotten families of combat veterans.

The reason why I left this comment is this part on page two.

BY THIS POINT, YOU MIGHT BE wondering, and possibly feeling guilty about wondering, why Brannan doesn't just get divorced. And she would tell you openly that she's thought about it. "Everyone has thought about it," she says. And a lot of people do it. In the wake of Vietnam, 38 percent of marriages failed within the first six months of a veteran's return stateside; the divorce rate was twice as high for vets with PTSD as for those without. Vietnam vets with severe PTSD are 69 percent more likely to have their marriages fail than other vets. Army records also show that 65 percent of active-duty suicides, which now outpace combat deaths, are precipitated by broken relationships. And veterans, well, one of them dies by suicide every 80 minutes. But even ignoring that though vets make up 7 percent of the United States, they account for 20 percent of its suicides—or that children and teenagers of a parent who's committed suicide are three times more likely to kill themselves, too—or a whole bunch of equally grim statistics, Brannan's got her reasons for sticking it out with Caleb.

None of this is impossible. If you want to prevent suicides, then take care of the families on the front lines of all of this. If you want to prevent them from becoming homeless, then take care of the families. Give them the knowledge they need to know so they can help their families heal from the combat they face at home. Our veterans deserve so much more than they have received and their families need to be included in on all of it because while they did not go, it came home to them.

TV show NCIS topic is PTSD for two episodes

NCIS Episode Preview: Shell Shocked
TV Fanatic
November 5th, 2012
by Steve Marsi

After an emotional NCIS episode last week, the show is off tomorrow night due to U.S. presidential election coverage. Perhaps appropriately, its return next Tuesday is the first of two episodes devoted to PTSD!

When a Navy Lieutenant who recently returned home from the Middle East is found dead from a brutal attack, the NCIS team questions the victim's friend, Marine Captain Joe Wescott (guest star Brad Beyer).
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Shell Shocked Part One

After WWII, vet endured a life of shell shock

This shows we've come a long way since the days when veterans came home suffering in silence. It also shows how we still don't do the right thing by all of our veterans.

After WWII, vet endured a life of shell shock

By Elizabeth Shestak
Correspondent
Posted: Monday, Jan. 09, 2012

When Bill Johnson returned from World War II, his family immediately knew there was something different about him.

In letters his mother wrote to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, she spoke of his restlessness, inability to hold a conversation, difficulty making friends, and new behavioral ticks.

"If you could know this boy now and before he went in the service, you couldn't believe it was the same boy. It is hard on me to watch him every day with no improvement. I have hoped so hard," she wrote.

She wrote this in 1950, nearly five years after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army after serving a tour in Italy. His family, namely his mother, spent decades petitioning the U.S. Army to acknowledge the changes in Johnson and claim them as service-related. It seemed simple to them - he was one way before entering the army, and another afterwards, going from "normal" to debilitated and dependent.

And yet his mental injuries were deemed 30 percent "non-service related," and Johnson was never compensated.
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Veterans Administration says 900 World War II vets pass away every day

Four brothers in my husband's family were part of WWII. Louis DiCesare, my husband's father was in the Army. He had a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. His uncle John was a Marine and killed in action. Another uncle Tony was in the Navy and Uncle George was a Merchant Marine. While three brothers survived, George never recovered from WWII. His ship was hit by a kamikaze pilot and he spent the rest of his life living on a farm for what they used to call "shell shock."

On my side of the family all of my uncles were in the service as well and my father was a Korean War veteran. Growing up, I was surrounded by veterans but aside from the a few pictures they had on their walls, it was hard to imagine them any different than any other family. Once in a while there were war stories told with a great sense of humor but sooner or later, their eyes would cloud, a tear or two would fall and the subject was quickly changed.

When I was young, I would read about war in history class and imagine my relatives being part of what I was reading about, yet when I was in their company again, I never asked them any questions. The fact they were there, in real time, faded and they were just my uncles and my dad.

They are all gone now. I have memories of the stories they told but above all, I have memories of them as who they were and the love they gave. None of them thought of themselves as heroes. They were just your average "Joe" because most of the people they knew were also in the service at one time or another. Unlike Vietnam when most of the people my husband grew up with didn't go except for one of his nephews, who was the same age as he was at the time. Jack had an older sister with two sons and a daughter. One son went and the other didn't. When they came home, they didn't feel like heroes either. They felt like outcasts. No one wanted to hear their stories. It was almost as if they wanted to dismiss the year out of their lives as if they had been away on vacation. "Shell shock" was understood when George went to live on the farm but it was not understood when my husband and his nephew came home with the same kind of inside wound.

Veterans Administration says 900 World War II vets pass away every day
By Randy Conat
GENESEE COUNTY (WJRT) -- (11/11/09)--While we pause the honor those who have served their country on Veterans Day, we have to face the fact that their numbers are dwindling.
The Veterans Administration says 900 World War II vets pass away every day.
One of the oldest vets in Genesee County fondly remembers answering when his nation called.
He's 91 years old, but Eugene Glass of Flint Township can still clearly remember his time in the Army over 60 years ago. Glass was living near Grand Rapids when he was drafted.
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http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/local&id=7113176

WWII Veteran Uncle Charlie needs help to come home

My husband's uncle was a Merchant Marine and his ship was hit by kamikaze pilots. He ended up living on a farm for the rest of his life, but his family was able to see him. I would like to think that if he had been like "Uncle Charlie" someone would want to help get him home to the rest of his family. Wouldn't you? We turn so many wounded veterans away from us because it's hard to live with some of them. When you have a family that is willing to do whatever it takes to keep them connected, it's the least we can do to help them out so they can.

Uncle Charlie's WarPosted by: Alan Wagmeister

Greensboro, NC -- This is the story of a World War II veteran and his family who is desperately trying to get him home. We have come to know him as Uncle Charlie. He was lost in the system for years. Now his family wants to bring him back to North Carolina, but no one can seem to help, not the Veterans Administration or even a US Congressman.

"I told him I would come and get him," says Laurica Oliver, "because it's family."

In fact, Charles Newkirk is Laurica's only living uncle, and the one sibling her mother has left.

Uncle Charlie's story begins during World War II, as he fought alongside others from the "Greatest Generation."

He came home in 1947 suffering from shell shock. Laurica says her grandmother talked about how "the war made my son crazy." Uncle Charlie wandered off into the woods and did other things that scared people. Laurica's grandmother contacted the Army who then came for Uncle Charlie. The family says he was placed in the care of the Army and the Veterans Administration.

Uncle Charlie was moved to a VA supervised group home in Tennessee. He stayed there for many years and in the 1960's, Uncle Charlie was moved to another supervised home in Ohio. In 1974, the VA determined that Mr. Newkirk was incompetent and an attorney, Richard Dimond, became legal guardian. Later, Uncle Charlie was diagnosed with schizophrenia by health care professionals. In 2002, Uncle Charlie was admitted to the VA in Chillicothe and has remained there since.
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http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=121278&catid=57