Vietnam War may add one more Medal Of Honor to list

Lake Fong/Post-GazetteRose Mary Sabo Brown, of Hickory, is reflected in the glass of a medal showcase. Her husband, Leslie Sabo, died in 1970 in Vietnam.

Vietnam War hero may finally get his due
Soldier who died to save his comrades recommended for Medal of Honor
Sunday, May 09, 2010
By Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Forty years ago Monday, Leslie Sabo of Ellwood City died in Cambodia while trying to save his buddies from a North Vietnamese ambush that killed seven of his 101st Airborne Division comrades.

The 22-year-old was recommended posthumously for the nation's highest award, the Medal of Honor.

He never got it.

Somehow the citation ended up lost in military bureaucracy and then forgotten until 1999, when a writer for the 101st Division association magazine came across Mr. Sabo's records at the National Archives.

Now, through his efforts and those of two members of Congress, the Army has again recommended that Mr. Sabo receive the medal.

"This brave soldier clearly distinguished himself through his courageous actions," wrote Secretary of the Army John McHugh in a March letter to Rep. Jason Altmire, D-McCandless, who pushed for the medal. "The Army and our nation are forever grateful for his heroic service."



Read more: Vietnam War hero may finally get his due

Airman killed in Vietnam War laid to rest

Airman killed in Vietnam War laid to rest


ARCADIA: Sgt. James Alley, a United States Air Force veteran who died in Vietnam, has finally been laid to rest.

Sgt. Alley died on April 6, 1972, when his aircraft was shot down.

His remains were not identified until earlier this year through DNA testing.

"It's a little, small victory here today," Moe Moyer, Florida's director of Rolling Thunder motorcycle club. "We get to say 'welcome home.' "

Following a small gathering at Ponger-Keys Grady Funeral Home, hundreds of veterans on motorcycles escorted Alley's body the two miles to Oakridge Cemetery.

Flyovers from the United States Air Force started the ceremony, performed with full military honors.

"These people have been waiting a long time for their son to come home," Lee Fowler said. "This should be emotional for all of America."
read more here
Airman killed in Vietnam War laid to rest

Pentagon tries aroma therapy to ease combat stress

Don't dismiss this without thinking about it.

We all know a sound, like an explosion or gunfire can have a veteran jumping just as the sound of helicopter blades can cause flashbacks for Vietnam veterans. Well there is also the reaction brought on by smells. Gun power and diesel fuel can give them a nasty trip back to combat. As humans can have unpleasant experiences brought back because of reminders like these, they can have pleasant ones replace them with better smells.

Chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, fresh baked apple pie, cinnamon in hot apple cider, work wonders for this New Englander longing for home living in Florida. Warm memories fill my heart and it "feels like home to me" until I go outside on the pool deck in December still in shorts and a T-shirt. Smells can calm people down or they can hurt. This article makes sense to me and I hope it will to you as well now that you are open to reading it.

Pentagon tries aroma therapy to ease combat stress
FORT RILEY, Kansas
Sat May 8, 2010 8:31pm EDTFORT RILEY, Kansas (Reuters) - The U.S. military is experimenting with aroma therapy, acupuncture and other unorthodox methods to treat soldiers traumatized by combat experiences, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Saturday.


He said the experiments showed promise.

Gates touted possible treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during a meeting with the wives of servicemen at Fort Riley, Kansas, when one woman asked him to explain why chiropractic and acupuncture therapies were not covered under her military health care plan.

"We have an experimental unit ... treating soldiers with PTS (post-traumatic stress) and using a number of unorthodox approaches, including aroma therapy, acupuncture, things like that, that really are getting some serious results, and so maybe we can throw that into the hopper as well," Gates said.

The Pentagon has seen a sharp increase in the number of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder during and after long deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
read more here
Pentagon tries aroma therapy to ease combat stress

Vets Helping Vets provides help for those who have served

Veterans outreach Vets Helping Vets services include, but are not limited to, employment referrals, information regarding benefits and transportation for VA medical care. A food pantry and limited financial assistance is available on a case-by-case basis.
To receive aid, learn more or volunteer, call 401-9788.
To make a monetary contribution, send a check to Vets Helping Vets, 1515 E. Silver Springs Blvd., Ocala, FL 34470. Contributions are tax deductible.
Donations of nonperishable food are welcome.

Vets Helping Vets provides help for those who have served
By Ann Sperring
Correspondent
It is tough enough to don a uniform, leave family behind and risk your life for your country.

Now, roadside bombs transform steel into bloodied shreds and leave horrific head injuries, sending many veterans home in comas or with serious cognitive defects. Some soldiers return in caskets, others in wheelchairs or with prosthetic limbs.

And the stress of living on a razor's edge can send the mind and spirit into a lingering dark abyss.

And as tough as it is to deal with the rigors of military service, for many veterans the going gets harder in civilian life.

Hank Whittier, executive director of Vets Helping Vets, a nonprofit outreach program headquartered on East Silver Springs Boulevard, is seeing new problems among the veterans he and his volunteers serve.

"Currently, we are experiencing a significant uptick in the number of young vets needing our help. The economy is making it tougher for them to transition. Sometimes they will start with just a request for job referrals and over time end up asking for food and rent help," Whittier said.

"We are also seeing more mental health issues, with 30 percent of our veterans being affected. Family members will come seeking help for loved ones they are seeing fall apart."
read more here

Vets Helping Vets provides help for those who have served

Boston pauses to recall Vietnam fallen Marine

Boston pauses to recall fallen Marine
By O’Ryan Johnson
Saturday, May 8, 2010

Fellow townies have never forgotten Marine Lt. Michael Quinn of Charlestown - and neither has the Marine Corps.

He was 23, a brawny football standout who, after graduating from Holy Cross, finished at the top of his officer’s class at Quantico in 1968 and was sent to Vietnam where he was killed nine months later.

Yesterday, as part of Marine Week Boston, Marine Col. Robert Durkin, commanding officer of the 4th Battalion 25th Marine Regiment, along with Mayor Thomas M. Menino, rededicated a plaque memorializing the late Marine at the top step of the bridge over the pond at the Public Garden. Below, Quinn had paddled Swan Boats every summer as a teenager.
read more here
Boston pauses to recall fallen Marine

Fake three-star Marine general was really PFC

Marine investigators say NC man posed as officer
(AP) – 1 day ago

WILMINGTON, N.C. — A man who pleaded guilty last year to altering an identification card after he was spotted in the uniform of a three-star Marine general is under suspicion of posing at an April ceremony as a highly decorated Marine colonel, authorities say.

Michael Hamilton, 67, of Richlands wore a Marine uniform at Jacksonville's Vietnam Memorial during a military recognition day ceremony last month, Marine investigators said this week. Authorities added Hamilton was photographed wearing several rows of medals including the Navy Cross, the second highest award for valor.

Investigators from Camp Lejeune said they searched Hamilton's house on April 26, two days after his picture was published in the Jacksonville, N.C., Daily News. An evidence report said they recovered a blue dress uniform blouse with seven service ribbons and 18 medals. The report didn't specify the medals recovered.

In a biography distributed at the April ceremony, Hamilton claims he was promoted from private first class to colonel between 1961 and 1969 and was awarded 80 medals, including two Navy Crosses. An affidavit filed by investigators with the search warrant said the highest rank Hamilton attained was private first class.

Hamilton only served nine months and was discharged in February 1962, according to the affidavit. It said his only decoration was a rifle qualification badge.

read more here

Marine investigators say NC man posed as officer

Gulf War ex-POW wants veterans for movies

Tac One Ops recruiting vets for movies
Posted: May 07, 2010 6:28 PM EDT


Tac One Ops recruits vets for movies
2:44

By Jeff Ferrell
SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) – Recruiting is underway for veterans right here in the Ark-La-Tex. But, it's not the kind of recruiting you may be thinking about. This is an effort by a local organization to put our veterans on the silver screen. It is all part of something called Tac One Ops.

Movie productions are becoming a near-ubiquitous sight in north Louisiana these days, running the gamut from scary movies like a ‘haunted battle' to a battle against aliens in Los Angeles, actually shot on the Interstate-49 overpass in Shreveport, just a stone's throw away from the KSLA studio.

"We get there in hand-to-hand. That's when a bayonet comes plunging through my right side right here. I still got a scar," described retired Army Sgt. and Vietnam veteran Jimmy Brown during a recent KSLA News 12 report on a movie in production. Brown represents just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to local veterans with a wealth of knowledge and experience.

That's where Tac One Ops comes in. Its two founders, Dave Valle and Paul Murray met while training actors on military weaponry and tactics. Valle recalled one day on a movie set, "we both looked at each other and said, 'you know what? This is a perfect scenario for military and police veterans."

You may recognize Paul Murray. In recent years we have spoken with Murray on gun issues. He's the owner of the indoor range called Shooters USA in Bossier City. He's also a former prisoner of war during the first Gulf War, who consistently plays down his truly harrowing experience saying only, "I got pushed around a little bit but that was about it."
read more here
http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=12448493

Pentagon to Congress:Stop spending so much money on the troops

This is the same Pentagon with no problem at all shelling out billions to defense contractors with absolutely no oversight on where the money went, what they were billed for or what they were getting for the money in return. This is really the same Pentagon now saying that Congress is being too generous to the troops? The same troops we keep sending over and over and over again back to Iraq and Afghanistan no matter what it's doing to them and their families? Amazing! Just amazing now they are worried about spending too much money. Well maybe the saying is true, troops are expendable but contractors are expensive.

But Congress -- including members opposed to the wars -- has made clear that it considers military pay and benefits sacrosanct, especially when service members and their families are struggling to cope with repeated deployments to faraway conflicts.

Pentagon asking Congress to hold back on generous increases in troop pay
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Pentagon, not usually known for its frugality, is pleading with Congress to stop spending so much money on the troops.

Through nine years of war, service members have seen a healthy rise in pay and benefits, with most of them now better compensated than workers in the private sector with similar experience and education levels.

Congress has been so determined to take care of troops and their families that for several years running it has overruled the Pentagon and mandated more-generous pay raises than requested by the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. It has also rejected attempts by the Pentagon to slow soaring health-care costs -- which Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said are "eating us alive" -- by raising co-pays or premiums.

Now, Pentagon officials see fiscal calamity.
read more here

Stop spending so much money on the troops

Fannin County Family Crisis Center in crisis

Fannin County Family Crisis Center in crisis
By media release
May 8, 2010


Our mission is to receive, comfort, counsel and support individuals and their families who find themselves in conflict due to emotional or physical abuse or sexual assault. Our mission is to help clients take control of their lives, know what options are available to them and assist them in making their own choices. After 12 years at their current location, The Fannin County Family Crisis Center must relocate within six (6) months due to required building renovations at the Veteran’s Administration.

During the next few months, the Board of Directors will be conducting a search for a new location. They are viewing the circumstances on a positive note because of the overwhelming support and past generosities of the citizens of Fannin County. Chief of Police Mike Bankston, who is heading up the relocation project, said that he “always has faith in the goodness and generosity of this fellow man and particularly in Fannin County. They have often surprised me and never let us down.”
read more here
http://www.ntxe-news.com/artman/publish/article_62053.shtml

'Moral injury' as a wound of war

For years now I've been saying there are different types of PTSD just as there are different causes. Now it looks like "experts" are finally taking this seriously. Combat PTSD and PTSD in law enforcement should not be treated the same way a survivor of a natural disaster is treated. The cuts in veterans and police officers is deeper and different from the others. The simple reason is, others are simply survivors of the traumatic events but combat troops and cops are participants in them. Thank God they are willing to risk their lives for the rest of us and stop treating them as if they are like the rest of us.

MILITARY: 'Moral injury' as a wound of war
Conference to examine consequence of battlefield transgressions, exposure to carnage

Story Discussion By MARK WALKER - mlwalker@nctimes.com


A group of mental health experts is giving a name to the guilt and remorse troops feel when they see or do bad things during war: moral injury.

They say failure to recognize and acknowledge exposure to military or civilian carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan sets up troops for post-traumatic stress, a severe and often debilitating anxiety disorder that affects 1 in 5 combat troops.

The experts' findings on the emerging war wound will be discussed at a combat stress conference May 18-20 in San Diego. A study of the issue was first published in December in Clinical Psychology Review. Moral injury is not now officially recognized as a mental health malady.

The principal author of the moral injury paper, Dr. Brett Litz, said he and his colleagues are calling for wide-scale research into the issue to validate its existence and how it may lead to post-traumatic stress.

"Moral injury can occur from what you witness or what you do," said Litz, a clinical psychologist, professor and counselor for the Department of Veterans Affairs. "I've been seeing veterans for 24 years, and when people who seem well-adjusted and doing fine really talk about their war experiences, what often emerges is sadness about the loss and what they saw. That is moral injury."

Litz and his collaborators specifically define a moral injury experience as "perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations."

They argue that service members who don't talk to loved ones, clergy or some other confidant will become convinced what they did is unforgivable, leading to recognized symptoms of PTSD, such as withdrawal, self-condemnation and avoidance.

go here for more
Moral injury as a wound of war