Orrin McClellan Was "Only Halfway Home" from War

There are very few reporters whose words can enter into a heart and pull someone into a world of pain but Lily can. When you read this know that she deeply cares and you can tell by what she writes, but I know her well enough to know this made her very sad. Lily is a true gift to all of our veterans.

This is by Lily Casura over at Healing Combat Trauma

July 07, 2010
Anatomy of a PTSD Suicide: Orrin McClellan Was "Only Halfway Home" from War


"Happy families are all alike," wrote Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian novelist (and combat veteran), in the opening lines of "Anna Karenina," adding, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And certainly few families are unhappier than those who've lost someone they love deeply to suicide, as Orrin McClellan's parents have, who've recently lost their Airborne soldier son to the aftermath of PTSD.

We wrote about Orrin McCllelan yesterday, the 25-year-old OEF veteran who took his own life in May of this year. The article, "Anatomy of a Suicide: OEF Veteran Orrin McClellan, RIP from PTSD," is linked here. The underlying Seattle Times article, also from yesterday's paper, is very good, and combines multimedia with the telling the story of McClellan's all-too-short life and struggle. It also documents the pain and suffering McClellan's parents are going through.

There is no "purple heart" for PTSD. There is no "war memorial" that lists those who died by suicide from PTSD, even when combat was the most likely explanation. And maybe there should be... But in the meantime, all we can do is try to reconstruct what we can find about who Orrin McClellan was in the 25 short years he was here.

Digging around on the Web, we can find out much about who McClellan was. The exercise becomes less macabre, or voyeuristic, than the assembling of an online shrine to the memory of someone we never knew, who's now too soon gone. There are the two online journals that McClellan kept, at MySpace and LiveJournal. There is his photo stream on Flickr. There is an obituary by a caring friend, who attended his memorial service. There is McClellan's listing at an online dating service, "Hot or Not," which he set up when he was in Afghanistan, and elsewhere pans with the single word, "whatever." There are some videos that a friend shot of him, who mourns his passing and wishes he had captured a few more shots of McClellan while he was still alive. There are the photos and the poems that his family shared with the Seattle Times, that are part of the original article. And there is a truly beautiful video about his deployment to Afghanistan, called "They Carry," that McClellan himself pieced together, shown on YouTube, and set to music: not heavy metal, but classical...He uploaded it in late September, 2007, after he got back from Afghanistan, and it carries the interesting descriptor: "this generation's wars from eyes on the ground...the faces and names are placeholders. those who were there remember. the rest can only watch." WELL worth viewing...
read more here
Anatomy of a PTSD Suicide

Twilight of Glory

Twilight of Glory
by
Chaplain Kathie

While most people in their 20's are talking about movies in the Twilight series about vampires, there is another meaning to the word "twilight" and they live it everyday.

twilight
1.
a. The diffused light from the sky during the early evening or early morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth's atmosphere.
b. The time of the day when the sun is just below the horizon, especially the period between sunset and dark.
2. Dim or diffused illumination.
3. A period or condition of decline following growth, glory, or success: in the twilight of his life.
4. A state of ambiguity or obscurity

Young men and women go off to other nations serving in the military everyday. They are sent off with people lining the roadways of military bases waving flags and praying God brings them home safely. In communities around the country we send off citizen soldiers leaving their jobs, families and friends to join the regular military in combat. Our neighbors going away from police, fire departments, offices, hospitals and yes, even unemployment lines, while we cheer for the sake of their devotion to duty.

Many of these men and women die while fighting the battles the nation decides need to be fought. They don't bother themselves with worrying about the politics involved. They have enough to worry about like staying alive and trying to keep their friends alive. They worry about being wounded and what will happen to them the day after they return with their lives changed. When they are deployed, all is taken care of for them. They are fed, given clothes and have a family surrounding them. We call them heroes and glorify their devotion. Yet when they are wounded, by body or mind, they enter into the twilight of glory, when they are in need of someone taking care of them. But we don't want to talk about them.

Thousands of Soldiers Unfit for War Duty
David Wood
Chief Military Correspondent
More than 13,000 active-duty Army soldiers -- the equivalent of four combat brigades -- are sidelined as unfit for war because of injury, illness or mental stress.

In an unmistakable sign that the Army is struggling with exhaustion after nine years of fighting, combat commanders whose units are headed to Afghanistan increasingly choose to leave behind soldiers who can no longer perform, putting additional strain on those who still can.

The growing pool of "non-deployable'' soldiers make up roughly 10 percent of the 116,423 active-duty soldiers currently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more Army reservists and National Guard soldiers are also considered unfit to deploy, a growing burden on an Army that has sworn to care for them as long as needed.

"These 13,000 soldiers, that number's not going to go away," said Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, who heads the Army's Warrior Transition Command, which oversees the treatment and disposition of unfit soldiers. "If anything, it's going to get larger as the Army continues the tempo it's on.

"This is an Army at war.''

Among these "non-deployable'' soldiers are those recuperating from combat wounds, some severe, and various forms of brain injury. Far more numerous are soldiers with non-battle conditions, including cases of coronary disease, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, acute anxiety, kidney disease, leukemia, chronic back pain and dozens of other maladies. Sometimes, these cases are complicated by drug or alcohol abuse, according to senior Army officers and internal Pentagon documents.
read more here
Thousands of Soldiers Unfit for War Duty

We don't want to talk about those in need. We honor glory for however long it lasts when we can feel as if we were a part of success simply by offering words of support or showing up to give the impression of really caring. The wounded are past their glory days in our minds. There is no longer a reason to cheer that same devotion to the nation that caused them to be wounded. If they bleed, well we give them a Purple Heart and then send them off to the abyss of the VA. A few communities band together at the urging of some charity to renovate a house to accommodate wheel chairs when they no longer have their legs. Some people really do care but we as a nation on the whole care more about TV shows, celebrity gossip and our own lives as we glorify our own sacrifices for the sake of our own families. While we know what it's like to be unemployed and worry about paying the bills, we forget they end up with the same problems the rest of us have but unlike us, they are suffering for being unselfish.

When what they have to go through is brought to our minds, we get angry but that fades as soon as the DOD or the VA says they will take care of filling the need. We go back to our own lives without every thinking of them again until a news report comes out that one more of them have taken their own life. We fail to understand few families are willing to talk about the circumstances of the death when suicide is involved, so there are many, many more we will never know about. We know the reported number of 18 veteran suicides a day but they represent the number of veterans in the VA system. We know about the reported number of suicides in the active military but we don't know about the deaths "still under investigation" or any of the deaths by their own hands after they leave military duty. We can try to count the number of attempted suicides, arriving at about 12,000 per year, but there are many more we will never know about.

Suicide hotlines report numbers of callers and the "rescues" they arranged, but no one is talking about the fact these men and women feel so hopeless they reach the point when they have to reach out for someone to talk to on a suicide prevention hotline.

Twenty-something year olds fill the beds at Walter Reed and Bethesda but few in this country, other than family members, have ever seen the inside of a military hospital.

One of the perks of being a Chaplain is that I was treated to a VIP tour of Walter Reed during the Memorial Day trip to Washington. There were 5 young soldiers from the same unit, wounded at different times to different degrees. There was a young female MP feeling blessed the RPG only took off one of her legs instead of hitting her higher. Another young soldier talked about how the people of Afghanistan were mostly good people with very little to live with and how he believe he was helping them to live better lives in their future. He wanted to go back as soon as possible. All of them are the same age as my daughter. They all deal with the same problems all others at their age deal with but then they have the added burden of not only risking their lives, but risking their futures. All of the soldiers I met at Walter Reed will live with the wounds they received for the rest of their lives.

It's really hard to believe I'm sitting here after all these years still doing what I began when my Dad met my husband for the first time. I was 22 when I asked my Dad what he thought of Jack. "He's a nice guy but he's got shell shock." Coming from a Korean War vet, I took it seriously but no one knew at the time it was mild PTSD issuing a warning for him to get help. By the time we met he had been home for 11 years. To this day, young men and women are receiving the same warning about getting help now instead of later so that the ravages of PTSD can be prevented, but too few listen. For those who do listen, they end up discovering that help is something they have to not only wait for, but have to fight for in long lines and paperwork.

None of what they are going through has to happen but they are no long in their glory days of deployment when at least some in this nation want to know what's going on. They are in the twilight of their glory when few in this nation will bother to notice them at all and even fewer will feel compelled enough to try to make this right for them.

twilight
1.
a. The diffused light from the sky during the early evening or early morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth's atmosphere.
b. The time of the day when the sun is just below the horizon, especially the period between sunset and dark.
2. Dim or diffused illumination.
3. A period or condition of decline following growth, glory, or success: in the twilight of his life.
4. A state of ambiguity or obscurity

They are in the twilight of glory because when they can't risk their lives, they are no longer of use to us but need us instead.


I wrote this poem with the words of Vietnam veterans back in 1984. These are their words. I just arranged them. This was their lives. I just listened. I revised it for today's veterans.

Twilight of Glory

by

Chaplain Kathie
The things I’ve seen and done would boggle your mind.
I’ve seen the death and destruction created by mankind
in the living hell that I walked away from but could not leave behind.
It all comes back to haunt me now and makes peace impossible to find.
The ghosts of the past that find me in the night
make me wonder if my life will ever be right.
I have tried to forget what I have done,
and now there is no place left to run.
All this in the name of glory!
There is no end to this horror story.

It still does not make sense even now that I am older,
why, when I was so young they made me a soldier
and why I had to be a part of that war
when I didn’t even know what we were there for.
At eighteen I should have been with my friends having fun
not patrolling through a jungle with a machine gun.
I did my part just the same, just for my country
and stood helplessly watching my friends die all around me.
I felt a surge of hate engulf my soul for people that I did not know
and saw children lose their chance to grow.
All this in the name of glory!
There is still no end to this horror story.

There was no glory for guys like me
only bitter memories that will not set me free.
I can never forget the ones who never made it home
some of them dead and others whose fate is still unknown
and the stigma that we lost what was not meant to win
most of us carry that extra burden buried deep within.
All this in the name of glory!
Will there ever be an end to this horror story?

In the twilight of glory
there is an unwritten story
each warrior keeps within.
Going back from the wars we are sent to fight
like going from sunshine to the darkness of night
we fade away from the public's mind
and wonder when glory was left behind
as we struggle to find reason to go on
back in a world where we no longer belong.



revised from IN THE NAME OF GLORY
@1984 Kathie Costos
I signed the poem W.T. Manteiv for We Trusted and Vietnam backwards.

Fisher Houses ease financial burden, stress

Fisher Houses ease financial burden, stress
By Clay Carey, USA TODAY
Carol Thomas had gotten used to sleeping on recliners and hospital couches every once in a while as her husband, Bobby, got treatment for kidney and heart problems at the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Affairs Hospital near Chicago.
But when doctors discovered cancer and had to remove Bobby's kidneys, the Glenwood, Ill., couple learned they would be in for an extended stay.

Instead of hospital couches, Carol said she now has a real bed at a home made for families such as hers while doctors work on her husband, a 64-year-old Army veteran who served in Vietnam.

That's because an organization called Fisher House opened a facility near the Illinois hospital in March — the most recently opened of 45 houses across the country that offer free lodging to veterans who have to travel more than 50 miles to get treatment at government-run Veterans Affairs hospitals, said Cindy Campbell, community liaison with the national Fisher House Foundation. Their families can stay for free, too.

"It has really been a home away from home," said Carol Thomas, 56. She has been staying there since late April. "Without them, I don't know what we would do."
read more here
Fisher Houses ease financial burden stress

Vietnam Vets of Winston-Salem to have own bike group

Veterans start biking group
by Meghann Evans

In June, local bikers helped the Winston-Salem chapter of Rolling Thunder lead the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall into Mount Airy. Soon, Surry County’s chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America will have a biking group of its own.

Dan Hilton, who helped organize the Veterans Reunion that took place in Mount Airy in early June, explained that each chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America has its own biking club. The Granite City Chapter 1021 of the Vietnam Veterans, located in Mount Airy, now is starting a biking group.

“It’s a good idea to do it,” said Hilton.

The group will be part of Rolling Thunder, the official motorcycle club of the VVA.

Read more: Mount Airy News
Veterans start biking group

The Strength Within

There are many stories on this blog about suicides but I felt it was time to take a look back to 2007 and see that when it comes to the programs the DOD and the VA have come up with, they are not doing the job.

It's time we stopped being military deserters and started to demand the men and women serving today along with the veterans are treated with the utmost respect, dignity and care they have earned. Nothing they need should be debated. Congress spends more time of trying to find ways for what they want when it comes to contractors but far too little time when it comes to the men and women who are the military!

Ask your member of congress why they are not demanding the best care for our troops and veterans! Tell them to stop being military deserters when the troops need them after doing what congress asked of them.

The Strength Within: One NCO's Experience with Suicide and PTSD
Sep 12, 2007
BY Elizabeth M. Lorge


Related Links
Suicide Prevention Week Stories

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 12, 2007)

In the face of rising suicide rates among Soldiers, the Army is making a renewed effort to help Soldiers at risk and educate Soldiers and leaders about the signs to look for in their battle buddies and subordinates. That education is crucial in saving Soldiers' lives, said retired 1st Sgt. Cornell Swanier. He has first-hand experience with suicide - as a prevention-education coordinator, as a noncommissioned officer who lost a Soldier and as a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who has thought about killing himself.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2002, he got the call every leader dreads. One of the Soldiers he had brought safely through a deployment to Kuwait for Operation Enduring Freedom was dead by his own hand, an event 1st Sgt. Swanier is still trying to comprehend. "I really got close to my Soldiers," he said. "I really tried to know the Soldiers, know their families, from top to bottom. It was tough on me. It's still tough on me to this day to walk in the barracks room and to see a dead Soldier. When Thanksgiving comes around, I think about that Soldier."

The specialist had been very intelligent, a model Soldier in a model section. He was a little quiet and prone to being picked on by his fellow Soldiers, but 1st Sgt. Swanier said he got along well with his section, one of the best in his company. 1st Sgt. Swanier said he felt responsible for a long time, but no one had any idea the Soldier wanted to kill himself. He even bought new speakers for his car shortly before he died. But he had planned the whole thing, bought a gun, even detailed where he wanted his ashes scattered in his suicide note.

After he died, 1st Sgt. Swanier went through all of the paperwork from the Soldier's monthly counseling sessions and couldn't find anything that would suggest suicide. 1st Sgt. Swanier had served as a prevention-education coordinator at Fort Benning, Ga., so he knew the signs to look for: Soldiers who start giving things away, whose job performance goes downhill, who isolate themselves and stop socializing and, of course, Soldiers who talk about killing themselves.

"You have to take that seriously. I'm sure that Soldier was exhibiting some signs around his roommate and fellow Soldiers, and they just didn't know it," he said. The suicide, he continued, touched everyone in the close-knit unit. "It really dragged us down, put a somber mood on the unit for some time. It took us time to move forward." The mission came first, however, and they were deployed for the initial ground war in Iraq in March 2003, a deployment that triggered 1st Sgt. Swanier's own battle with post-traumatic stress disorder and thoughts of suicide. Until a year after his return, when his father mentioned how angry he was, 1st Sgt. Swanier didn't realize how PTSD was affecting his life - he had cancelled several appointments with specialists and avoided group therapy.

"There were many sleepless nights. Depressed days. I would sit in one spot for most of the day. I would isolate and I wouldn't go out. I wouldn't talk to anybody. I wouldn't answer the telephone. I would get up in the middle of the night and make sure all my doors and windows were secured," he said. He never attempted it, but 1st Sgt. Swanier also thought about killing himself. He still does occasionally. He doesn't even like to wear neckties, although now he feels comfortable talking about it with his wife. If it hadn't been for the conversation with his father, 1st Sgt. Swanier believes he would have lost his family and ended up divorced. Instead, he joined an outpatient program at the local Department of Veterans Affairs post-traumatic stress clinic.

"When you mention the words mental health or behavioral health, there's a stigma," he said. "And I'm a first sergeant. We were coming back and that place was full of Soldiers, no leaders. And I just couldn't see myself going to behavioral health. I'm the type of person who was used to going up there and checking on Soldiers." 1st Sgt. Swanier said his wife and daughter didn't understand at first, but that their support has gotten him through his treatment. Talking to other veterans who know what he's going through also helps, he said. The Strength Within

Homeless Man Rescues Fallen American Flag

Homeless Man Rescues Fallen American Flag

Daniel Novick-KFOX News Weekend Anchor/Reporter
Posted: 3:56 pm MDT July 4, 2010
Updated: 2:04 pm MDT July 5, 2010

EL PASO, Texas -- There is typically an American flag that flies high in front of METI Inc., a federal contractor in East El Paso. But instead, the flag is lying flat inside and the flag pole is on the ground outside after a storm last Sunday.

"The wind and the rain knocked over the flag pole, causing the flag pole to lie on the parking lot overlooking Boeing Drive," said Rebecca Orozco with METI Inc.

But it is the condition in which employees found Old Glory that shocked everyone, until they checked their surveillance video.

"After watching the surveillance videos we noticed that it was a good Samaritan who we suspect was a homeless man that came to the rescue of the flag around 1:40 in the morning," Orozco told KFOX.

In the surveillance video you can see the homeless man in driving rain and wind carefully folding up the American flag military style and then placing the flag pole off to the side.

"It was an amazing experience to see that, it was very heartwarming to see that a homeless man or a good Samaritan who was walking around that area at that time of the day in the rain will come to the rescue of the U.S. flag," said Orozco.

Orozco said she wouldn't expect that kind of act in a late night storm from anyone, especially someone who has so little to give.

"Knowing that so many people have turned their back on him, he never turned his back on this country," she said.

KFOX found the man who didn't turn his back on the flag. His name is Gustus Bozarth.

"It's a small respect, folding the flag like that," said Bozarth.

He lives in the back of a warehouse just feet from the flag he saved.
go here for more
Homeless Man Rescues Fallen American Flag

Veterans struggle with life outside the military

Veterans struggle with life outside the military

By Matthew D. LaPlante

The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated 32 minutes ago
He had three square meals a day, a steady paycheck, solid benefits and a job with purpose. Life in the Army wasn’t perfect, of course, but Justin Youse was content with the path he had chosen.

Then he broke his back.

Today, the 29-year-old Iraq war veteran is in constant pain. He doesn’t sleep well. He considers the Veterans Affairs medical system, which he relies on for health care, to be a frustrating, impersonal, bureaucratic behemoth. He has battled addiction, gone through a divorce and been laid off from a job.

And he’s not alone in his struggles.

A new study by The Gallup Organization indicates that while military members are generally happier and healthier than other American workers, military veterans fare worse than the general work force when it comes to their emotional and physical health, work environment and access to basic necessities.

That came as no surprise to Youse, who injured his back when he dove from the back of a troop truck under fire in 2003 and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder related to other combat experiences in Iraq.

“Once you become a veteran, you’re still dealing with everything you were dealing with when you were active duty, but all the security and camaraderie is gone,” Youse said.

If he was sick or injured in the Army, Youse said, he would simply walk into the base clinic for treatment. “Now,” he said. “It’s all about jumping through hoops. It’s like being guilty until being proven innocent. You have to prove you’ve got medical issues before they’ll give you a second glance.”
go here for more
Veterans struggle with life outside the military

$1 million for each solider per year in Afghanistan?

Congress needs to start doing some heavy soul searching before more troops they claim to support become veterans trying to deal with what no one thought of, them.

We spend a fortune on waging war no matter if you agree with it or not. We've heard all the debates and know how easily they seem to find the money for contractors but we've also heard how they have a much harder time taking care of the men and women when they come home. Now, while it costs $1 million a year to pay for them risking their lives in Afghanistan, some members of congress are saying when they come home, they are just not worth paying for. Without mentioning any names of party they happen to belong to, some members end up proving they are not supporting the troops but are in fact supporting the contractors instead.

We owe the troops of today just as much as we owe the troops of yesterday we call veterans. How can they go from being worth $1 million a year while they risk their lives and then end up being a pawn in a political game?

We need to start watching them because if any of them say they support the troops, they better be prepared to fight for them and what they need. If they don't fight for the troops and our veterans, don't bother fighting for them come election time. They have already proven what they say does not lead to what they end up really doing.

US taxpayers’ Afghan aid money buys rich Afghans’ Dubai villas


By John Byrne
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
You already might have heard that it costs the United States $1 million for each solider per year in Afghanistan, to cover the cost of the soldiers' benefits, troop transports and other material. What you might not have heard is that your hard earned taxpayer dollars are also being used to buy well-connected Afghans posh villas in Dubai.

US taxpayers are also footing an enormous bill for the Pentagon's use of fuel in the landlocked nation. In 2008, the price of gasoline in the United States topped the $4 per gallon mark.

This year in Afghanistan, the price has topped $400.

read more here
US taxpayers Afghan aid money buys rich Afghans Dubai villas

Is anyone putting a lid on spending in Afghanistan or even talking about it the same way they say any bills for the veterans needs to be paid for?

Suicide reflects troubling trend among veterans

Local veteran's suicide reflects troubling trend
Orrin Gorman McClellan is among the war casualties that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has just begun to track — young men and women who served in the post-9/11 military, and killed themselves after struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and other war wounds.


LANGLEY, Island County —

Orrin Gorman McClellan grew up among the alder and cedar that cover his family's 11-acre homestead on Whidbey Island. He relished painting, music and acting, playing the star role of Toad in a local production of "The Wind in the Willows."

McClellan seemed an unlikely Army recruit. But in the post-9/11 world, he responded to talk of honor, service and camaraderie. After graduating from high school, without informing his parents, McClellan signed up for three years of active duty.

He served in Afghanistan, where he lost friends to enemy bullets, picked up the body parts of blown-up soldiers and wrestled with the emotions unleashed by combat missions.

"Have you ever felt that each word you say brings you further away from explaining yourself," he wrote in an April 30, 2005, poem in a computer journal. "Everything you create puts a sour taste in your mouth and every action you take burns you with shame."

In the fall of 2006, McClellan left the Army and came back to his Western Washington island and a strong support network eager to help him rebuild his life. But family and friends were not enough to save him.

This year, on May 18, McClellan took his life with a handgun.
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Local veterans suicide reflects troubling trend

Help Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Association

Many Americans do not realize that not all veterans of the Vietnam War receive benefits related to dioxins and other toxins to which they (the veterans) were exposed from roughly 1963 to 1975. These service personnel served aboard ships along the coast of Vietnam. These veterans were exposed to toxins and dioxins when they drank contaminated water that was aboard ship. They also showered in that water, ate food prepared in it and breathed air from the ventilation system that spewed toxic air. These are the same contaminates for which the armed forces who served on land are being compensated.


I am proud to report that Congressman, Bob Filner, Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, is moving ahead with promises he has made on behalf of veterans of the Vietnam War. Representative Filner's bill, HR-2254, has an overwhelming support of 256 fellow Representatives, and he is working on issues regarding the funding of this legislation. It deals with military victims of Agent Orange poisoning.


Congressman Filner has stepped up to the plate boldly on this issue, an action that many members of this 111th Congress have not yet done. His recent release of a Video to Veterans at shows him as a staunch proponent for all veteran issues, and he spent some time detailing the problems that HR-2254 is going to solve as well as his approach to how he plans to get this bill through the House. Like everything else these days, his biggest hurdle is financial. But Congressman Filner indicates he will work through those funding issues in order to get this legislation passed.


As Executive Director of the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Association, I stand and salute him for his past valiant efforts to pass this legislation and have great faith that he will come through for us in the end.

John Paul Rossie, Executive Director
Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Association
PO Box 1035
Littleton, CO 80160-1035