Former Louisiana Army National Guardsman accused of threats

Former National Guardsman accused of threats

The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jul 8, 2010 8:38:08 EDT

BATON ROUGE, La. — A former soldier accused of threatening the president and governor denied threatening them but said he's angry that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs won't pay for his counseling and prescriptions.

After a hearing Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christine Noland said 26-year-old Abram Kane Williams, who was arrested early this month, must remain in federal custody.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick A. Menner Jr. said case workers and others told an FBI agent that Williams repeatedly threatened President Barack Obama, Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge.

The Advocate reports that Williams, a former member of the Louisiana Army National Guard, testified that the VA concluded his problems are not service-related. But he said they began after his return from Iraq.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/ap_guardsman_threats_070810/

Deputies: Stalker out on a bail kills victim

Deputies: Stalker out on a bail kills victim
LEADVILLE - Police say a man out on bail from a stalking arrest killed the woman he was stalking and then himself Wednesday night.

Yvonne Flores, a 58-year-old woman from Leadville, was coming home from the store when Anthony Medina, also 58 years old and from Leadville, met her in her driveway and apparently shot her two times and then shot himself, said the Lake County Sheriff's Office.

Medina was arrested for stalking Flores on June 22 and was out on bail.
read more here
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=142775&catid=339

DAV Chapter 16 Orlando Installation of Officers

Tonight is the DAV Chapter 16 installation of officers. I am the Chapter's Auxiliary Chaplain and will be delivering the invocation. These are not just the words I will say tonight, but the words I try my best to live by.

Welcome members, friends and honored guests. We gather here this night to celebrate the future, as much as we honor the past. Each one of us committed to our veterans and to the troops serving in harms way in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is fitting this night that we consider the words of Christ from John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Our veterans were not only willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their friends they served side by side with, but for their families and friends back home. For their neighbors and communities and for all generations coming after them, living in the freedom and security provided by those willing to die to insure it.

On the Lincoln Memorial we read the ending to President Lincoln's second inaugural address.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

These words are cherished by the DAV and the Auxiliary as we strive to fulfill the promise to bind the wounds of the disabled by war and to assure the care of those who have borne the battle. To care for the widows and orphans left behind by fallen. Since the Revolutionary war many have been called to defend this nation. George Washington said that "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." and this the DAV fought for because we believe there is no greater love than to serve this nation.

On this day as we enter into another year of working to insure the promise of care for the disabled veterans, let us be renewed in spirit as well. When we face a struggle too hard for us to fight, may God send us others to stand by our side. When we tire, may God renew our strength. May God bless us with holding our veterans in our hearts so that we never stop fighting for them, never stop learning and adapting to the needs of different generations and never forget those who had a love so great they were willing to die for it.

VA to Issue Science-Based PTSD Regulations

This woman is not a friend of veterans and has been wrong on PTSD for so long that we really need to wonder why on earth anyone asks her anything at all.

“I can’t imagine anyone more worthy of public largess than a veteran,” said Dr. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy group, who has written on P.T.S.D. “But as a clinician, it is destructive to give someone total and permanent disability when they are in fact capable of working, even if it is not at full capacity. A job is the most therapeutic thing there is.”

Common sense proves her wrong. Look at it this way. Would you join the military thinking that if there is a war, all you have to do is risk your life to end up with a check from the VA every month? If you survive at all? Hell no. If you are granted 100% disability from the VA you are making less money than if you were able to work. Aside from the turmoil you go through with PTSD, the ravages on your personal life with everyone you know, nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, panic attacks, short term memory loss plus a long list of others, you also have to face being on medication that comes with their own set of problems.

This is what it breaks down to.

Dependent Status
Veteran Alone (Per Month)
30% $376
40% $541
50% $770
60% $974
70% $1,228
80% $1,427
90% $1,604
100% $2,673
go here for more
Dependent Status

Would you want to go through combat to end up with $192.50 a week with a 50% disability rating? How about $668.25 for 100%? If you end up with 100% you have to be suffering a lot and watch your life fall apart. Some may say that kind of money a week is good but they forget that a lot of people make more than that, especially trades people, and the VA doesn't pay overtime or give merit raises. Take a heavy equipment operator in a state where it snows. They make most of their yearly income plowing snow for days on end and they make overtime. Take them off their jobs because of medications they have to be on and there goes that money, plus the difference they would have made just on a regular paycheck alone.

But we're not talking about 100% disability rating for the most part because the percentages awarded at usually 50% or lower. Would you risk your life and end up with PTSD to make less than you could make at your local grocery store?

This ruling does not make it easier to live with PTSD but only takes out having to prove which time your life was on the line ended up being the straw that broke your life.

When work finally started to happen on PTSD, veterans were sent to the VA because they had the best programs and resources. Veterans had to file a claim just to be able to have PTSD covered so they wouldn't have to pay for it.

But Rick Weidman, executive director for policy and government affairs at Vietnam Veterans of America, said most veterans applied for disability not for the monthly checks but because they wanted access to free health care.

“I know guys who are rated 100 percent disabled who keep coming back for treatment not because they are worried about losing their compensation, but because they want their life back,” Mr. Weidman said.

Private health insurance companies refused to cover the treatments because the diagnosis was connected to military service. Once this happened, mental health care coverage would not cover anything to do with PTSD. If the veteran still had an income, they had to pay for their care without a disability rating from the VA. So they filed claims. A service connected disability rating assured them of being taken care of. Medications and therapy were taken care of.

More than two million service members have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, and by some estimates 20 percent or more of them will develop P.T.S.D.

More than 150,000 cases of P.T.S.D. have been diagnosed by the veterans health system among veterans of the two wars, while thousands more have received diagnoses from private doctors, said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, an advocacy group.

But Mr. Sullivan said records showed that the veterans department had approved P.T.S.D. disability claims for only 78,000 veterans. That suggests, he said, that many veterans with the disorder are having their compensation claims rejected by claims processors. “Those statistics show a very serious problem in how V.A. handles P.T.S.D. claims,” Mr. Sullivan said.

This will also encourage a combat veteran to seek help in healing PTSD. That is what the goal is supposed to be. Isn't it? We want them to recover from what happened to them while they were risking their lives. Right? We want them to seek help as soon as they show signs of PTSD so they get better. Right? Isn't that the part that is missing from all this debate?

Look at all the different programs going on across the country. Are they trying them to heal? Yoga? Martial Arts? Group therapy? Reaching out on their computers to find support and help to heal? If given a choice between recovering their lives or getting a check worth less than $200 a week, the would take healing any day. The goal has not been reached because too many have had their claims denied, which is like a knife in their backs after being told by a VA psychologist their condition is related to their service in combat but the claim has been denied over paperwork issues.

Do we want to stop them from ending up homeless? This helps in that area because when you have a veteran with PTSD and they cannot work, with no income at all, they can't pay to keep that roof over their heads. We talk a lot about homeless veterans but we hardly ever mention the "couch homeless" sleeping on the couch in a friend's home because they have nowhere else to go. Families have kicked them out of the house they used to live in, usually because they just didn't understand what was going on. When the VA is denying their claim, the family ends up doubting the suffering of the veteran. After all, the American public has been conditioned to believe the VA takes care of veterans injured in combat. They don't want to believe any veteran is being turned away.

Bing search Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and you get 5,190,000 results. Bing PTSD and you find 1,840,000 results. Google Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and you find 2,400,000. For PTSD the result is 1,110,000. These results are there for a reason. People want to learn so they understand but above that, they want to heal.

Encouraging them to seek help leads them to healing. Making them fight to prove a claim, adding more stress to their lives, discourages them allowing mild cases of PTSD to get progressively worse to the point where when they are finally helped, they are only stabilized instead of healed.

PTSD still has to be proven but this is a step in the right direction.

VCS in the New York Times: VA to Issue Science Based PTSD Regulations
Written by James Dao
Wednesday, 07 July 2010 20:01
Veterans Affairs to Ease Claim Process for Disability

July 7, 2010 (New York Times) - The Federal government is preparing to issue new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits for the illness, a change [based on scientific research] that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

The regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will take effect as early as Monday and cost as much as $5 billion over several years according to Congressional analysts, will essentially eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events like bomb blasts, firefights or mortar attacks that might have caused P.T.S.D., an illness characterized by emotional numbness, irritability and flashbacks.

For decades, veterans have complained that finding such records was extremely time consuming and sometimes impossible. And in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans groups assert that the current rules discriminate against tens of thousands of service members — many of them women — who did not serve in combat roles but nevertheless suffered traumatic experiences.

Under the new rule, which applies to veterans of all wars, the department will grant compensation to those with P.T.S.D. if they can simply show that they served in a war zone and in a job consistent with the events that they say caused their conditions. They would not have to prove, for instance, that they came under fire, served in a front-line unit or saw a friend killed.

The new rule would also allow compensation for service members who had good reason to fear traumatic events, known as stressors, even if they did not actually experience them.

There are concerns that the change will open the door to a flood of fraudulent claims. But supporters of the rule say the veterans department will still review all claims and thus be able to weed out the baseless ones.

“This nation has a solemn obligation to the men and women who have honorably served this country and suffer from the emotional and often devastating hidden wounds of war,” the secretary of veterans affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, said in a statement to The New York Times. “This final regulation goes a long way to ensure that veterans receive the benefits and services they need.”
read more here
VA to Issue Science Based PTSD Regulations

VA not approving enough service dogs, IG says

VA not approving enough service dogs, IG says

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 7, 2010 17:19:44 EDT

A new report by the Veterans Affairs Department Inspector General says VA should be doing more for veterans whose lives could be improved with help from service dogs.

Eight years after receiving approval to help pay for dogs to assist veterans with mobility problems, seizure disorders or other disabilities, a report released Wednesday says VA has approved only eight requests.

VA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said VA supports providing service dogs for veterans with physical and hearing issues, and does so on a case-by-case basis.

Relaxed policies that might make service dogs more widely available are under review, but rule changes take time, officials said.

“It is unacceptable not to exercise the authority given to them to improve the quality of veterans’ lives,” said Christina Roof of AmVets, a group that has been pushing the issue for years.

When service dog benefits are provided, VA does not pay for the dog nor its training, but veterinary bills, vaccinations and treatments for fleas and ticks are covered by VA. In some cases, a veteran can be reimbursed for food if a dog is on a medically ordered diet.
go here for more
VA not approving enough service dogs IG says

Soldier's house burns after homecoming, 4 firefighters hurt

Soldier's house burns after homecoming

The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jul 7, 2010 9:15:26 EDT

NATICK, Mass. — The home of an Army officer who had just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan hours earlier has been destroyed by fire.

Banners saying "Welcome Home" still hung nearby the military-owned house in Natick where Chief Warrant Officer Michael Doe and his family lived as firefighters battled Tuesday's blaze.

Four firefighters were injured at the fire at the Soldier Systems Center.
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Soldiers house burns after homecoming

Louisiana National Guard member dies in Iraq

Louisiana National Guard member dies in Iraq
Published: Wednesday, July 07, 2010

The Department of Defense Tuesday night identified a member of the Louisiana National Guard killed in Iraq on Friday.

Sgt. Jordan E. Tuttle , 22, of West Monroe, La., died July 2 at Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered in a non-combat related incident.

Finish reading here
Louisiana National Guard member dies in Iraq

Kidnapped 4-Year-Old Found Safe in Missouri

UPDATE

Missouri Man Eyed in Abduction Case Dies
Updated: 10 minutes ago

Lauren Frayer
Contributor
(July 8) -- A Missouri sex offender who shot himself as police approached to question him about the kidnapping of 4-year-old Alisa Maier has died.

The man died Wednesday night at a hospital in St. Charles, Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Al Nothum told The Associated Press.
The Lincoln County sheriff's department earlier told AOL News it could not confirm the report.

Alisa's 6-year-old brother, Blake, was the only witness to her abduction. He told police a man driving a dark four-door sedan pulled up in front of their house Monday night and ordered her into the car. She was found a day later wandering around a car wash parking lot in a St. Louis suburb more than 80 miles from her home. Details were reported by several news agencies.
read more here
Missouri Man Eyed in Abduction Case Dies

Miracles can happen and it looks like one just did

Kidnapped 4-Year-Old Found Safe in Missouri

Lauren Frayer
Contributor

(July 7) -- A 4-year-old Missouri girl believed to have been kidnapped while playing with her older brother in their front yard has been found wandering around a strip mall parking lot more than 80 miles from her home, and a relative said this morning that she was unharmed.

Police say they got a call just before 10 p.m. Tuesday reporting a young child wandering around the parking lot of a closed car wash in Fenton, a suburb of St. Louis. They confirmed her identity as Alisa Maier and then took her to a hospital as a precaution, according to several St. Louis-area TV stations.

Her parents traveled to the hospital overnight for a happy reunion, NBC News reported.

"They were just so happy," Alisa's grandfather Roy Harrison told NBC's "Today" show this morning. "There was a lot of smiling."
read more here
Kidnapped 4 Year Old Found Safe in Missouri

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.