Wounded Soldier Surprises Hometown
Sgt. Brendan Ferreira Makes Trip Home From Walter Reed
Taunton -- A local soldier, wounded in the line of duty, surprised his local community Sunday when he came home for a fundraiser in his honor.
The Wounded Soldier Day Fundraiser Jeep Run was held at the P.A.C.C. in Taunton in honor of Sgt. Brendan Ferreira, 23, of Assonet.
The fund raiser was on the same weekend Ferreira was supposed to come home on leave from Afghanistan. Those plans were changed back in March when Ferreira was critically injured during a suicide bomb attack. Two of his fellow soldiers were killed.
read more here
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/mostpopular/24385897/detail.html
Monday, July 26, 2010
The Secretary’s War on Homelessness
We can talk all we want about how bad it is for average Americans out of work, losing their homes and suffering in an economy that has left them behind the eight ball, but as bad as it is for us, we need to understand when it comes to our veterans, they were willing to die for us. We don't stand a chance of getting help if we allow them to suffer after they served this country.
We have problems with health insurance and the struggle to pay for care. They come home and then have to fight for care from the VA, when they wouldn't need it if they didn't serve.
We have problems in our own homes with relationships, our kids, bills, the list goes on, and so do they, but they have another problem too often fought in silence against PTSD.
When they end up homeless after all they did for the sake of this country, it is a testament of how shallow our words are when we say we support the troops or claims we are a grateful nation. Our veterans are a minority in this country. We have about 24 million veterans out of this nation of over 300 million, even less are combat veterans. If we can't take care of them, what does that say about the rest of us?
We have problems with health insurance and the struggle to pay for care. They come home and then have to fight for care from the VA, when they wouldn't need it if they didn't serve.
We have problems in our own homes with relationships, our kids, bills, the list goes on, and so do they, but they have another problem too often fought in silence against PTSD.
When they end up homeless after all they did for the sake of this country, it is a testament of how shallow our words are when we say we support the troops or claims we are a grateful nation. Our veterans are a minority in this country. We have about 24 million veterans out of this nation of over 300 million, even less are combat veterans. If we can't take care of them, what does that say about the rest of us?
The Secretary’s War on Homelessness
Shinseki vows to get America’s veterans off the streets within five years. Even the homeless aren’t sure it can be done.
BY JAMES V. CARROLL - August 1, 2010
Three strangers approach a slender man curled up on the sidewalk. They ask his name. He squints into the early-morning sunshine.
"I'm Paul," he quietly replies, rising to his feet, his finger stuck between the pages of a hardbound book he's been reading. He offers his other hand. "And you gentlemen are ..."
Paul, the men soon learn, is a veteran, a former sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. He stands out among the others living on this particular Las Vegas side street. His clothing is clean, his hair neat, his face shaven, his fingernails dirt-free and trimmed. He is soft-spoken and articulate.
He appears to be here by some kind of mistake. Paul is one of hundreds of homeless veterans living and sleeping on the streets of Las Vegas, and one of the tens of thousands of former military men and women across America seeking shelter at night under bridges or in cardboard boxes, tents, sleeping bags or abandoned cars.
Recent VA surveys estimate that more than 100,000 U.S. military veterans are homeless on any given night - a situation VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has vowed, like no other Washington official before him, to correct. "The current estimate for 2010 is that 107,000 veterans remain homeless - a decrease of 18 percent from 2009, and down from 195,000 six years ago," Shinseki said at the 50th American Legion Washington Conference in March. "It's a start, but that's not good enough. We need a full-court press to keep driving those numbers down. It is unacceptable for a single veteran to spend the night on the streets of America."
Shinseki unveiled an ambitious plan last November to eradicate homelessness among veterans within five years. Speaking to more than 1,200 service providers at a VA summit in Washington, the secretary backed up his promise with a pledge to spend $3.2 billion during fiscal 2010 in a move toward fulfillment of the goal. Of that, $2.7 billion would be earmarked for medical services and $500 million for housing programs.
read more here
The Secretarys War on Homelessness
WikiLeaks: Evidence of war crimes in papers
WikiLeaks: Evidence of war crimes in papers
By Kimberly Dozier and Raphael Satter - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 26, 2010 10:05:36 EDT
LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Monday he thinks there is evidence of war crimes in the thousands of pages of leaked U.S. military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan.
The remarks came after WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing group, posted some 91,000 classified U.S. military records over the past six years about the war online, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and covert operations against Taliban figures.
The White House, Britain and Pakistan have all condemned the release of the documents, one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history.
Assange told reporters in London that “it is up to a court to decide really if something in the end is a crime. That said ... there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material.”
read more here
WikiLeaks Evidence of war crimes in papers
Remains of missing pilot found in Vietnam
Remains of missing pilot found in Vietnam
The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 25, 2010 16:20:37 EDT
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — The family of a U.S. Army helicopter pilot missing for nearly four decades in Vietnam says his remains have been recovered and will be returned to his native Oklahoma.
Shannon Wann Plaster told The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle that the remains of her father, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Donald Wann, were found in 2008 and the military recently confirmed the identification.
The military, through, the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, has not announced a change in Wann’s status.
Wann was one of two soldiers, along with 1st Lt. Paul Magers of Sidney, Neb., deployed in a Cobra gunship on June 1, 1971, to extract a group of Army Rangers under attack, then destroy left behind ammunition and mines near Hill 1015, or Dong Tri Mountain.
read more here
Remains of missing pilot found in Vietnam
The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 25, 2010 16:20:37 EDT
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — The family of a U.S. Army helicopter pilot missing for nearly four decades in Vietnam says his remains have been recovered and will be returned to his native Oklahoma.
Shannon Wann Plaster told The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle that the remains of her father, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Donald Wann, were found in 2008 and the military recently confirmed the identification.
The military, through, the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, has not announced a change in Wann’s status.
Wann was one of two soldiers, along with 1st Lt. Paul Magers of Sidney, Neb., deployed in a Cobra gunship on June 1, 1971, to extract a group of Army Rangers under attack, then destroy left behind ammunition and mines near Hill 1015, or Dong Tri Mountain.
read more here
Remains of missing pilot found in Vietnam
Vietnam Veterans Made To Pay Again For Their Service
Yesterday I did a post on Leather-clad bikers brave heat to honor veterans and the following is the result from a comment left on the post.
I've participated in a lot of rides and I know how much work people do before the charity ride even begins. They have to get the word out to have as many showing up as possible but above that, because bikers always want to help, to do something for the sake of someone else and to make their communities better. When it is a charity ride by veterans, these rides are not just for some fun, not just for the sake of getting together but are deeply tied to their hearts.
It appears that this ride has a back story to it that needs to be known. I would like comments on this if it happened to your group in other parts of the country because the money you raised to help charities should never be taken away from you or the charities you ride for. I would also like comments about why you ride and what they mean to you. For the next couple of days, I am taking off comment monitoring so that you won't have to wait to see your comments. Please, do not use vulgar language or make accusations under anonymous comments. I'll have to take off the comment even if you have a very valid post.
You can also email me at namguardianangel@aol.com
I've participated in a lot of rides and I know how much work people do before the charity ride even begins. They have to get the word out to have as many showing up as possible but above that, because bikers always want to help, to do something for the sake of someone else and to make their communities better. When it is a charity ride by veterans, these rides are not just for some fun, not just for the sake of getting together but are deeply tied to their hearts.
It appears that this ride has a back story to it that needs to be known. I would like comments on this if it happened to your group in other parts of the country because the money you raised to help charities should never be taken away from you or the charities you ride for. I would also like comments about why you ride and what they mean to you. For the next couple of days, I am taking off comment monitoring so that you won't have to wait to see your comments. Please, do not use vulgar language or make accusations under anonymous comments. I'll have to take off the comment even if you have a very valid post.
You can also email me at namguardianangel@aol.com
PUBLISHED TODAY
VETERANS FOR CHANGE NEWLETTER
Vietnam Veterans Made To Pay Again For Their Service
How many times must the Vietnam Veterans have to pay for their service? We paid with our youth, our blood, the lives of 58,000 of our comrades, our honor & dignity when we returned home, the disrespect of an uncaring hostile public and government, the abuse of the prior generations of Veterans, a VA system slanted against us, unfounded charges of drug abuse and labels as baby killers. We are dying at a faster rate then any prior generation of veterans from exposure to Agent Orange.
We have overcome all of that only to find out we must pay again. This time we were made to pay just so we could go to the Ohio Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, (a Memorial that we paid for with our donations), to Honor our fallen comrades whose names are inscribed on that Wall and in our Hearts. The Ohio Veterans Memorial Park Board and the Clinton Cemetery Ass. conspired to keep us out of the Memorial Park and forced us to spent in excess of $5,000.00 in lawyers fees, court costs and a bogus $1,000,000.00 Ins. policy so we could exercise our Constitutional and Civil Rights to peacefully assemble to Honor Our Fallen Hero's and Comrades. These un-American, anti military, anti veteran people and groups had to have a Judge tell them they were violating our Constitutional and Civil Rights as Americans.
This BLOOD MONEY was taken from the profits from the Run that were to be made to the Gold and Blue Star Mothers to support their charities, The Wounded Warrior Project, The Fisher House and The Traumatic Brain Injury Foundation
How many more times must we Vietnam Veterans have to pay for serving our Country without being allowed to be Proud of that very Service. I guess our "bill" will never be paid as long as Military and Veteran hating people like Ohio Veterans Memorial Park Board and the Clinton Cemetery Association Board can get away with making bogus rules.
What they don't understand is we will never stop fighting for our earned respect and we will never forget.
Sp-4 Luke P. Patrino
937th Combat Engineer Group Republic of Vietnam 67-68
Who Really Paid the Price
Having had very close ties with Ohio’s Vietnam Veterans for the past four years, I have learned a great deal not only about them but also about their values. They have a motto which is truly a promise, “Never again will one generation of Veterans abandon another”. Ask any of our troops and they will tell you the Vietnam Veterans are, by far, their biggest supporters. That is the main reason the Run to the Wall Committee chose to dedicate the Second Annual Run to the Ohio Wall to our deployed and fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan and to donate any proceeds from the event to the Ohio Gold and Blue Star Mothers for distribution.
So who are the real losers in the costly, nonsensical rules imposed by Ken Noon/ Ohio Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Park Board and Sandra Dreurey/ Clinton Cemetery Association Board which erupted into a court battle by Ohio Veterans’ to exercise their constitutional rights of peaceful assembly in honor of our newest generation of heroes?
· The Fisher House minus a donation of $1,600 which would fund an apartment for a Veterans’ family as they await treatment at a Military Medical Center.
· The Wounded Warrior Project minus a donation of $1,542 which would provide six brand new laptops for Veterans confined to beds at Walter Reed Hospital.
· The Traumatic Brain Injury Foundation minus a donation of $1,570 that would provide an injured Veteran with a sponsor to assist them in their daily routine.
The Run to the Wall is all and only about supporting our Veterans. How sad our Veterans are absolutely the last thing on the minds of the Ohio Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Park and Clinton Cemetery Association Boards; they have certainly shown their self worth.
Chell Rossi, Sec/Treas. Run to the Ohio Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall, Inc.
Families also suffer from effects PTSD
Families also suffer from effects PTSD
by
Hope Hodge
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series looking at how PTSD affects families.
Coping with symptoms of post-traumatic stress is a fact of life for many who return from combat tours, and helping troops become mentally and physically healthy has become an increasingly consuming task for military and civilian physicians in Jacksonville.
But the effects of traumatic events overseas do not end with those closest to the incident.
A Jacksonville Marine wife, a “veteran” of more than 10 of her husband’s deployments, told a seminar audience that she would change her routine drastically while he was away, spending her days by the telephone, watching CNN 12 hours a day.
Another woman whose son, a Camp Lejeune Marine, completed three combat deployments and returned home with traumatic brain injuries from a humvee explosion, PTSD and self-medicating substance abuse, said anxiety over her son’s condition would make her physically ill.
“When my son was going through a lot of issues, and the phone would ring, and I would look down and see it was him, I would literally get nauseous,” she said. “I’ve had to redefine the way I interact with him.”
While data on the effects of combat stress response on military families is hard to come by, it’s something that military officials are asking about.
In May, Defense Department officials sent online surveys to 100,000 military spouses and 40,000 married active-duty service members asking them about the effects of coping with multiple deployments and other facts of military life in the interest of improving services available to spouses and families.
Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital’s director of Mental Health, Cmdr. Robert O’Byrne, said stories such as those of the wife and mother above — who asked to not be identified — are “regretfully common.”
Families also suffer from effects PTSD
by
Hope Hodge
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series looking at how PTSD affects families.
Coping with symptoms of post-traumatic stress is a fact of life for many who return from combat tours, and helping troops become mentally and physically healthy has become an increasingly consuming task for military and civilian physicians in Jacksonville.
But the effects of traumatic events overseas do not end with those closest to the incident.
A Jacksonville Marine wife, a “veteran” of more than 10 of her husband’s deployments, told a seminar audience that she would change her routine drastically while he was away, spending her days by the telephone, watching CNN 12 hours a day.
Another woman whose son, a Camp Lejeune Marine, completed three combat deployments and returned home with traumatic brain injuries from a humvee explosion, PTSD and self-medicating substance abuse, said anxiety over her son’s condition would make her physically ill.
“When my son was going through a lot of issues, and the phone would ring, and I would look down and see it was him, I would literally get nauseous,” she said. “I’ve had to redefine the way I interact with him.”
While data on the effects of combat stress response on military families is hard to come by, it’s something that military officials are asking about.
In May, Defense Department officials sent online surveys to 100,000 military spouses and 40,000 married active-duty service members asking them about the effects of coping with multiple deployments and other facts of military life in the interest of improving services available to spouses and families.
Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital’s director of Mental Health, Cmdr. Robert O’Byrne, said stories such as those of the wife and mother above — who asked to not be identified — are “regretfully common.”
Families also suffer from effects PTSD
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Leather-clad bikers brave heat to honor veterans
Leather-clad bikers brave heat to honor veterans
By Diana Rossetti
CantonRep.com staff writer
Posted Jul 24, 2010 @ 11:22 PM
Last update Jul 25, 2010 @ 12:15 AM
LAWRENCE TWP. — They came by the hundreds, bikers of all stripes, many of them veterans, for Saturday’s second annual Run to the Ohio Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Clinton.
Following a blessing of the bikes at the group’s Clay’s Park Resort gathering place, a cacophony of Harley-Davidson and Honda horsepower snaked north on state Route 93, caught state Route 21 and roared seven miles into Clinton.
Leading the pack was Vietnam veteran Luke Patrino, of Cuyahoga Falls, who organized the first ride and is president of this year’s event. Also up front was paraplegic Todd Slates driving a hand-controlled MobilityWorks Conquest trike designed to accommodate a wheelchair-bound rider.
The air, heavy with humidity and hot as Hades, was stifling. Perspiration-soaked leathers and denim absorbed and held the 90-degree heat.
First-timers tapped foot brakes as the 125-foot-long black granite wall came into sight, “Lest We Forget” boldly engraved above the names of 3,095 Ohioans who lost their lives in Vietnam.
“Vietnam vets have a saying,” Patrino said. “ ‘Never again.’ Never again will our generation of veterans turn their backs on the next generation.
read more here
Leather clad bikers brave heat to honor veterans
By Diana Rossetti
CantonRep.com staff writer
Posted Jul 24, 2010 @ 11:22 PM
Last update Jul 25, 2010 @ 12:15 AM
LAWRENCE TWP. — They came by the hundreds, bikers of all stripes, many of them veterans, for Saturday’s second annual Run to the Ohio Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Clinton.
Following a blessing of the bikes at the group’s Clay’s Park Resort gathering place, a cacophony of Harley-Davidson and Honda horsepower snaked north on state Route 93, caught state Route 21 and roared seven miles into Clinton.
Leading the pack was Vietnam veteran Luke Patrino, of Cuyahoga Falls, who organized the first ride and is president of this year’s event. Also up front was paraplegic Todd Slates driving a hand-controlled MobilityWorks Conquest trike designed to accommodate a wheelchair-bound rider.
The air, heavy with humidity and hot as Hades, was stifling. Perspiration-soaked leathers and denim absorbed and held the 90-degree heat.
First-timers tapped foot brakes as the 125-foot-long black granite wall came into sight, “Lest We Forget” boldly engraved above the names of 3,095 Ohioans who lost their lives in Vietnam.
“Vietnam vets have a saying,” Patrino said. “ ‘Never again.’ Never again will our generation of veterans turn their backs on the next generation.
read more here
Leather clad bikers brave heat to honor veterans
Going to the Bunker
Lily Casura has a rare gift. No, I'm not talking about her amazing talent as a reporter but as one with a tremendous heart. There are a lot of people these days attempting to tell a story about lives they really don't understand. Reading a few lines on the subject of PTSD gives them away. You can tell they don't understand what our veterans are like and you can also tell they are just writing a story they were told to write. It happens all the time. In Lily's case, this is what she wants to do because this is where her heart has taken her. She has an informed passion going far beyond a few minutes of a reporters time as if the subject of the interview should feel bless they spent any time at all with them. She pulls people into this world of hell and hope like few others are able to do and I am very, very proud to call her my friend.
Going to the Bunker: A Combat Veteran with PTSD on the Purpose of Protective Isolation
by Lily Casura
Every combat veteran with PTSD knows what is meant by their "bunker," or what "going to their bunker" means. It's a walled-off, isolated situation that allows them to get some space to themselves, away from other people (including family and friends), when they feel particularly triggered, and they need to stay in there for, well, as long as they're going to. They come out when they're ready, and not a moment before. Obviously this situation can be very frustrating to others in the vet's life, but for the vet it affords him or her some very necessary, protective isolation.
The rest of us who aren't combat vets with PTSD I suppose could think of it as the vet putting himself or herself in a time-out from the world, by taking themselves out of the mix, and away from people and stimulation, both bad and good. And the time-out will be over when it's over, because they decide when it's up.
The recent Fourth of July with its fireworks that remind many vets of combat was a classic bunker situation. Many, many vets were making plans before the Fourth for how to protect and insulate themselves from being triggered by the fireworks (noise, smoke, crowds). One Gulf War vet with PTSD who had already isolated himself, wrote of putting a pillow over his head and just wanting it to be over, so that he didn't have to experience it. The next day, fireworks all exploded, he was better. But during, he had to be in the bunker. Another combat vet with PTSD, from the Iraq war this time, talked about staying in her bunker for days, making brief provision runs, every fourth day or so, to the grocery store and then...back to her bunker. When she needed to be in her bunker...
The bunker concept/construct is so typical to combat vets with PTSD that I thought I'd ask one who I know fairly well how he'd describe it. He has decades of PTSD "experience" under his belt, and I've also seen him retreat to his bunker at various times. A month one time, a week another time, the last time, a day. Sometimes even a few hours. But however long the episode lasts, during that time: totally unreachable. And realistically, you better not even try...because it just makes the situation worse.
red more of this here
Going into the bunker
Busting out of the bunker
by
Lily Casura
Probably spent 20% of my life in a bunker, hiding, wanting to die, not having the nerve to shoot myself; hoping that the diseases and the meds would finally do me in.
I just didn’t know how to be happy. There was no joy in my life. There’s no reason to live. My family used to ask me, 'How can you look at what you’ve done, and tell me that you have no purpose in life? You don’t understand.' Problem was, I didn’t understand. I did not know why I didn’t have the capacity to have joy, to love anyone or to have fun. I just know I’d tried religion, I’d tried everything the VA could throw at me, in-house therapy, group therapy, self-help, medication, I tried working myself to death, I tried getting rich, I tried doing stupid things to harm myself (go back into combat situations), where maybe if I revisited it; I tried going to The Wall; and something would just not allow to want to live, or be happy, or enjoy being in my life. I couldn’t look around and see the flowers, let alone smell them. All the roses in my life were wilted; not because they were, but because of my vision of them was wilted."read more of this here
The whispering ghosts, John Connolly's new book looks at PTSD
The whispering ghosts
Profile: John Connolly
Jul 25, 2010 12:00 AM
By Michelle Magwood
Michelle Magwood talks of war, love and archetypes with an author whose books make your flesh crawl
John Connolly prefaces his latest novel with an arresting quotation regarding the nature of war: "War is a mythical happening ... where else in human experience, except in the throes of ardor ... do we find ourselves transported to a mythical condition and the gods most real?"
The quote, from psychologist James Hillman's A Terrible Love of War, cues the reader in to the central theme of The Whisperers. The setting is his familiar Maine, but the story snakes far across the world to the war in Iraq.
After a bloody battle between US soldiers and the Feyadeen in Baghdad, a museum of rare antiquities is plundered. Among the treasures that disappear is a seemingly ordinary sealed box. Seemingly, that is, but this is a John Connolly novel. And Connolly can make the flesh crawl off your hands.
The box surfaces in the woods of Maine, where the stolen artefacts are awaiting transport. There's a booming smuggling operation shuttling over the border between Maine and Canada: weapons, cash and drugs, secreted in the monster trucks that ply the route. But lately other more rare and valuable goods are being shifted too.
Enter Charlie Parker, a private detective who is asked to investigate the suicide of a young soldier recently returned from Iraq. He's the third in his platoon to kill himself, and it emerges that he has been involved in the smuggling operation. What is driving them to their deaths? Is it the ancient ghosts raked up by their spoils, or the ghosts of their fellow soldiers cut down beside them in Iraq?
"Post traumatic stress disorder is a problem for the US military," says Connolly. "They've made them more efficient soldiers, but they're making it harder for them to go back to normality." The US Veterans Administration is reporting disturbing numbers of suicides and suicide attempts by returning combatants.
"More US soldiers are killing themselves than dying in the field. More British soldiers died by their own hand after the Falklands War than were killed over there."
read more here
The whispering ghosts
Profile: John Connolly
Jul 25, 2010 12:00 AM
By Michelle Magwood
Michelle Magwood talks of war, love and archetypes with an author whose books make your flesh crawl
John Connolly prefaces his latest novel with an arresting quotation regarding the nature of war: "War is a mythical happening ... where else in human experience, except in the throes of ardor ... do we find ourselves transported to a mythical condition and the gods most real?"
The quote, from psychologist James Hillman's A Terrible Love of War, cues the reader in to the central theme of The Whisperers. The setting is his familiar Maine, but the story snakes far across the world to the war in Iraq.
After a bloody battle between US soldiers and the Feyadeen in Baghdad, a museum of rare antiquities is plundered. Among the treasures that disappear is a seemingly ordinary sealed box. Seemingly, that is, but this is a John Connolly novel. And Connolly can make the flesh crawl off your hands.
The box surfaces in the woods of Maine, where the stolen artefacts are awaiting transport. There's a booming smuggling operation shuttling over the border between Maine and Canada: weapons, cash and drugs, secreted in the monster trucks that ply the route. But lately other more rare and valuable goods are being shifted too.
Enter Charlie Parker, a private detective who is asked to investigate the suicide of a young soldier recently returned from Iraq. He's the third in his platoon to kill himself, and it emerges that he has been involved in the smuggling operation. What is driving them to their deaths? Is it the ancient ghosts raked up by their spoils, or the ghosts of their fellow soldiers cut down beside them in Iraq?
"Post traumatic stress disorder is a problem for the US military," says Connolly. "They've made them more efficient soldiers, but they're making it harder for them to go back to normality." The US Veterans Administration is reporting disturbing numbers of suicides and suicide attempts by returning combatants.
"More US soldiers are killing themselves than dying in the field. More British soldiers died by their own hand after the Falklands War than were killed over there."
read more here
The whispering ghosts
W.Va. mom fights for soldier's PTSD treatment
W.Va. mom fights for soldier's PTSD treatment
By Julie Robinson
The Charleston Gazette
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Private First Class Lindsay Bailey saw plenty of carnage and destruction when she served as a U.S. Army gunner in Iraq.
About five months into her service there, the 21-year-old Sissonville native lost three friends when their vehicle was torn apart by an improvised explosive device, or IED.
"She called me crying and totally upset," said her mother, Robin, who was home with Lindsay's father, Greg. "She knew those three young men really well. She'd babysat the children and knew their wives.
Soon after the explosion, Lindsay Bailey began suffering from severe anxiety and sleeplessness.
This week, the federal Department of Veterans Affairs announced regulations it says will simplify the path to care for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. However, those regulations only apply to veterans, not to active-duty soldiers.
By Julie Robinson
The Charleston Gazette
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Private First Class Lindsay Bailey saw plenty of carnage and destruction when she served as a U.S. Army gunner in Iraq.
About five months into her service there, the 21-year-old Sissonville native lost three friends when their vehicle was torn apart by an improvised explosive device, or IED.
"She called me crying and totally upset," said her mother, Robin, who was home with Lindsay's father, Greg. "She knew those three young men really well. She'd babysat the children and knew their wives.
Soon after the explosion, Lindsay Bailey began suffering from severe anxiety and sleeplessness.
This week, the federal Department of Veterans Affairs announced regulations it says will simplify the path to care for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. However, those regulations only apply to veterans, not to active-duty soldiers.
The base hospital at Fort Richardson is not equipped to provide long-term care and counseling for PTSD and substance-abuse sufferers, but they can be transferred to a private residential treatment facility in Colorado. Robin Bailey asked why her obviously troubled daughter was not receiving counseling, only extensive medication.
Later, she learned that her daughter's superiors planned to pursue a Chapter 14 discharge, which is issued for soldiers who have committed some form of misconduct. If they've served less than two years, as Bailey had at that point, they don't receive future Veterans Affairs and military benefits.
Confused and frightened by her daughter's condition and treatment, Robin Bailey turned to her friend, Diane Vande Burgt of Charleston, who runs Lest We Forget, a PTSD family support group, with her husband, Tom, a retired Marine and Army National Guard veteran.read more here
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)