Guitars helping veterans move past trauma

The phrase was coined by William Congreve, in The Mourning Bride, 1697

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast

To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd,

And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd,

By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.

What then am I? Am I more senseless grown

Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!

'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.

Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night

The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King;

He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd

Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.

Why am not I at Peace?

Guitars helping veterans move past trauma
South Charlotte News
Apr. 26, 2013
By Eileen Schwartz

Jim Spagnolo, left, receives a guitar from volunteer instructor Dan Pfeiffer after completing the G4V program.

What do guitars and veterans have in common? More than you can imagine.

Ask Gary Walbrun and he’ll tell you about Guitars for Vets.

The national organization started in Milwaukee, Wis., in 2008. There now are 25 chapters nationwide that offer loaner guitars, free lessons and the gift of a guitar for veterans who complete a 10-week series of one-on-one lessons – all to help veterans suffering the effects of trauma.

Walbrun and his wife relocated to Fort Mill three years ago from Minneapolis.

Walbrun, 61, retired as a human resource executive, and he’s also a lifelong musician who plays in a group called RyvrWud. After reading about Guitars for Vets in a guitar magazine, Walbrun volunteered to be a guitar instructor to veterans.

Want to donate? Have a guitar to donate or looking for a way to thank a veteran? Contact Guitars for Vets: visit www.guitarsforvets.org or contact Gary Walbrun at G4VCarolina@comporium.net or “Guitars For Vets Carolinas” on Facebook.
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A Mortuary Affair in Iraq

A Mortuary Affair in Iraq
New York Times
By TERESA FAZIO
April 25, 2013

I never meant to be a wartime hussy. Unlike Paula Broadwell, I was not buff and beautiful; I was a shy Catholic girl from White Plains, N.Y., with a calligraphed physics diploma. As a 23-year-old Marine lieutenant just a year and a half out of R.O.T.C., my plan for a seven-month Iraq deployment included laying fiber-optic cable underground, not taking up with a comrade 12 years my senior.

I befriended him in the cavernous chow hall as he forked limp cabbage onto a plastic plate. He worked in our battalion’s mortuary affairs unit, and scraping human remains from helicopters had killed his taste for meat. When I asked if he had a family, he said, “what’s left of it.” His estranged wife cared for their 7-year-old son, who was my youngest brother’s age. Soon we e-mailed bawdy jokes over the network my wire platoon helped set up on our base in Anbar Province.

I didn’t look feminine; my hacked-off hair and wire-rim glasses let me roll from my sleeping bag into uniform. My Kevlar jacket barreled a camouflage carapace onto my 5-foot-1 frame. Even slung tight, my M-16 hung past my knees. The combined effect was less “Hurt Locker” than “Harry Potter Goes to War.”
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Ex-Marine says cops beat him

Ex-Marine says cops beat him in Jamaica's 103rd Precinct: suit
Dwight Edwards, 35, walked into the 103rd Precinct unscathed and came out beaten, according to a lawsuit corroborated by his girlfriend, Alicia Branford.
BY JOHN MARZULLI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
April 26, 2013

The Queens district attorney’s office is investigating a former Marine’s claim that he was punched and kicked in the face by cops as they ejected him from the 103rd Precinct stationhouse, where he had gone to retrieve a friend’s personal property.

Dwight Edwards, 35 — who served in combat in Afghanistan, where he was severely injured by an improvised explosive device — suffered a fractured eye socket in the alleged attack. “He walked into the precinct unscathed and came out beaten,” lawyer Joel Berger said Thursday after filing a lawsuit in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Edwards was not arrested or even given a summons.

Already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of a brain injury he suffered in the bombing, Edwards has been severely depressed since the Jan. 2 incident at the police station and checked himself into a hospital for treatment this week, according to his girlfriend, Alicia Branford.
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Fort Bragg Army wife stands by her man when Army didn't

UPDATE April 27, 2013

Support pours in for this family!

Crystal Reilly knows the price families pay when their husband's get deployed because she had to do it six times. Her husband was supposed to come back from Afghanistan so that he could get help in a hospital. The hospital became her home instead and she was the one on suicide watch.

If you believe the headlines from the military about "resilience" training, understand something right here, right now. Since 2009 they all have had this special "training" that was not tested so when a wife like Crystal uses the term "guinea pig" know that this is the biggest part of the problem. When suicides go up after billions are spent every year to "prevent them" it shows there is something really, really wrong with this.

Army wife battles military over husband's post-traumatic stress disorder
ABC News
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Nicole Carr

FAYETTEVILLE (WTVD) -- The spouse of a Fort Bragg soldier is taking her battle with the Army public after she says they abandoned them in their time in need.

Crystal Reilly, a mother of two, says she took her concerns about her husband's post traumatic stress disorder to the Army, and was virtually ignored.

So Thursday, she did something that couldn't be ignored. Almost anything you could imagine was for sale at Reilly's home in the 1600 block of Lakeway Drive in Fayetteville.

If you a double take, you realize the house and its owner are crying out.

A sign on the home reads, "The Reilly family is done with the guinea pig Army system. Get us real help."

Reilly has been married to the Army for 15 years, but it became apparent in 2009 that her husband, Sgt. Charles Reilly, was starting to change.
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US military faulted for burn-pit use

US military faulted for burn-pit use
By Ernesto Londoño
The Washington Post
Published: April 25, 2013

The U.S. military spent $5 million on incinerators at a base in Afghanistan that never became operable, forcing troops to use a type of open-air burn pit that has been linked to serious respiratory problems among veterans, according to a government report.

The Pentagon banned burn pits at large war-zone bases after facing a flurry of lawsuits and health claims by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were exposed to toxic fumes during deployments. The pits are used to burn everything from cafeteria waste to feces.

The case of the inoperable incinerators at Forward Operating Base Salerno in eastern Afghanistan, detailed in a new inspector general report, sheds light on the continued challenges of waste disposal in combat zones and the stark choices that commanders in Afghanistan are having to make as the U.S. military footprint continues to contract.
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