Fort Bragg Soldiers Flipping For Homeless Veterans

3 soldiers team up to provide homes for homeless vets
Fayetteville Observer
By Amanda Dolasinski Staff writer
August 7, 2016

Three specialists with an innate devotion for giving back hope to provide a special Thanksgiving for a homeless veteran - by putting their comrade in a home.

Specialists Tony Brown, Devonta Birden and Carla White - three friends who serve at units at Fort Bragg - created Southern Comfort Care Inc., a company that plans to buy property to build or renovate homes to flip for homeless veterans in Cumberland County. The company needs to raise at least $25,000 to purchase the first home by October so the family can be in for Thanksgiving.

"It's about giving back and making somebody else's life better," said Brown, president and founder of Southern Comfort Care Inc. "I'm trying to look out for people who paved the way for me."
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Veterans Fighting Wars and 114 Sessions of Congress

Veterans were supposed to receive more than "gratefulness" from this nation even before it was a nation.

From the beginning, the English colonies in North America provided pensions for disabled veterans. The first law in the colonies on pensions, enacted in 1636 by Plymouth, provided money to those disabled in the colony’s defense against Indians.

Other colonies followed Plymouth’s example.

Members of Congress have been in charge of how veterans are treated in this country since beginning of it. So why do they forget that as they are responsible for everything they complain about?

History of the VA

Revolutionary War

In 1776 the Continental Congress sought to encourage enlistments and curtail desertions with the nation’s first pension law. It granted half pay for life in cases of loss of limb or other serious disability.

At most, only 3,000 Revolutionary War veterans ever drew any pension. Later, grants of public land were made to those who served to the end of the war.

1812 National effort to provide medical care for disabled veterans. 

Civil War
1862 Congress established National Cemetery System to provide burial for the many Union dead of the Civil War.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the nation had about 80,000 war veterans. By the end of the war in 1865, another 1.9 million veterans had been added to the rolls. This included only veterans of Union forces. Confederate soldiers received no federal veterans benefits until 1958, when Congress pardoned Confederate servicemembers and extended benefits to the single remaining survivor.

Immediately after the Civil War, the number of disabled veterans in need was so great that Congress in 1865 authorized the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. The name was changed to the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1873.

First Veterans Group

After the Civil War, veterans organized to seek increased benefits. The Grand Army of the Republic, consisting of Union veterans of the Civil War, was the largest veterans organization emerging from the war.

As part of the effort between 1865 and 1870 to rebury battlefield casualties, 70 national cemeteries were opened and 300,000 remains gathered and reburied. Of the total buried, 142,000 were unknown. In 1873 Congress authorized national cemetery burial for all honorably discharged Union veterans.

Aid and Attendance

The Consolidation Act in 1873 revised pension legislation, paying on the degree of disability rather than the service rank. The Act also began the aid and attendance program, in which a disabled veteran is paid to hire a nurse or housekeeper.

Until 1890, Civil War pensions were granted only to servicemen discharged because of illness or disability attributable to military service. The Dependent Pension Act of 1890 substantially broadened the scope of eligibility, providing pensions to veterans incapable of manual labor. Within the next three years the number of veterans on the pension roll increased from 489,000 to 996,000 and expenditures doubled. Legislation passed in the 19th century had established a general pension system that could be applied to future pension recipients. As a consequence, new pension laws did not follow the Spanish-American War in 1898 or the Philippine Insurrection, 1899 to 1901.

The first important pension law in the 20th century was the Sherwood Act of 1912, which awarded pensions to all veterans. A similar law in the 19th century had limited recipients to Revolutionary War veterans. Under the Sherwood Act, veterans of the Mexican War and Union veterans of the Civil War could receive pensions automatically at age 62, regardless of whether they were sick or disabled.

As a result, the record shows that of the 429,354 Civil War veterans on pension rolls in 1914, only 52,572 qualified on grounds of disability.

Veterans Protest 1932

As the Depression worsened, veterans began calling for immediate payment of their “bonuses,” as the certificates came to be called. In March 1932, a small group of veterans from Oregon began marching to Washington, D.C., to demand payment. Word of the march spread like wildfire and soon small bands of unemployed veterans from across the country began descending on the nation’s capital.

There is no way of knowing how many veterans joined the “Bonus Expeditionary Forces,” as the marchers were called. By the summer, some estimates put the force at between 15,000 and 40,000. They camped wherever they could. Some slept in abandoned buildings or erected tents. But many lived in makeshift shacks along the mudflats of the Anacostia River. With no sanitation facilities, living conditions quickly deteriorated in the “shanty town.”

Veterans Administration Created 1930

President Hoover, in his 1929 State of the Union message, proposed consolidating agencies administering veterans benefits. The following year Congress created the Veterans Administration by uniting three bureaus — the previously independent Veterans’ Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions and the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. President Hoover signed the executive order establishing the VA on July 21, 1930.

GI Bill of Rights Servicemen's Readjustment Act 1944


Veterans Preference Act 1944

VA Hospitals and Waiting in Line

On Feb. 1, 1946, Bradley reported that the VA was operating 97 hospitals with a total bed capacity of 82,241 patients. Hospital construction then in progress projected another 13,594 beds. Money was available for another 12,706 beds with the construction of 25 more hospitals and additions to 11 others. But because of the demobilization, the total number of veterans would jump to more than 15 million within a few months. The existing VA hospitals were soon filled to capacity, and there were waiting lists for admission at practically all hospitals. In addition, there were 26,057 nonservice-connected cases on the hospital waiting list. Until more VA hospitals could be opened, the Navy and Army both made beds available.

To handle the dramatic increase in veterans claims, VA Central Office staff was increased in two years from 16,966 to 22,008. In the same period, field staff, charged with providing medical care, education benefits, disability payments, home loans and other benefits, rose from 54,689 employees to 96,047.

Every session of Congress, from the 1st to this 114th, have managed to forget that no matter which party controlled what got done and what went wrong, to blame everyone but themselves.  They are still doing it.

Vietnam Veteran Still Trying To Get "Brothers" Home

Veteran anxiously awaits mission to bring soldiers' bodies home from Vietnam
The Times-Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)
By Bill O'Boyle
Published: August 5, 2016

Pfc. Anthony John (Tony) Pepper, left, and Cpl. James Mitchell Trimble.

VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL FUND

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (Tribune News Service) — Ed Zimmerman’s long journey may soon be over.

Zimmerman, 67, of Bear Creek, will head to South Vietnam on Aug. 10 to assist the U.S. government’s recovery effort to search and, hopefully, recover the remains of Pfc. Anthony John (Tony) Pepper, 20, of Richmond, Virginia, and Cpl. James Mitchell Trimble, 19, of Eureka, California.

“This has been quite an undertaking for me,” Zimmerman said Thursday. “I’ve gone over it mentally so many times. But I’m very confident we will find the location and bring them back.”

Zimmerman said all the preparations for the trip have been made and he can’t wait to get to Vietnam to direct the recovery team to the exact spot where he last saw Trimble and Pepper.

“I’ve been going over things in my mind and I have clarity,” he said. “A lot of the cobwebs have gone away. I know I can find the spot where they were.”

In a Times Leader story in June, Zimmerman said he has not been able to rest, often having nightmares, since learning the bodies of two dead Marines he saw in a ravine in South Vietnam were never recovered — never returned to their families for burial.
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Jerusalem Post Report: Healing PTSD Lives With Film

Healing Lives With Film on Jerusalem Post covers the use of film to help heal PTSD. In the article they also talk about veterans. Very interesting read since the notion that PTSD, suicide and grieving does not exist in Israel because of strong sense of community. Guess he didn't spend much time in the veterans community where they suffer and heal together.

Junger Thinks Society to Blame When Troops Come Home?

"In his book, Mr. Junger marshals history, psychology, anthropology and statistics to make his case. He suggests that in countries with a strong sense of community, such as Israel, incidence of PTSD is low even though that nation exists in a state of near-constant conflict."

Healing Lives With Film
Jerusalem Post
Judith Siegel-Itzkovich
August 6, 2016

Using video to treat trauma is a “very Israeli project,” said Miri Boker, head of the videotherapy center and an occupational therapist who spoke at the beginning of the five-hour conference. “We did this to embrace our soldiers and bereaved families.” The conference began with a 24-minute film made by Hagai, an IDF medic who participated in Operation Protective Shield in Gaza, and his friend Ariel. Unlike films made by bereaved fathers, they actually wanted their work to be shown, and the movie – Ma Rodef Samal Rishon? (What Pursues a Staff Sergeant?) was presented a few months ago at Docaviv.

They served together in the war, in the Sufa Battalion.

When the battle ended, Ariel bought an old Peugeot, while Hagai purchased a video camera.

One of them is shown living out of his car, even sleeping in it. He moves around the country, returning to scenes near Gaza, cooking vegetables, chicken and ground beef on a camping stove and watching passing sheep. He recalls that “horrible things happened in the war.” He is clearly unable to settle down after the trauma of his buddies’ deaths. In one of the film’s sequences, a soldier is sitting on an armored car. The narrator explains that an IDF physician told the soldiers to wear their bullet-proof vests, but that some ignored his advice. A mortar suddenly lands, killing one of the soldiers. The storyteller was saved because he by chance bent down to reach something. He was saved, but a friend was killed.

“His eyes and mouth were open. I knew he was dead. I felt his last two heartbeats before he died. I tore myself away and put on a vest.”

War, he said, “messes you up. Many guys I know suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. You can’t survive such an experience without getting shell shock.” They dedicate the movie to the memories of Daniel Marash, Liran Adir and Noam Rosenthal, who were killed in action.

“From World War I, shell shock was recognized. At first,” said Ariel, “it was thought it resulted from some chemical in the gunpowder. In later wars, especially Vietnam, it was realized that the problem was psychological trauma.”
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Death of Air Force Lt. Col. Under Investigation

Washington airman dies from non-combat injury in Asia
KING 5 News and Associated Press
August 06, 2016

LANSING, Mich. - A U.S. airman assigned to Washington's Camp Murray has died in southwest Asia from an injury not related to combat.

Lt. Col. Flando Jackson (Credit: Washington Military Department)

The Defense Department says Saturday that Lt. Col. Flando Jackson's death on Thursday is under investigation.

Officials say the 45-year-old Jackson was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military campaign against Islamic State forces and terrorists at war against the governments of Iraq and Syria.
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