Vietnam Veteran Sidney Randall Skeeter Laid to Rest With Honor

Vietnam veteran with no immediate family honored by fellow servicemen 
WJLA ABC 7 News 
by Elizabeth Tyree and Chris Hoffman 
Friday, March 17th 2017

Skeeter was born in 1949 in Nelson County and served in the Vietnam War where he received several awards including a Purple Heart.

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) -- A Vietnam veteran was honored one last time in Lynchburg on Friday. When Tharp Funeral Home learned he had no immediate family, they worked with extended family and fellow veterans to help pay tribute to him. Sidney Randall Skeeter died Saturday.

"That means he was a real honorable patriot, and he deserves all the honor that we can give him," said Gary Witt, a local veteran. "We need to respect him and we need to give him the honor that he deserves, I feel proud that we are able to be here just to show respect to him [Friday]." read more here

OMG! Maj. General Pittard Credited for Suicide Prevention!

I do believe I have gone crazy or I am sleep reading. This cannot be true! A fabulous article on a General actually trying to do something about suicidal soldiers. All hopes dashed when I discovered the article was about Maj. General Dana Pittard! 

The General Who Went to War On Suicide
A commander with a history of depression created a unique way to keep his soldiers from killing themselves. The Army had other ideas.
POLITICO
By BEN HATTEM
March 17, 2017

On the evening of July 19, 2010, Major General Dana Pittard, the new commander of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, got a call from the base’s 24-hour duty officer. A SWAT team had been sent to the house of a young sergeant named Robert Nichols. Nichols was inside with a gun, threatening to kill himself.

Pittard arrived at the soldier’s home just in time to see the soldier step out of the house, put the gun to his chest and fire. Neighbors and police crowded the street, but Pittard was the only officer from the Army base at the scene. He went home, where his boxes were still packed from his move 10 days before, feeling disturbed and helpless.

Nichols was the first of Pittard’s soldiers who died under his command at Fort Bliss. Others followed. A soldier from Fort Bliss’ 11th Air Defense Artillery brigade, which had recently returned from a tour in the Middle East, committed suicide. Another from the same brigade soon overdosed on prescription drugs.

The rash of deaths caught Pittard off guard. He knew that suicide was a growing concern for the military, which had spent millions of dollars to tackle the crisis and had issued dozens of reports—including a 350-page study that called suicides and deaths linked to high-risk behavior an “Army-wide problem.” But going in Pittard hadn’t planned to focus on the issue. That changed quickly. With suicides mounting at his base—a sprawling complex of 30,000 personnel, larger than Rhode Island—he realized he wanted to make stopping what he saw as preventable deaths a top priority.

Yep that guy!
Two years after that "first" suicide he was caught writing this while working out in the gym.

A General's Blog Post Undermines Army Suicide-Prevention Efforts

The Atlantic 

YOCHI J. DREAZEN

MAY 22, 2012

Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard commands Fort Bliss, one the nation's largest Army bases, so his blunt comments about suicide has raised eyebrows throughout the military.

"I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act," he wrote on his official blog recently. "I am personally fed up with soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess. Be an adult, act like an adult, and deal with your real-life problems like the rest of us."

The posting was subsequently scrubbed from the Fort Bliss website, but the comments are adding new fuel to a contentious debate about whether the record numbers of troops who are taking their own lives are acting out of weakness and selfishness or because of legitimate cases of depression and other psychological traumas.

"Soldiers who are thinking about suicide can't do what the general says: They can't suck it up, they can't let it go, they can't just move on," said Barbara Van Dahlen, the founder of Give an Hour, an organization that matches troops with civilian mental-health providers. "They're not acting out of selfishness; they're acting because they believe they've become a burden to their loved ones and can only relieve that burden by taking their own lives."

read more here

I guess Politico didn't bother doing much of a Google search on him because this was on the second page of the search. 

Then again they could have searched Combat PTSD Wounded Times for even more reports like these.

New Records Show Injured Soldiers Describe Mistreatment Nationwide From Commanders at Army Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) North Carolina’s Fort Bragg records the most complaints, Texas not far behindNBCBy Scott FriedmanApr 7, 2015
New Army records uncovered by NBC 5 Investigates show injured soldiers have filed more than 1,100 complaints about mistreatment, abuse and lack of care from their commanders at more than two dozen Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) nationwide, many of those in Texas.
Those are just complaints made over five years to the U.S. Army ombudsman program, one of many places soldiers can complain.
Last fall, NBC 5 Investigates and The Dallas Morning News first revealed hundreds of complaints from ill and injured active duty soldiers in Texas.
Those Texas soldiers said WTU commanders harassed, belittled them and ordered them to do things that made their conditions worse at three Army posts in Texas: Fort Hood, Fort Bliss and Fort Sam Houston.

Major General Dana Pittard leaving after 3 officers committed suicide

Darren Hunt of KCIA News reported on Monday, All three suicides at Fort Bliss this year were officers

"The Pentagon says nearly 350 U.S. Military service members committed suicide last year.

Among those were five Army soldiers at Fort Bliss.

This year, three more suicides, all with something in common -- they were non-commissioned officers.

Sunday night on ABC-7 Xtra, Fort Bliss' outgoing commanding general confirmed the latest suicide happened just last week.

Anthony Fusco last Monday at his Northeast El Paso home -- a day after buying a gun at the PX -- has Pittard talking about refocusing the program.

But if the reporter cannot pay attention all along, the least effort that can be made is to actually get informed about what has been going on. After the fantastic reporting done by the Dallas Morning News series "Injured Soldiers Broken Promises" of the real facts of what our soldiers were going through after asking for help, it should have been important enough to pay attention to.

VA could feel chill of Trump’s hiring freeze

This is from San Antonio Express News VA could feel chill of Trump’s hiring freeze, by Martin Kuz. It really points out some facts that most people to not know. Notice the date of of the backlogs?

Hundreds of thousands of veterans had endured a similar ordeal since the mid-1990s as they waited years to obtain disability and pension benefits from the VA. The delays led to former President Barack Obama directing the agency to streamline the benefits process and hire 2,500 new personnel to assess compensation claims. The changes reduced the case backlog from 611,000 in 2013 to under 100,000 two years later.

But that progress now appears in jeopardy. President Donald Trump has imposed a federal hiring freeze that prevents the VA’s benefits agency from filling open positions, creating concern among veterans and advocates in South Texas that the backlog could swell again.

“A few years ago, getting your benefits was like a lottery system,” said Villanueva, who lives in San Antonio and supports his wife and three children with his $3,000 monthly disability payment. “You had no idea when you would hear back from the VA.”

It is true and something that keeps getting missed in most of the recent reporting. Veterans have been dealing with all of this for decades. Congress, with jurisdiction over the VA since 1946, has never once apologized to veterans for not doing their jobs.

The VA’s acting secretary at the time, Robert Snyder, moved quickly to exempt jobs that the agency “deems necessary for public safety.” The action shields 36,000 out of 48,000 open positions in the VA’s national workforce of 360,000, including physicians, nurses, behavioral health providers and other front-line medical staff.

The Veterans Benefits Administration had almost 500 job vacancies in its 56 regional offices as of March 1. None qualify for exempt status, and while VA Secretary David Shulkin has talked of protecting more positions, advocates fear the agency will remain shorthanded.

Easy on this part. The VA already had a backlog before troops sent to Afghanistan and the into Iraq created even more disabled veterans. Congress didn't seem to think mobilizing the VA to prepare them should be on the to-do-list.

Felix Rodriguez, the assistant veterans service officer for Hidalgo County in Weslaco, considers that drop the strongest argument to exempt the agency’s administrative positions.

“We’re talking about quality of life for veterans,” he said. “For some of them, their VA benefits are their only source of income. They can’t afford to wait. Without that money, they start slipping down.”

And yes, that part also keeps getting missed.
Click the link and discover more of what veterans are dealing with.

President Trump Had Meeting with Veterans Groups

It looks like Politico doesn't read Military Times.....

Trump's 'major meeting' on veterans affairs doesn't happen

Trump meets with veteran leaders, promises VA reforms
Military Times
By: Leo Shane III
March 17, 2017

Along with Got Your 6, the meeting included Student Veterans of America, the Military Order of the Purple Heart and the “big six” veterans groups — American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, PVA, Vietnam Veterans of America and AMVETS.

(Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/AP)

WASHINGTON — President Trump held his first face-to-face meeting with representatives from prominent veterans groups on Friday, a step that community advocates called a productive and critical step in advancing the White House’s promises to veterans.

The hour-long meeting with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and senior White House staff covered issues including medical care access for veterans, accountability for VA employees, veterans caregiver programs and the president’s campaign pledges to make veterans services more efficient.

It included top officials from 10 veterans groups and was billed as a listening session for the president, with no policy or legislative proposals presented to the community leaders.

But individuals at the event said Trump was involved in the conversation throughout the meeting, questioning the groups on their priorities and ways the White House can help.
read more here

Walk to Honor Veteran-Firefighter After PTSD Suicide

Exactly when do these efforts to raise awareness of suicides make them aware of reasons to live instead?

Walk to honour a fellow fireman
Shepparton News Australia
by TAYLAH BURROWS
MARCH 18, 2017

A team of Shepparton firefighters will complete a 20km walk next month to honour a colleague who took his own life.

Just 18 months after finishing a 400km walk to raise awareness for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, Ballarat firefighter Nathan Shanahan committed suicide.

He was as an ex-soldier and a former Mildura firefighter.

Mr Shanahan’s walk from Mildura to Adelaide in April 2015 was also a way for him to tackle his own demons.

However, in December last year he succumbed to his mental health problems.

To honour him, Mr Shanahan’s colleagues in Ballarat and Mildura organised the Walk Off The War Within challenge, a 20km walk to share the burden and walk as one.

About five Shepparton firefighters will take part in the challenge on Saturday, April 22, along with teams from CFA stations and other service groups from across the state.
read more here