I am on vacation/staycation and this was not a great way to wake up this morning. My email opened with a link to a report on the "22 Pushup" stunt and I debated on opening it or not. Now I wish I just trashed it. This is from Canada. Pretty much shows that it is easier to just do what is popular than do what works.
Hillbilly Burlesque will feature this "22 Push Up National Challenge."
"PUSHUP CHALLENGE: Country singer-songwriter Jessie Tylre Williams will be entertaining July 22 at Memorial Park during the 22 Push-up National Challenge. Williams, known for the album This Road, says she’s just as happy working with Manitoba Pilates, Advantage Conditioning and other fitness centres to start conversations going about post-traumatic stress disorder, and to eliminate the stigma attached to it."
But those are not the numbers of veterans killing themselves in Canada. Those are the "reported" numbers of veterans committing suicide in the US 2012 VA Suicide Report.
The other thing that no one is talking about are the ages of the veterans committing suicide. I actually read news reports with "22 a day" and post-9-11 veterans. Well here are the facts on that.
You would have known that if reporters managed to add in facts when they do articles on something as serious as veterans surviving combat but not able to survive long after the danger to their lives was supposed to have ended.
This stuff does not work and the folks behind it make no attempt to even claim to be doing anything about changing the outcome on US veterans committing suicide. They are all about talking about the "problem" they felt no need to become educated on. Ya! In other words, like the Lifelock commercial, they are not going anything about the problem, they are monitoring it. They are not even really doing that when it seems they must have forgotten there is an actual report about the number they raise money to make people aware of. To read it being spread out in Canada, as well as other nations, proves that too few are actually taking any of this seriously enough and reducing lives down to number that are not real. Canada has a lot less veterans to worry about, so maybe their numbers are just not as headline grabbing as the US.
The 31 fallen are part of a larger troubling statistic. A continuing Globe and Mail investigation has uncovered that at least 70 soldiers and veterans died by suicide after returning from the Afghanistan operation – nearly one-third higher than the 54 revealed by the newspaper one year ago.
Apparently Canada isn't sure about how many veterans they are losing to suicide. This is all very depressing since Canada has taken the lead on treating their police officers and firefighters for PTSD, far beyond what the US has done.
Reminder, those are percentages, and not numbers from the VA on that chart. Notice how much they have changed? That is because they really haven't other than the rate of female veterans is higher now than it was in 2001. Why do the challenge to raise awareness when no nation has actually lived up to the fact they were challenged when the first reports came out?
Veteran says House in the Woods saved him, hopes it can now help others WLBZ Zach Blanchard July 08, 2017
Lawrence said he was overcome by PTSD after he served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now credits House in the Woods with saving him and wants to do the same for others.
LEE, Maine (NEWS CENTER) – The House in the Woods, a project aimed at providing military veterans a place of refuge, held its grand opening Saturday.
The project has been the work of the House and Emery families after they both lost their sons in the line of duty.
Sgt. Joel House died in June 2007, and Sgt. Blair Emery died just months later in November. Both served in Iraq.
10 years after their deaths, the families were able to open their facility in Lee thanks to a massive outpouring of local support from individuals and companies.
The lodge-style facility has a large gathering space, commercial kitchen, as well as lodging for guests and staff.
Paul and Dee House founded House in the Woods in the hopes of creating a program that would provide military men and women and their families with a place to escape and experience the outdoors.
“I was lost,” Lawrence McManus said. “It eats away at you.” read more here
Owner of teddy bear with recording of Afghanistan soldier found in California BY FOX59 WEB JULY 9, 2017
"Paige Holguin saw the posting from her office in Los Angeles. She recognized the bear as the one her late brother gave her niece more than eight years ago. He was a veteran who battled PTSD and lost the bear when he was evicted from an apartment. The bear has even more meaning to Holguin because her brother later lost his battle with his illness and took his own life."
Vietnam veteran recalls coming back from 'dead' THE WASHINGTON POST Saturday, July 8, 2017
“You have to be willing to take it a day at a time. You have to set in your mind that you're going to survive. You have to believe that they are not going to defeat you, that you're going to win.” Ronald Ridgeway
HALLETTSVILLE, Texas — Ronald Ridgeway was “killed” in Vietnam on Feb. 25, 1968.
The 18-year-old Marine Corps private first class fell with a bullet to the shoulder during a savage firefight with the enemy outside Khe Sanh.
Dozens of Marines, from what came to be called “the ghost patrol,” perished there.
At first, Ridgeway was listed as missing in action. Back home in Texas, his old school, Sam Houston High, made an announcement over the intercom.
But his mother, Mildred, had a letter from his commanding officer saying there was little hope. And that August, she received a “deeply regret” telegram from the Marines saying he was dead.
On Sept. 10, he was buried in a national cemetery in St. Louis. A tombstone bearing his name and the names of eight others missing from the battle was erected over the grave. His mother went home with a folded American flag.
But as his comrades and family mourned, Ridgeway sat in harsh North Vietnamese prisons for five years, often in solitary confinement, mentally at war with his captors and fighting for a life that was technically over.
Last month, almost 50 years after his supposed demise, Ridgeway, 68, a retired supervisor with Veterans Affairs, sat in his home here and recounted for the first time in detail one of the most remarkable stories of the Vietnam War.
In the end, of the 26 missing and presumed killed in action on Feb. 25, remains of all but nine were positively identified, according to Pipes and Stubbe. The unassociated body parts were sent home and placed in two caskets that would be buried beneath a large tombstone bearing the nine names of those unaccounted for, Stubbe said.read more here
Women Don't Fake It As Much Combat PTSD Wounded Times Kathie Costos July 9, 2017 Maybe it is because it is so hard for them to do it, women hardly ever fake it. After all, they paid such a higher price for service than males do. Is it that these events are not being reported? Is no one trying to track them down? Or, is it more about the fact that women performing next to men is never worthy of the press covering?
Oh, wait. Did you think this was about faking a great sexual experience? Well, shame on you for being mislead like that. This is about Stolen Valor and females faking their military service. Since it has been happening, but under the radar, I thought it was a good time to bring it up. There are a lot of reports on males faking it. In May there was John Hemphill "He claimed to have served our country for 22 years until a FOX6 investigation exposed him as a liar." There are a lot of things folks just assume. If a male veteran says they have PTSD, it is assumed they have it because of combat. If a female veteran says they have PTSD, well it is assumed it is because of some kind of sexual trauma. Why is that? Is it because people forget that women are in the field just like their "brothers" are? Well, their "brothers" get assaulted too but females are just talked about more. It seems as if everything involving women in the military is less talked about than males in the military. This morning I was thinking about a Stolen Valor article I read and then I tried to remember reading about many women being accused of faking service. So, not being able to just let it go and enjoy my vacation from work, I did a search.
We were sent an article from the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Press paper from November 10th 2013. In this article they interviewed what they believed to be an Iraqi War Veteran, and Wounded Warrior, Christina “Chrissy” Axtman.
As I began to read the story, red flags started flying. The person that emailed me said that Christina was telling everyone her story, and how she had earned the Bronze Star for Valor while deployed with the 173rd Airborne to Iraq in 2007. Notice the paper calls it a Division not a Brigade, although they operate as a Division they are not. I am not sure if this was her statement or just a mistake by the editor.
Not only that, but according to the 173rd’s Deployment history, in 2006 the Brigade was notified for a second tour of duty in Iraq from 2007 to 2008, but its deployment plan was changed to Afghanistan in February 2007 when the Pentagon announced that it would relieve the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division along with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. In the spring of 2007, the 173rd again deployed to Afghanistan, as Task Force Bayonet, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF 07–09). So the 173rd was not even in Iraq for the time frame she claims she was with them.
We've seen videos of Stolen Valor before — people impersonating someone who they are not while in a military uniform. Parrish Alleman of CBS-affiliate WIAT 42 in Birmingham, Alabama, launched a five-month investigation after receiving tips that a military member she had interviewed was a fake. It turns out after a lot of investigative reporting that Julee Johns had only served 16 days — not the 16 years she initially claimed.
2015 Female Busted In Tuscaloosa Alabama Posing As A Soldier Home From Deployment
Pretty much you must have guessed there are very few women pretending to be something they are not. After all, women can't claim to be Navy SEALs or Green Berets easily. While women have been recipients of every military award, including the Medal of Honor, they are not usually thought of as heroic. Medal of Honor? Yep, knew I'd get you on that one. There was a Doctor during the Civil War and she was also a POW. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker not only received the Medal of Honor, she refused to give it back with Congress tried to take it from her. So when do we stop taking honor from other women and stop assuming stuff that just isn't true or connecting stuff to their sexuality instead of their courage?
