WWII Veteran Honor Restored and Medals Back

“I was absolutely overwhelmed:” WWII veteran gets his wings back

FOX 17 News

Rebecca Russell

January 6, 2017

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.-- A World War II veteran who was stripped of his medals nearly 75 years ago was repinned on Saturday.

Virgil Westdale was part of the most decorated battalion in military history: the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, after he was stripped of his Army Air Corps badge during the war because he was a Japanese-American. Westdale had his pilot's license taken away and was demoted to a Private in the Army. 75 years later, Westdale got his wings back, along with a celebration of his 100th birthday.

It was a moment decades in the making that many say never needed to happen.

"It was the restoration of his Army Air Corps Badge," said Lt. Col. Steve Kenyon. "That is 75 years after it was wrongfully taken away from him, so it's a pretty big deal."

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Vietnam Veteran learned to love again...from dog

Dog teaches Vietnam veteran to love again

Herald Tribune
Billy Cox
January 6, 2018

BRADENTON — On the bright afternoon of Feb. 4, 1970, a land mine tore apart a South Vietnamese soldier who stood maybe 10 feet away from Pfc. Bob Calderon, as the two were returning to a rural village from a joint patrol. 

Vietnam veteran Bob Calderon with his guide dog, Max, in his East Manatee neighborhood. (Herald Tribune staff photo Dan Wagner)

The spray of shrapnel knocked the 19-year-old Marine off his feet and forced surgeons to amputate his mangled legs above the knee. For the next several months, he was totally blind.

Calderon would regain vision in his right eye, then reassemble what was left into a portrait of resilience. He would graduate from a wheelchair into prosthetic limbs. He went to school on the G.I. bill, learned a trade and entered the workforce as a mechanical draftsman. He learned to play through the pain of embedded metal fragments so numerous he can’t take an MRI scan. He became a competitive wheelchair bowler, played wheelchair hoops, and traveled as far away as New Zealand to become the USA World 9-Ball Champion in a billiards tournament.

The Michigan native also had a way with the ladies. He married once, twice, three times. He attributes much of the failure of the first two to post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis he didn’t get until some 15 years ago. But he fathered two kids. For a man who can make the literal claim that “half of me is still in Vietnam,” no shelf seemed too high.

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VA Lawsuit: Tacoma VA

A Tacoma veteran died waiting for heart surgery from the VA. His family has sued

The News Tribune

Alexis Krell

January 7, 2017

He was diagnosed with aortic stenosis, a hereditary narrowing of his aortic valve. The VA put him on a surgical wait list to get a new one, and then sent him home. He learned June 24 that his surgery would be July 5. On July 1, he died at home.

A Tacoma veteran who needed a new heart valve died after a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center waited too long to do his surgery, his widow’s lawsuit says.

George Walker was 75 when he died at home July 1, 2016 — days before he was scheduled for surgery at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, and a little more than a week after doctors knew he needed the operation, the complaint says.

“They absolutely shouldn’t have sent him home,” said attorney Jessica Holman Duthie, who represents the family.

After Walker’s death, his wife found paperwork that shows he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal in 1967 — things he didn’t talk about, she said. 

He worked for almost 30 years as the foreman of a forklift shop at a Seattle warehouse, where his blue coveralls and white beard earned him the nickname Papa Smurf.

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Police and PTSD "like your brain getting shot"

There is powerful, simple logic in this story of police officers supporting each other through the "in the line of duty" wound of PTSD. When an officer is shot, other police officers show up to visit, help in anyway that is needed and the wounded officer finds nothing to be ashamed of.

When they are wounded by what the job did to them, they need the same support but are reluctant to even ask for help. They sure as hell don't expect it.

The thing that keeps getting missed in all of this is that officers know what a traumatic event can do to survivors. They risk their lives to make sure there are more survivors than victims. They just have a hard time translating what responding does to them.

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Police and PTSD: Local cops counseling colleagues
lohud
Jordan Fenster
January 7, 2018

“They say it’s an illness, a disorder, cumulative stress disorder, post-traumatic distress — but it’s an actual injury, no different from being a cop and getting shot and having this disability now because of an injury. It's like your brain getting shot.” Matt Frank

Matt Frank was shot by a suspect during an interrogation. Later, laying in the hospital, the then-Mount Vernon Police detective had a revelation.

Severely injured, Frank was visited at his hospital bedside by groups of police officers, many of whom he had never met, “just to see if I needed anything or if my wife needed anything while I was there, if my son needed to be picked up from school,” he said.

His then-4-year-old son asked if Frank knew the officers from work.

“I tell him, ‘No I don't even know those guys,’ and he said, ‘Well, why would they do that?’ and I said, ‘Because we're police officers and that’s what we do for one another.’”

Before that shooting in 2010, Frank and a friend, Westchester County Police Officer Joe Krauss, had been holding what he calls “10-13 parties” — 10-13 is the police code for “officer needs immediate assistance” — intended as fundraising functions.

“We would raise money for police officers that were in need of that type of support,” he said.
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The other thing is, they need to get help now so that when it comes time to retire, they won't be hit with PTSD awakening and taking over.

This video is 9 years old. It addresses PTSD and retirement from The Badge of Life.
Andy OHara
Published on Nov 19, 2008
http://www.badgeoflife.com/ Badge of Life: The challenges faced by police officers when leaving a stressful career and entering retirement. Visit http://www.badgeoflife.com/ for free police suicide prevention videos and educational materials. Police retirement issues. Music: Kevin MacLeod

It is even worse for them if they were in the National Guard or Reserves. Facing the risk to their lives in combat, then back home, facing more risks gives them little time to heal.

Useless PTSD Treatment Taking More Lives in UK

Shell-shock 'suicide' of Harry's pal who beat Taliban bombs: Decorated British soldier who fought with the Prince in Afghanistan is found dead after complaining about the Army's 'useless' PTSD treatment
Daily Mail UK
By Mark Nicol for The Mail on Sunday
6 January 2018

Prince Harry served alongside Warrant Officer Nathan Hunt, 39 in 2008 while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Prince Harry spent two-and-a-half months in the deadly Helmand Province

Warrant Officer Nathan Hunt, 39, from Lincoln was found dead last week
He had served in Afghanistan in a British Army desert reconnaissance unit
WO Hunt told a friend in the Royal Engineers he was struggling to cope
His role was to identify roadside bombs as they crossed Helmand Province

A decorated British soldier who fought alongside Prince Harry in Afghanistan is believed to have killed himself after complaining to colleagues about the treatment he was receiving for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Married Warrant Officer Nathan Hunt, 39, was found dead last week after confiding to Royal Engineers colleagues that he was struggling to cope with the effects of battlefield trauma. He also described the care provided to him by the Army as ‘useless’.

The father-of-one protected Prince Harry when they belonged to a British Army desert reconnaissance unit. Warrant Officer Hunt’s highly dangerous role was to identify roadside bombs encountered by the elite force as they crossed Helmand Province on secret missions to ambush the Taliban.

But last night WO Hunt’s former colleagues accused the Ministry of Defence of letting him down. One said: ‘Nathan was a cracking bloke who saved a lot of lives in Afghanistan. He fought the demons in his head for years but it seems they won in the end. He said recently at a get-together for veterans that the care he was receiving for his condition was useless and he was thinking of getting out of the Army. read more here