Chief Master Sergeant Kathryn Godfrey passed away

Kathryn Godfrey, of Melbourne, mother, dauaghter, sister, hero and friend passed away February 16, 2012. Born in Pensacola, FL October 3, 1952, she died at the young age of 59. She fought for her Country by serving in the United States Air Force for 30 years participating in six different campaigns eventually earning and retiring at the rank of Chief Master Sergeant. Independence, courage, generosity, sensitivity, integrity, dignity, goofy and fun, are some of the words that family and friends would use to describe her. She lived and loved life to its fullest and will be missed and remembered for years to come.

She is survived by her two daughters, Crystal Madison and Stephanie Jorgenson; her grandchildren, Aries, Alexis, Alyssa and Eva; her mother, Barbara Mendoza; her brothers, Phillip Mendoza, Rick Mendoza and Danny Mendoza; her best friend, Teresa James and son many more.

Her funeral will be held on Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 1:00 pm on Patrick Air Force Base at the South Chapel. At 2:30 pm a precession will go to Florida Memorial Gardens in Rockledge, FL for her burial and at 3:30 pm we will head to the Patrick Air Force Base Marina for a Celebration of Life.
read more here to find out how you can donate in her honor

51-year-old woman finishes basic at Fort Leonard Wood

51-year-old finishes basic at Leonard Wood
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Feb 16, 2012 11:14:52 EST
FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — A 51-year-old woman has finished basic training at Fort Leonard Wood and has become one of the oldest people to go through the 10 weeks of physical and tactical drills.

Sgt. Sandra Coast, of Holmes, Ohio, will graduate Thursday from the program, which allows her to serve with an Army Reserve unit.

Coast served in the Navy for 11 years before leaving in 1993 to raise her son. When her son joined the Marines, she decided to join the Army.
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Woman on FOX says 'What Did They Expect?' when addressing rape in the military

Fox News' Liz Trotta On Women Raped In Military: 'What Did They Expect? These People Are In Close Contact' (VIDEO)

Fox News pundit Liz Trotta made a series of incendiary statements about rape in the military during a Sunday appearance on the network.

Trotta was reacting to news that the military will allow women to work closer to the front lines. Speaking to Fox News host Eric Shawn, she alleged that feminists wanted "to be warriors and victims at the same time."

She cited a recent Pentagon report that sex crimes committed by army personnel have increased by 64% over the past six years. Then she made a startling statement:

"I think they have actually discovered there is a difference between men and women. And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact, the whole airing of this issue has never been done by Congress, it's strictly been a question of pressure from the feminists."
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Parris Island to honor female Marines

Parris Island to honor female Marines
By PATRICK DONOHUE

Published Saturday, February 11, 2012


Get breaking news and story updates about local, state and national military issues by following On Base on Twitter.

Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island will honor the service and sacrifice of female Marines with a day of events Monday, base officials say.

It's been nearly 70 years since women officially became a part of the Corps, and the depot is celebrating with a morning colors ceremony, tours of Parris Island and other events, said Lt. Melanie Salinas, depot spokeswoman.

"The Marine Corps is known for ensuring our future generations of Marines learn the history, traditions (and customs) of our Corps during recruit training," Salinas said. "The celebration ... highlights the history and tradition of women's service in the Marine Corps..."
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Ban on women lifted for 1% of military jobs

Ban on women lifted for 1% of military jobs
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Feb 9, 2012 15:21:29 EST
The Pentagon will lift parts of its longtime ban on women serving in combat units, but only a small fraction of the force will be affected, officials announced Thursday.

The change will open up about an additional 1 percent of military jobs to women, but about 20 percent of jobs across the active-duty force will remain restricted to men.

The new rules, likely to take effect this spring, will continue keep most combat career fields off-limits to women, who make up about 15 percent of the active-duty force.

For the Army the change means nearly 14,000 new jobs are available for women, less than 10 percent of the jobs currently closed to them. The Army will be opening six enlisted occupational specialties that were not formerly available to women, including artillery mechanic and maintainers for the Abrams tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

For the Marine Corps, the change will be less significant because the Marines are currently not enforcing the legally optional restrictions on women serving in units that “co-locate” with ground combat units. That’s less than 1 percent of the roughly 54,000 Marine Corps jobs currently closed to women. The Marines for the first time will allow women to serve in some career fields in artillery battalions, tank battalions and combat assault battalions.

The Navy will open 60 positions that were previously closed, also less than 1 percent of the nearly 34,000 Navy jobs currently closed to women.

The Air Force will be largely unaffected by the change because more than 99 percent of Air Force jobs are already open to women.
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NCO arrested for murder of Spc. Brandy Fonteneaux

NCO arrested, charged in Carson killing
The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jan 27, 2012 17:37:33 EST
FORT CARSON, Colo. — A combat engineer at Fort Carson has been arrested and charged in the slaying of a food operations specialist in the barracks at the post, officials said Friday.

Sgt. Vincinte L. Jackson, 40, is being held on suspicion of premeditated murder and murder in the death of Spc. Brandy Fonteneaux, 28, of Houston, according to an announcement and documents released by the post. Authorities found Fonteneaux’s body on Jan. 8 in the barracks where she lived.
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Iraq War Veteran's husband accused of stabbing her and holding her hostage

Charges: Man Stabbed Wife, A Veteran, Held Her Hostage
January 24, 2012

ST. PAUL (WCCO) — A St. Paul man is accused of assaulting his wife, who is an Iraq war veteran, threatening to kill her and holding her hostage for five days, according to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

Charlie Pearman Blackwell, 30, was charged with felony counts of kidnapping, second-degree assault, terroristic threats and domestic assault by strangulation.

According to the criminal complaint, police responded to the 1000 block of Hatch Avenue in St. Paul Saturday on the report of a woman stabbed and being held against her will. When they arrived, several attempts to announce their presence went ignored, so they gained entrance to the residence through the back patio door. They then located Blackwell and a 21-year-old woman on the floor of the living room.
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All-women team of Seabees makes history in Afghanistan

All-women team of Seabees makes history in Afghanistan
By KAY SAILLANT
Los Angeles Times
Published: January 23, 2012

It was an unusual job even for the Seabees, the U.S. Navy's construction forces trained to hold a hammer in one hand and a Beretta M9 in the other.

First, the team selected to build barracks high in the mountains of Afghanistan consisted of eight women, who are all stationed at Naval Base Ventura County. And second, the women completed the job far ahead of schedule.

Beating deadline made up for long days and freezing nights in tents without plumbing, building four 20-by-30-foot structures, said Gafayat Moradeyo, the mission commander. But when the women returned to Bagram air field, their Afghanistan base, they learned that they had nailed another achievement: a place in naval history.

Military officials say they are the first all-female construction team to take on a construction job from start to finish in the Seabees' 70-year history. And they did it in record time in the barren rocky mountains of Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold and the focus of recent combat efforts.
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Specialist Brandy Fonteneaux's family says they know who killed her

We know who killed our daughter, say parents of female soldier found naked and beaten to death in barracks
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
21st January 2012

The mother of a female soldier found stabbed to death in her barracks at a Colorado infantry post claims to know who killed her daughter but will not identify the suspect publicly until the Army investigates further.

The unclothed body of Specialist Brandy Fonteneaux, 28, was found on January 10 at Fort Carson, an Army base outside Colorado Springs.

Investigators said no arrests have been made and while they have declined to release any new details about the case, Ms Fonteneaux's relatives are speaking out.
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Break in Soldier Spc. Brandy Fonteneaux Murder Case

Break in Soldier's Murder Case
Only on FOX
Updated: Friday, 20 Jan 2012

NED HIBBERD
Reporter
HOUSTON - The family of a Houston soldier, murdered in her own barracks at Fort Carson, tells FOX 26 News there has been a break in the case.

US Army Spc. Brandy Fonteneaux was found dead on January 8, her body covered in blood.

“She was stabbed, she was nude, she was not raped,” says Fonteneaux’s adoptive mother, Beven Thomas. “(Investigators) believe that the clothing was taken to preserve DNA.”

In an exclusive interview, Thomas and her sister, Verona Fonteneaux – who is Brandy’s biological mother – tell FOX 26 they know who killed the 28-year old woman who called both of them, “Mom.”
And they also provided a name. But Army investigators have been very stingy with information on this case. They did not return repeated phone calls, Friday evening.
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Break in Soldier's Murder Case: MyFoxHOUSTON.com

Sex Crimes By Soldiers Up 97 Percent In Five Years

When you read this keep in mind that there are more women serving in the military and that the military has been trying to get these crimes reported, or at least, that is what they have been saying for a long time. Those two factors have reports up but as this article points out, most still go unreported and the criminals get away with it. Sex crimes are committed by criminals and there should be a no tolerance policy. The vast majority of our armed forces serve with honor and dignity. That portion of the members of the military should make sure these criminals are charged and kicked out.

Womens Memorial

U.S. Army: Sex Crimes By Soldiers Up 97 Percent In Five Years

John Rudolf
1/20/12

Maj. Gen. Mary Kay Hertog, of the Air Force, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta addressed the problem of sexual assaults in the military at a Pentagon press briefing this week.

Military leaders vowed this week to curb sexual assaults by and against U.S. soldiers after the release of a new report revealing that violent sex crimes committed by Army personnel nearly doubled since 2006. The majority of reported sex crimes occurred on U.S. soil, the Army said.

A U.S soldier committed a violent sex crime every six hours and 40 minutes in 2011, a rate far above that of the general population, the report found.

"This is unacceptable. We have zero tolerance for this," Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, said at a press conference Thursday. "Army leaders take sexual assault seriously."

Chiarelli said the Army was confronting the problem by stepping up surveillance of barracks and cracking down on drug and alcohol abuse, a key factor in sexual assault.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also addressed the issue of sexual abuse within the military this week, announcing that the Pentagon was creating a database to track offenders and would provide increased funding to train sex crime investigators.
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Wounded warrior shares inspirational message

Wounded warrior shares inspirational message

Melissa Stockwell, a U.S. Army veteran who lost her left leg in Iraq in 2004, spoke Thursday at Blue Ridge Community Health Services.

By Jessica Goodman
Times-News Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, January 19, 2012
Melissa Stockwell, a U.S. Army veteran, reached down and unhooked her leg during a Thursday presentation for the Philanthropic Educational Organization, Chapter AN, meeting at Blue Ridge Community Health Services.

"I'm an extremely proud American," said Stockwell, 31. "And I'm an extremely proud to be an above-the-knee amputee."

Stockwell was the first woman to lose a limb in Iraq, losing her leg to a roadside bomb in 2004, and has turned the experience into a teaching moment. She uses her story to inspire others.

Stockwell is on the Board of Directors for the Wounded Warriors Project, which helps service members with injuries connected to their service. The program helped her after she sustained her injuries in Iraq. Stockwell is a recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
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Pregnant Okla. reservist shot to death

Pregnant Okla. reservist shot to death: police
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jan 19, 2012 11:51:09 EST
MIDWEST CITY, Okla. — Authorities say a 23-year-old Oklahoma National Guard reservist who was found shot to death in her home last week was six months pregnant.

Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes says the department is considering the case a double homicide. Officers found Jessica Brown dead in her home after a neighbor called police to report that Brown's two young children were playing alone in the street.
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Women at War Have Same PTSD Rate as Men

Women Soldiers See More Combat Than In Prior Eras, Have Same PTSD Rate as Men, Study Says
By Steve Tokar on January 13, 2012

Women who served in the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan were involved in combat at significantly higher rates than in previous conflicts, and screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder at the same rate as men, according to a study led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

“While women technically are not supposed to serve in direct combat, this research demonstrates that, in reality, they are experiencing combat at a higher rate than we had assumed,” said lead author Shira Maguen, PhD, a clinical psychologist at SFVAMC and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF. “At the same time, it shows that men and women really don’t differ in how they react to the stresses of combat.”

Women in the U.S. military gradually have been integrated into combat roles since the early 1990s, and today comprise about 14 percent of Americans serving in uniform. Of roughly 2.2 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 255,000 have been women, according to the Pentagon. Under current U.S Army rules, women are not officially assigned to units whose primary mission is direct combat on the ground, but can be assigned to other roles in combat zones.

The study of 7,251 active-duty soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is the first study, the authors say, to include gender as a variable in examining responses to four combat-associated traumatic experiences: killing, witnessing someone being killed, exposure to death (seeing dead soldiers or civilians) and injury.

The authors found that 4 percent of women reported killing, 9 percent reported witnessing killing, 31 percent reported exposure to death and 7 percent were injured in the war zone.
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Gainesville Florida woman lost 84 pounds to become a soldier

Woman Loses 84 Pounds to Become Soldier


January 04, 2012
Army News Service
by Cynthia Rivers-Womack, USAREC
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Allison Scarbrough will officially change jobs Jan. 3, 2012, from retail cashier to Health Care Specialist in the U.S. Army. But the change has not been easy.

In May 2010, then 20-year-old Scarbrough walked into the Gainesville recruiting station ready to become a Soldier. This was a brave move for her because before she could enlist two things had to happen. Weighing 240 pounds, the 5-foot-5-inch Scarborough had to lose 84 pounds -- and keep the weight off -- before she would be eligible to enlistment. But for the motivated Scarborough, failure was not an option.

In 2010, Scarbrough belonged to the country's growing demographic of 18- to 24-year-olds considered overweight and obese. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health announced the release of the first federal guidelines to identify, evaluate and treat overweight and obese adults. When the guidelines were released, 97 million Americans, or 55 percent of the population, were identified by physicians as overweight or obese.
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Iraq War Mom Surprises Sons at Mall

Iraq War Mom Surprises Sons at Mall

Uploaded by ABCNews on Dec 23, 2011
Capt. Dawn McCracken-Bruce reunites with young sons in time for Christmas.

New old reports of women at war

Women at War

editor's note
Looking over the archives of my older blog, I came across several stories reported before 2007 when I started this blog. This blog is here because a Marine sent me an email about my older blog asking me to stop putting political views on it. At first, I defended my right to post what I wanted and I sent him back a long email ranting about my right. What he sent in return, was a simple question. "Are you doing this for us or yourself?" When I read it, I cried. I knew he was right and I had fallen into the same trap I complained the most about. Politics was getting in the way of everything in this country.

I made him a promise that from that point on, I would do this blog and only put in political views when it was about them. If a politician was doing something for them, they would be praised for it and if they did something against them, they would be nailed over it.

I kept my promise all these years later.

The government has a huge problem when it comes to taking their own work seriously and reporters have a hard time knowing the facts on what they report on. It makes me wonder if any of them bother to read their own archives. The government funds programs they have already figured out failed before but with new congressional members come new people without a clue and without wanting to learn what happened before by having staffers find out. So we get repeated failures and the same devastating results. Reporters tend to do the same. They publish reports as if it is all a new issue without referring back to older reports addressing the same thing.

Today I'll be posting new reports along with what has been known for a long time.

New Report

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

More women in combat means more mothers with PTSD
By Kyra Phillips and Michael Cary, CNN
Tue December 13, 2011

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Staff Sgt. June Moss was diagnosed with PTSD after serving in the Iraq war
As more women see combat, more female vets are suffering from PTSD
Treatment helps, but Moss worries about slipping back into depression
Today, Moss has gotten over her fear of crowds

Palo Alto, California (CNN) -- It wasn't until five months after Army Staff Sgt. June Moss returned from the Iraq war in 2003 that her real battle began. The horrors of the war -- witnessing decapitated and burned bodies amid mass destruction -- led to post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I do notice when I'm stressing out that I start having dreams about what I saw and how I felt," says Moss, now 40 and retired from the Army. "It does come back as if to haunt you."

The percentage of women in the military has doubled in the last 30 years, with more than 350,000 serving as of 2009, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs' latest figures. With more female troops in combat, there has been an increase in PTSD diagnoses: One in five female veterans suffer from PTSD, according to the VA.

As a light-vehicle mechanic, Moss drove across Baghdad and provided security at checkpoints during her combat tour in Iraq. When she returned home, she became overly protective of her two children, fearing that someone was going to kidnap or harm them.

At the same time, she hunkered down inside her home, staying in bed, because she says it was too hard to face the most mundane tasks such as shopping.

"It was crazy. I couldn't even do crowds. It reminded me when we were in a marketplace (in Iraq), and we didn't know if somebody was out there to kill us," Moss explains. "I'm back home, and I didn't have to worry about a suicide bomber, but I still felt as if there was one lurking in the mall or the grocery store."
read more here

Old Report

Female GIs hard hit by war syndrome
KIRSTEN SCHARNBERG


Chicago Tribune

Mar 25, 2005

NEW YORK - (KRT) - On a mission just south of Baghdad over the winter, a young soldier jumped into the gunner's turret of an armored Humvee and took control of the menacing .50-caliber machine gun. She was 19 years old, weighed barely 100 pounds and had a blond ponytail hanging out from under her Kevlar helmet.

"This is what is different about this war," Lt. Col. Richard Rael, commander of the 515th Corps Support Battalion, said of the scene at the time. "Women are fighting it. Women under my command have confirmed kills. These little wisps of things are stronger than anyone could ever imagine and taking on more than most Americans could ever know."

But today, two years after the start of an Iraq war in which traditional front lines were virtually obliterated and women were tasked to fill lethal combat roles more routinely than in any conflict in U.S. history, the nation may be just beginning to see and feel the effects of such service.

Thousands of women, like the male veterans of so many wars before, are returning home emotionally damaged by what they have seen and done. These female troops appear more prone to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, than their male counterparts.

And studies indicate that many of these women suffer from more pronounced and debilitating forms of PTSD than men, a worrisome finding in a nation that remembers how many traumatized troops got back from Vietnam and turned to drugs and violence, alcohol and suicide.

One children's book increasingly popular among military families illustrates what the effects of this most recent war might mean for society in the years and even decades to come: "Why Is Mommy Like She Is? A Book for Kids About PTSD."

In the wake of such concerns, the Veterans Affairs Department has launched a pioneering $6 million study of PTSD among female veterans. It is the first VA study to focus exclusively on female veterans; 8 percent to 10 percent of active-duty and retired military women suffer from PTSD, a rate nearly twice as high as that among men.

"PTSD is a very real problem for women who serve in the military," said Paula Schnurr, one of the study's lead researchers and the deputy executive director of the VA's National Center for PTSD in White River Junction, Vt. "This study is specifically addressing that, and we hope it will not only help us treat women coming home from Iraq, but all those who have ever served and struggled with PTSD in any conflict before."

The study's findings are not due until the end of the year, but researchers already have made some startling discoveries that are illustrative of the nature of PTSD among female veterans and of the U.S. military.

According to Schnurr, data indicate that female military personnel are far more likely than their male counterparts to have been exposed to some kind of trauma or multiple traumas before joining the military or being deployed in combat. That may include physical assault, sexual abuse or rape.

"The speculation is that many of them are joining the military to get away from adverse environments," said Schnurr, also a professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth College, speaking of the nearly 216,000 U.S. women on active duty and the nearly 151,000 who are part of the reserves and National Guard.

The implication of such a finding on PTSD research is considered significant. Because most research indicates that a person is at greater risk of developing PTSD - or developing more severe PTSD - when he or she has had past traumas, many female troops are deploying to war zones already heavily predisposed to react adversely to the intense fear, killing and loss routinely encountered there.

"The evidence is conclusive," said Rachel MacNair, an expert in the psychological effects of violence and PTSD. "The greater the trauma in your life, the greater the symptoms of PTSD."

MacNair, however, focuses on another factor that she believes more acutely affects the rate of PTSD among veterans of Iraq: whether they have killed during their deployment.

In 1999, MacNair earned her doctorate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a study that analyzed the data from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, a landmark congressionally funded project that studied nearly 1,700 veterans.

Her findings were stark: Troops who had killed - or believed they had killed - suffered significantly higher rates of PTSD than those who had not.

"It is very clear that being shot at is traumatic, or losing your buddy is traumatic, but the act of shooting and killing another human being, something that goes against every instinct we have, is the biggest trauma of all," said MacNair, who calls this kind of PTSD "perpetration-induced traumatic stress."

That hypothesis by MacNair, who is strongly critical of the military, is supported by history and by military experts.

S.L.A. Marshall, one of the earlier official Army historians, estimated after studying World War II veterans that only 15 percent had fired their weapons during battle. He asserted from his interviews with soldiers that their failure in battle was because they were more afraid of killing than of being killed. Other studies show that even the most poorly treated prisoners of war had lower rates of PTSD than front-line soldiers because the prisoners no longer were in a position where they had to kill.

How such findings translate to the Iraq war is clear. Unlike previous conflicts, where women rarely were pulling the triggers or running the weaponry that left enemies dead on the battlefield, they routinely are doing so in Iraq, as Lt. Col. Rael pointed out on that cold December day on the outskirts of Baghdad.

On top of that they are being taken prisoner, as was Pvt. Jessica Lynch during the initial invasion; they, like their male counterparts, are being constantly mortared and ambushed by a guerrilla insurgency; and they are watching fellow troops go home grievously wounded or dead in numbers not seen since the war in Vietnam.

"It all adds up," said MacNair, "but the act of having killed does seem to be the factor that tips the scales in favor of PTSD."

Of the nearly 245,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, almost 12,500 have been to VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms of PTSD. In addition, a study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that up to 17 percent of troops returning from Iraq were suffering from PTSD or other readjustment problems.

So far no statistics have been released detailing how many of these patients are women, but numerous support groups have sprung up specifically for women with PTSD. In one Internet chat group, Sisters Bound by Honor, women struggling with PTSD talk with one another about their experiences.

Yet the women who most need counseling to help them deal with what they witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan - like their male counterparts - are the most unlikely to seek it.

A Defense Department study of combat troops returning from Iraq found that soldiers and Marines deeply suffering from PTSD and readjustment problems were not likely to seek help because of the stigma such an act might carry. In the study, 1 in 6 veterans acknowledged symptoms of severe depression and PTSD, but 6 in 10 of those same veterans feared their commanders and fellow troops would treat them differently and lose confidence in them if they sought treatment for their problems.

That seems especially true of women, who have fought for years to be assigned positions in the Army that once were off-limits to them. A number of female Iraq war veterans suffering from PTSD declined to be interviewed for this article.

Still, former Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who taught psychology at West Point and wrote the book "On Killing," which closely documented the link between killing and PTSD, believes the treatment of PTSD among the veterans of Iraq could be the most effective in combat history. Using an analogy to obesity, he said that after past wars, only those traumatized soldiers "who were 400 pounds overweight got attention or treatment."

"But, now," Grossman said, "we are so sensitive to PTSD and its effects that we can notice the person who is the equivalent of just 20 or so pounds overweight, and we can help them then, long before they have the psychiatric equivalent of high blood pressure and heart attack."

The study of female veterans suffering from PTSD may be just such a start. The study includes hundreds of women and aims, among other things, to discover which clinical treatments are most effective for women with the disorder.

Half of the women will be treated through prolonged exposure therapy, in which each woman will be guided for 10 weeks through vivid remembering of the traumatic event or events until her emotional response decreases through "habituation." Schnurr, one of the study's directors, compares habituation to the way city dwellers grow immune over time to loud noises such as police sirens or car alarms.

"The goal is that the memory of the traumatic event is no longer as startling, as terrifying, when it comes," she said.

The other half of the women will be treated with what is known as "present-centered therapy," a treatment that focuses on helping a patient deal with her current life challenges rather than the memory of past traumas.

"Both therapies are appropriate and helpful to some degree," Schnurr said, "but we expect that the prolonged exposure will be the most effective. If that is the case, I think we will begin using that treatment much more - and more effectively - in the years to come."

Although the goal of the study is to determine which therapies work best for women suffering from PTSD, experts agree that if the study is conclusive it eventually may be applied to tens of thousands of Iraq war veterans, male and female alike.

"It is our hope that we can find ways to help these women," Schnurr said. "But, more than that, we are hoping to draw some conclusions that can help us in the treatment of PTSD across the board. That means men and women, soldiers and Marines, those who are suffering for reasons having nothing to do with combat at all."

© 2005, Chicago Tribune.

They are having the problems they are today because what was known back in 2005 was not enough to put what was needed in place for them when they came home.

New videos feature military service stories of women veterans

New videos feature military service stories of women veterans
Written by Department of Veterans Affairs
Saturday, 10 December 2011


WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Veterans Affairs has released a series of videos in which women veterans describe their experiences serving in the military, ranging from their significant contributions to national safety and security to the challenges they faced during their service and after returning to civilian life.

“These videos show the important contributions women have made to this country through their military service,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “Women veterans have earned the respect of a grateful nation for their tremendous service and sacrifice.”

The three- to five-minute videos are part of VA’s ongoing “Rethink Veterans” campaign to increase awareness of women veterans and their vital roles in our nation’s history.

read more here



Here's one of mine on the history of women at war

For many returning women vets, fight not yet over

For many returning women vets, fight not yet over
By HOWARD ALTMAN
The Tampa Tribune
Published: November 29, 2011
Last month, Josefina Reyes went to work for Tampa Bay Crossroads, a rehabilitation and counseling center that came into being in 1977, the year she was born.
DAVE KRAUT/STAFF

Josefina Reyes was a homeless veteran until she found help and a new career with Tampa Bay Crossroads. Now she counsels women with more stress than she had.

Reyes serves as an intake counselor for women veterans, most of them homeless or headed that way, and helps assess their problems and begin to find solutions.

For Reyes, who served three years with the Army, leaving as a corporal in 1999, this is familiar territory.

Until recently, she, too, was homeless, unable to translate her military experience as a truck driver and vehicle fueler into the civilian world.

Now, instead of being on the receiving end of counseling, Reyes helps guide women out of the downward spiral.

There's no shortage of need.

There are about 300 homeless women veterans in Hillsborough County, according to Sara Romeo, chief executive officer of Tampa Bay Crossroads.
read more here

Think you know what women do in the military? Think again.

Think you know what women do in the military? Think again.
Armed Sources
Blogging military and veterans news with Lindsay Wise
Meet Katariina Fagering: a Marine veteran, warrior poet, artist and mom openly coping with post traumatic stress.

I interviewed Fagering last week for an article about Women’s Inpatient Specialty Environment of Recovery (WISER), an acute psychiatric in-patient program at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Houston. The 45-year-old Heights resident and mother of two is one of a growing number of number of female veterans seeking health care at VA hospitals and clinics nationwide as more women join the military and take on de-facto combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Marine Katariina Fagering talks to local women in Iraq in 2006. Photo courtesy Katariina Fagering
During Fagering’s 2006 deployment, she went door-to-door with another female Marine to talk to Iraqi women — a mission her male counterparts couldn’t do because of cultural taboos. This type of “engagement” carried out by women attached to male infantry and special forces units has become an integral part of the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s dangerous work. Fagering’s friend, Maj. Megan McClung, was the first female Marine officer to be killed in the Iraq war. She died in a roadside bombing in 2006, devastating their entire brigade. “Everyone knew her, she was an exceptional athlete, more energy than humanly possible, smart, funny, and a mentor to so many,” Fagering said. “It’s hard to talk about.”
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