Saturday, September 27, 2014

Air Force Reservist Back from Afghanistan to Overjoyed Kids

Returned Afghan vet surprises 4 kids at Roy assembly
Standard Examiner
By RACHEL J. TROTTER
SEPTEMBER 26, 2014

ROY – It took mere seconds for Skye Seward to run into her father’s arms after he burst through a red curtain at North Park Elementary Friday afternoon. Three other Seward children quickly made their way to the stage as well — all throwing their arms around their dad while he passed out flowers and a teddy bear to his youngest son, 5-year-old Mario.

Staff Sgt. Brian Seward has been deployed to Afghanistan for the past seven months through the Air Force Reserves. His wife, Shannon, eagerly waited with her camera poised for the exact moment in the school assembly, sponsored by the Utah Opera, that the announcement would come that he was there to see his kids.

“This is the longest five minutes of my life,” Shannon said, smiling. “I told the kids he wouldn’t be back until October 29, so this is a big surprise for him,” she said.

The Sewards’ youngest, Mario, has cerebral palsy and Shannon said father and son are very close, so she is especially excited for their reunion.
read more here

Friday, September 26, 2014

Friends seek funds to bury homeless Vietnam veteran they loved

Friends raising funds for homeless vet's burial
The Winchester Sun
By Whitney Leggett
September 25, 2014

Friends of a local homeless veteran who died earlier this month are banding together to raise funds for a proper burial.

Michele Bradford began an online GoFundMe campaign last week to accept donations for the burial expenses of Charles “Chuck” Ek, a Vietnam veteran who died Sept. 10 in Madison County. He was 60.

Bradford said she met Ek when she worked as a volunteer at the Clark County Homeless Coalition’s emergency winter shelter this year. She said Ek was encouraged to visit the shelter by another veteran who ate breakfast at McDonalds every morning and had seen him in the area.

Ek spent most of his days hanging out in the shopping center behind McDonalds where Peddler’s Mall is located. Peddler’s Mall employees came to love him and are also collecting donations for his funeral fund.

Peddler’s Mall manager Tonya Corona said she has known Ek since she took over the store around a year ago. She said he slept on a bench in a breezeway at the shopping center until three months ago when local officers heavily enforced the no loitering rules at the shopping center.

At that time he made his way to Richmond, where he found shelter through the Salvation Army. Madison County Coroner Carlos Coyle confirmed this week that Ek died from cardiovascular disease and he was being held in Richmond.

He said the coroner’s office can hold Ek for a couple of weeks, which means time is running out. This is why Bradford and Corona, along with other people in the community, are asking for help to pay for his burial expenses.

Bradford said Ek can be buried free-of-cost at Camp Nelson in Danville, but she would like to bury him in Winchester so that the community who became like family to him can visit his grave and show their respects often.
read more here

US Soldier shot by German Police

U.S. Soldier Shot Twice by German Cops After Oktoberfest Rampage
NBC News
September 26, 2014

MAINZ, Germany – An American soldier was shot twice by German police after drunkenly rampaging through a hospital with a fire extinguisher, officials said. The 28-year-old serviceman had been brought to the emergency room after sustaining a head wound at Munich’s world-famous Oktoberfest on Thursday night.

A police spokesman told NBC News that the soldier had been unruly while being transported him from the beer festival in an ambulance.
read more here

Alaska Deputy Commissioner of VA Out of a Job

ANCHORAGE - Deputy commissioner of Alaska's Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, McHugh Pierre, resigned on Thursday at the request of Gov. Sean Parnell, a Parnell spokeswoman said.

Reminder of some of what was going on in Alaska
Is there a doctor in the house at Wasilla Alaska VA? Nope!
VA clinic in Wasilla without doctors
The Associated Press
September 4, 2014

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — The Veterans Affairs clinic in Wasilla is without doctors after the three physicians working under contract over the summer decided not to renew those.

A nurse practitioner, who transferred from Anchorage last week, is now carrying the 1,000-patient caseload.

The Mat-Su Veterans Affairs Community Based Outpatient Clinic is supposed to have two full-time doctors but has been down one since 2012. The last full-time doctor left in May, KTVA reported

Great Veterans Charities to Donate to

Aside from the two I belong to, Point Man International Ministries helping veterans and families with PTSD since 1984 (yes that long) and the Disabled America Veterans along with the DAV Auxilairy helping disabled veterans since "At a May 21, 1920, gathering at Memorial Hall, Judge Marx reported he had been in touch with the War Department. He had learned that 741,000 veterans were eligible for membership in a group for disabled veterans. The seed had been planted."

It is easy to see my heart with both of these groups. Point Man was started by a Vietnam veteran and the DAV, well in one way or another, I've been involved with them my whole life. My Dad was a disabled veteran and they helped him with his claim when I was just a kid.

Here are some more on a National level with great reputations.
FISHER HOUSE
1991
Two Fisher Houses open:
National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD – dedicated by President George H. W. Bush
Walter Reed Army Medical Center; Washington, DC
Families served: More than 22,000 in 2013
Daily capacity: 832 families
Families served: More than 220,000 since inception
Number of lodging days offered: Over 5.2 million
7,000 students have received $11,000,000 in scholarship awards
Over 50,000 airline tickets provided by Hero Miles to service members and their families, worth nearly $73 million

GARY SINISE FOUNDATION


HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS

Then there are

VFW
AMERICAN LEGION
HONOR FLIGHT
Plus many others on a national level but you can also support smaller local charities in your own community. I am involved with many in my area and there is a great deal being done right in your own neighborhood as well.

First decide what you want your money to do. Simple things like do you want to take care of all veterans or just OEF and OIF? Do you want it to help with housing for amputees? Do you want it to help homeless veterans trying to get off the streets? Do you want it to go to helping veterans with PTSD or TBI or both? Do you want it to go to family members of the fallen? To their kids? Do you want to help active military or veterans?

Think very seriously about where your money would do the most good after that by looking up the charity online and their history.

The need is growing all the time but extremely troubling considering this is a time when there has never been more groups claiming to do more.

Wounded Warrior Project Under Fire,,,,Again

Wounded Warriors Project Under Fire
Daily Beast
Tim Mak
September 26, 2014

Is a much-touted charity for American veterans everything it says it is?

Over the past decade, the Wounded Warriors Project has emerged to become one of the celebrated charities in the country – but with its prominence comes deeper scrutiny and criticism.

It’s a broad but closely held sentiment within the veterans' advocacy community: grumbling and critiques about the fundraising behemoth WWP has become, and whether it has been as effective as it could be.

In interviews, critical veterans’ advocates and veterans charged that the Wounded Warrior Project cares more about its image than it does about helping veterans; that they make public splashes by taking vets on dramatic skydiving trips but don’t do enough to help the long-term wellbeing of those injured in combat.

These criticisms come from a broad cross-section of veterans and their advocates, the vast majority of whom refused to speak on the record due to the sway the Wounded Warrior Project carries.

"They are such a big name within the veterans’ community. I don't need to start a war in my backyard," a double-amputee veteran who served in Iraq told The Daily Beast.

But granted anonymity, the vet gave voice to what is at the very least a perception problem for the WWP:
“They're more worried about putting their label on everything than getting down to brass tacks. It’s really frustrating."

The same veteran spoke of waking up in the hospital after an IED hit his supply truck – WWP, he said, had given him only trivial merchandise: a backpack, a shaving kit and socks.

“Everything they do is a dog and pony show, and I haven't talked to one of my fellow veterans that were injured… actually getting any help from the Wounded Warrior Project. I'm not just talking about financial assistance; I'm talking about help, period,” he said.
Ken Davis, a veteran who served in Iraq before being injured, is considered an "alumni" of the Wounded Warriors Project – even though he said he no longer wants to be associated with them.

"I receive more marketing stuff from them, [and see more of that] than the money they've put into the community here in Arizona," he told the Beast. "It's just about numbers and money to them. Never once that I get the feeling that it's about veterans."

He could have used a ride to a VA facility for health care, he said. But rather than receive practical assistance from the WWP, he got a branded fleece beanie.
read more here
Check back later for more on this

UPDATE First while you hear the term "Wounded Warrior" it is not always about Wounded Warrior Project.

The DOD used that term talking about another charity supplying homes for wounded servicemembers/veterans
07/07/2014
Wounded Warrior Receives New Home
United States
℠2014 - "Helping a Hero" has provided its latest home for a wounded warrior.

The DOD has Wounded Warrior Program
Prosthetic knee returns wounded warriors to active duty
Department of Defense
Apr 27, 2012
A new, computerized prosthetic knee joint is making a major difference for wounded warriors. Some are able to return to combat zones.

Wounded Warrior Surfers
Department of Defense
Invictus Games
London, City of, United Kingdom
℠2014 - U.S. wounded warriors traveled to London to compete in the 2014 Invictus Games
Here is more about the Wounded Warrior Program
The military's wounded warrior programs provide assistance and advocacy for severely wounded, ill, and injured service members, veterans, and their families. These programs assist service members and their families as they return to duty or transition to civilian life.

What are wounded warrior programs and what support do they provide?
Each of the individual branches of service operates a wounded warrior program to assist service members and their families with non-medical issues associated with the transition back to duty or to civilian life. The wounded warrior programs work with the service member and his or her medical team to develop a comprehensive recovery plan that addresses specific recovery, rehabilitation and reintegration goals. These programs provide lifetime support for the service member; eligibility for participation in the program does not conclude when the service member is discharged from a military treatment facility. Typical non-medical support provided by the wounded warrior programs may include, but is not limited to, assistance with the following:

Pay and personnel issues
Invitational travel orders
Lodging and housing adaptations for the wounded warrior
Child and youth care arrangements
Transportation needs
Legal and guardianship issues
Education and training benefits
Respite care
Traumatic brain injury/post-traumatic stress support services

The Wounded Warrior Project has been fantastic at raising awareness for themselves. Plain and simple. When you see the logo, you know exactly what it is tied to but few remember the real Marines in Iraq or the photographer there to take the iconic picture.

Shadow of Marines lives on in famous logo
The Marines Sgt. Matt LeVart carries injured Cpl. Barry Lange off the battlefield as members of India Company 3rd Battalion 7th Marine Division engage Iraqi soldiers in battle. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch)

So what are they doing? What are they doing besides advertising for themselves?

Yet they made it worse by making it seem as if they were there with this video.
They have the video unlisted, which usually I would respect however since they have it on their page, it is available for anyone to watch.

They show commercials with heart tugging images of amputees and families in tears. Are they trying to say they are operating the rehabilitations facilities? Seems like most of the things being done are just like the ones done by Army Wounded Warrior Program amazing enough, also celebrating 10 years.

AW2 Eligibility and Enrollment
Commemorating a Decade of Impact for wounded, ill and injured Soldiers and Families
Click here to learn more about AW2's Tenth Anniversary.

The Army Wounded Warrior Program (AW2) is the official U.S. Army program that assists and advocates for severely wounded, ill and injured Soldiers, Veterans, and their Families, wherever they are located, regardless of military status. Soldiers who qualify for AW2 are assigned to the program as soon as possible after arriving at the Warrior Transition Unit (WTU). AW2 supports these Soldiers and their Families throughout their recovery and transition, even into Veteran status. Through the local support of AW2 Advocates, AW2 strives to foster the Soldier's independence. There are more than 18,200 Soldiers and Veterans currently in AW2.


In this video you see them delivering backpacks and yes, what was stated above with their logos on everything is true. That was their original mission statement. Now it has changed.
Wounded Warrior Project® (WWP) takes a holistic approach when serving warriors and their families to nurture the mind and body, and encourage economic empowerment and engagement. Through a high-touch and interactive approach, WWP hopes to foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation's history.


Uploaded on Sep 1, 2009
Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to honor and empower wounded warriors. WWP serves to raise awareness and enlist the publics aid for the needs of severely injured service men and women, to help severely injured service members aid and assist each other and to provide unique, direct programs and services to meet their needs. For more information, please call visit www.woundedwarriorproject.org.
This is my video from long ago with the same song not used to raise funds but to actually raise awareness for the veterans!
They are fantastic at raising funds and spending money on commercials. As for the rest, I have exactly one advertiser blocked from this site. Guess who it is. They filed a lawsuit against another charity called Help Indiana Veterans because of accusations made based on complaints. The trouble is, if you pay attention to what they say, they never say they are doing anything. They don't claim to be running the hospitals doing the rehabs or supplying limbs or building homes or modifying them. They don't claim to be doing anything so if people are upset for giving them money, they need to ask themselves what they actually were thinking when they hit the donate button. Did they just assume or were they lied to? Honestly no matter how I feel about WWP, I never remember them saying anything wrong. They just didn't say anything at all. (Updated 3/21/15 to replace link to my video)

PTSD Vietnam Veteran Died Detained Instead of Helped to Recover

If you still think the problems veterans face getting help for PTSD instead of being lock up is new they are not. Not much has changed no matter how much we seem all so willing to congratulate ourselves on how much we've done for them.
Another mentally ill inmate died of dehydration
News and Observer
Posted by Joseph Neff
September 25, 2014

A North Carolina prison inmate with a history of mental illness died of dehydration in March, according to an Associated Press report. All the details are not yet known, but there are a number of striking similarities to the 1996 of a Vietnam veteran who suffered from post traumatic stress.

A subsequent federal audit found a host of problems plaguing medical and mental-health care at Central Prison: inadequate staffing, an out-of-date facility, poor management and overuse of drugs and restraints in the psychiatric hospital.

In March, Anthony Michael Kerr, 53, died of dehydration while in care of Alexander Correctional Institution.
A damaged veteran:

Mabrey grew up in Roanoke Rapids, the oldest of four children. His father was a loom repairman for J.P. Stevens, working in the textile mill featured in the movie "Norma Rae."

Drafted after high school, Mabrey served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970, escorting convoys, setting up ambushes and protecting an Army base in the Ia Drang Valley.

"It was rough," said Melvin Tharrington, a boyhood friend who recalled the night they spent pinned down under enemy fire for five hours. "Glen was good as gold. He was like a brother to me. He wasn't the same Glen I had known after he got back. I think it just really got to him."

A week after Mabrey's return, his mother heard noises in his bedroom. She found him in his closet crying, banging his head against the wall.

"Momma said he talked about all his friends coming back in body bags and it was too much for him," Hollowell, his sister, said.

He was a welder by trade, but had trouble holding a job. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome, Mabrey lived on monthly $ 900 disability checks.

He had numerous run-ins with the law resulting from his abuse of alcohol and cocaine: DWI, driving with a revoked license, larceny, writing bad checks. His first marriage ended. His second marriage was rocky. He was arrested for assaulting his wife, usually while he was drinking.
read more here

War Ends For Fallen, Not For Widows

Moving On: Project Helps War Widows Recover
NPR
by GLORIA HILLARD
September 25, 2014
"And I still have that voicemail, and I still listen to it seven and a half years later. I can't erase it," she says. "Just because that war is over, it doesn't mean that ours is over, like our journey is still continuing."

Members of the American Widow Project cheer at the end of an annual event in San Diego. The organization's mission is to help heal and empower participants.

In the kitchen of a beach house in San Diego a group of moms is preparing dinner.

The 13 women from all around the country have one thing in common - they lost their husbands in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

They are part of the American Widow Project, a support group for women whose husbands were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense Department estimates there are more than 3,200 military widows and widowers from those wars.

The women gather once a month in small groups for bonding and adventure.

For 34-year-old Danielle Schafer, much of the day her husband died remains hazy.
read more here

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Green Berets Mistreated at Fort Carson

Fort Carson Gets a Black Eye for Its Treatment of These Green Berets
US Navy SEAL Today
By Joel Warner
Sep. 24 2014

Sergeant First Class Emil Wojcik wasn't the same after a rollover car crash at Fort Carson in March 2013 broke one of his cervical vertebrae. That, combined with the various times he'd been knocked unconscious during rough parachute landings, seemed to knock something permanently askew in his mind. He lost hearing in his right ear and begun stuttering when he spoke. Sleep became a problem. He'd sit upright in bed in the middle of the night and yell, "Stand up straight, the general is here!" -- as if he were back on one of his secret missions. Or he'd sleepwalk, sometimes tumbling down the stairs of his Colorado Springs home. He started taking Ambien to help him sleep, but that plus the Oxycodone he was on for ongoing neck pain left him in a medicated stupor.

It didn't help that Wojcik, who was born in Warsaw but had immigrated to Michigan when he was seven, had a lot on his mind. In 2012, his first marriage had ended in an ugly divorce and custody battle that resulted in his two children living 4,500 miles away, with their mother in her native Ireland. His second wife, Amber, had stage IV bone cancer that had spread to her lungs and lymph nodes, and the two were caught in exhausting cycles of chemotherapy treatments and remission. On top of that, a good friend of Wojcik's, a Special Forces team sergeant at Fort Carson, had taken his pistol and killed himself while parked on the side of Interstate 25 in December 2011. "Nobody asked too many questions about it," says Wojcik of the incident -- but it stuck with him.

For Wojcik, everything came to a head one evening in July 2013.
But Wojcik didn't feel supported by his superiors, even as his medical condition deteriorated. By December 2013, his neck pain and sleeping problems had become serious enough that his battalion's physician referred him to the Army's Medical Evaluation Board, the first step toward being medically retired from the Army. But then in January, when he was called into his battalion commander's office -- "It was the first time I'd ever met the man," he says -- Wojcik learned that he could be leaving Special Forces for other reasons. Wojcik's medical-evaluation process had been halted, his commander told him; he was now looking at an other-than-honorable discharge from the Army because of his behavior, which would leave him with few benefits.
read more here

Fiscal 2016 sequestration marks ‘breaking point’ for the Army

It seems as if people have just gone insane in the online world. So many so upset about Obama getting off Air Force 1 with a coffee cup in the same hand he saluted a Marine with. Ok, so he should have switched hands but he didn't. That is what they are upset about but not so much the fact that our troops are under siege by Congress.
Army Chief: Fiscal 2016 sequestration marks ‘breaking point’
Fort Hood Sentinel
By David Vergun, Army News Service
SEPTEMBER 25, 2014
ACROSS DOD

WASHINGTON - Should sequestration resume in fiscal year 2016, “it will be very difficult for us to lead around the world. Fiscal year 2016 is a breaking point,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, adding, “I’m not seeing peace breaking out around the world in (2016).”

Odierno delivered his remarks Friday, at a Defense Writers Group, at the Fairmont Hotel here, where he was guest speaker.

Everyone wants the U.S. to lead the way in resolving global conflicts and crises, he said, not necessarily supplying the preponderance of forces, but involvement to some extent. The nagging question is, “Do we want to do that or not?”

In fiscal year 2016, Odierno pointed out that the budget will go down $9 billion from what it is now. That would have a “significant degradation” on the force “because I cannot take people out fast enough.”

The general explained that manpower, modernization and training need to be kept in balance even as the budget shrinks and it’s currently out of balance with too many Soldiers and not enough dollars to properly train and equip them.

With a reduction of 20,000 a year, that’s as far as he said he’s willing to push it without seriously degrading operational concerns and personnel considerations.
Sequestration takes “a large percentage of a small portion of the budget” that would have otherwise gone to training and equipping the force, he said. The slashed budget will delay aircraft purchases, platform upgrades, improved command-and-control systems and a host of other needed requirements for years to come.

The active Army is now 510,000, which is down from a high of 570,000. It will be 490,000 by the end of fiscal year 2015, 470,000 by fiscal year 2016, 415,000 by fiscal year 2017 and 420,000 by fiscal year 2019, he pointed out.

Before the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, and the Russian incursion into Ukraine, Odierno said he testified to lawmakers that a reduction to 450,000 would pose a “significant” security risk and 420,000 would mean the Army would be unable to “execute our current strategy.”
read more here
Guess they just weren't important enough for Congress to stick around long enough to figure out what they would approve and fund before taking off to try to get re-elected.

Military suicides keep going up so that Navy SEAL, Green Berets and other Special Forces bravest of the brave have committed suicide even after Congress spent billions a year on "preventing" them. Ya, and they just keep writing the checks no matter what happened to the troops. Top that off with they really aren't too upset over veterans committing suicide either, since their numbers went up as well.

Sorry but when it comes down to what we really have to complain about, do we really think it is a wise use of indignation to focus on feeble salute?

Oh by the way, Obama was focused on military suicides in 2008 when he was running for office and serving on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, just in case you forgot that. We expected a lot more of out of him but as of this very day, no one has been held accountable.