Showing posts with label military women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military women. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

“Unfortunately, I kept silent. I didn’t talk about it, but I was only hurting myself internally.”

A Second Chance at Life: Local veteran tells her story of life after surviving suicide attempt


Military Matters
Author: Bary Roy
September 9, 2019

ROUND ROCK, Texas — Editor's note: This article contains depictions of sexual assault and suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

Vivianne Pearson is a United States Army veteran who proudly followed in the footsteps of her family at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

It was while she was stationed in Fort Jackson that she says she went to get a drink with her sergeant, someone she barely knew, when he forced himself on to her.

Almost 11 years after a cry from her daughter interrupted her suicide attempt, a local vet is moving forward in life as a successful business owner in Round Rock.

"I was cornered," she said. "I was just fighting this particular sergeant off of me. It was the most scariest, intimidating, anxious experience that I've ever had to experience because I'm thinking to myself, 'Your wife is even here.'"

Pearson said that assault in 2006 shaped her military experience. She said the sergeant who assaulted her made it a point to make her life unbearable after a report was filed.

“There was a report made about the party. He thought I reported him,” she said. “But in all honesty, I didn’t. Not at all. My life was a living hell from day one after that.”

In retrospect, Pearson said she knows keeping her silence was a mistake. She believes that men and women who in those situations need to speak up and know there’s no shame in doing so.

“Unfortunately, I kept silent,” she said. “I didn’t talk about it, but I was only hurting myself internally.”
read it here

Monday, September 9, 2019

Two Army Generals made history....because they are sisters!

These 2 women are the first sisters ever to become Army generals


CNN
Mallory Hughes
September 7, 2019

(CNN)The US Army has plenty of famous examples of generals who were brothers. But sisters? Now that's another story.
Maj. Gen. Maria Barrett presenting Brig. Gen. Paula Lodi a beret with one-star rank insignia as a tribute to the history of women serving in the Army and the historic moment of sisters serving together as General Officers.

Maj. Gen. Maria Barrett and younger sister Brig. Gen. Paula Lodi became what the Army believes to be the first pair of sister generals.

Because women sometimes change their last names after marriage, the Army would have had to look at every single woman general, as well as their siblings, to compare names and determine if they were sisters. An Army spokesperson told CNN that it wasn't possible to do that.

"But since there haven't been that many women generals, it's a safe bet that they're the first," the spokesperson said.

The military didn't start accepting women into its ranks until the Army Nursing Corps was established in 1901.
Maj. Gen. Barrett is the Commanding General of NETCOM. She graduated from Tufts University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations and was commissioned through the Army ROTC program as a Second Lieutenant in 1988.

Her younger sister, Brig. Gen. Lodi, was promoted in July and is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at the Office of the Surgeon General. She is a Distinguished Honor Graduate of the Naval War College and has master's degrees in public administration, military arts and science, and national security and strategic studies.
read it here

Thursday, September 5, 2019

History made as Airman becomes Army Ranger...oh yes she did!

First female Air Force airman earns Army Ranger tab


Air Force Times
By: Diana Stancy Correll
September 3, 2019


“Ranger School is truly not for the weak or faint of heart. It speaks well of all those who persevere to find that inner grit and motivation to push through all that Ranger School throws at them,” said Lt. Col. Walter Sorensen, Air Force Security Forces Center chief of training, in an Air Force news release.
Air Force 1st Lt. Chelsey Hibsch has become the first female airman to graduate from Army Ranger School in Fort Benning, Georgia. She is now a flight commander in the 821st Contingency Response Support Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, California. (Machiko Arita/Air Force)
Nearly 300 airmen have earned the Ranger tab since the Army started accepting airmen into its school 64 years ago. But none have been women — that is, until Air Force 1st Lt. Chelsey Hibsch became the first female airman to earn the tab last week.

Hibsch, a former enlisted airman who previously served with the 374th Security Forces Squadron at Yokota Air Base in Japan, pinned on the tab at the Army Ranger School graduation at Fort Benning, Georgia, Aug. 30.

She was eligible to take the Army Ranger Course after she attended the Air Force’s Ranger Assessment Course, which is hosted by the Air Force Security Forces Center and based on the first two weeks of the Army Ranger Course. She also attended the Tropic Lightning Academy at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.

Hibsch described the Air Force’s Ranger Assessment Course as “an unmatched learning experience on leadership and followership," and prepared her for Ranger School because it provided an “understanding of how you function when you’re hungry, tired, wet, cold and worse, then you have to lead a team of individuals feeling the exact same way."

“You really find out a lot about your teammates and yourself in these stressful situations,” Hibsch said, according to an Air Force news release.
read it here

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Gabbard's gray hair more important than how she got it? Seriously!

Gabbard explains why she keeps spot of gray in hair


The Hill
BY JESSICA CAMPISI
09/02/19


The 2020 hopeful took two weeks off the campaign trail for the joint training exercise mission in Indonesia.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a 2020 presidential candidate, on Monday explained why she hasn’t gotten rid of the gray area in her hair.

“I started going gray in that one spot during and after my first deployment to Iraq,” she said during an Instagram Live video while in Iowa. “And so I keep it as just a remembrance of those who we lost there and the cost of war and why we fight so hard for peace.”

“No, I’m not going to fix [it],” she added. “If you mean dye, no, I’m not going to dye it.”
read it here

Gabbard spent two weeks in Indonesia training with the National Guard. You'd think that would be the biggest part of her recent activities but there is more focus on the fact she has some gray hair! 

Social media still not taking military women seriously.

Friday, August 23, 2019

After Captain died, Eglin Air Force changed physical fitness test

Eglin Curtails Run Portion of PT Test After Captain's Death


Military.com
By Oriana Pawlyk
22 Aug 2019
"I am deeply saddened over Tranay's death," said Lt. Col. Timothy Stevens, AFOTEC commander, in the release. "The pain of her absence has touched each and every one of us. Our thoughts and prayers are with Tranay's family, her friends and our fellow airmen during this difficult time."

Physical fitness tests were briefly suspended earlier this week and outdoor cardio testing will be curtailed for the remainder of the summer at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, after an airman died Saturday. She had completed her PT test on Friday.

Capt. Tranay Lashawn Tanner, 29, was transported to the Eglin Hospital on Saturday morning with health complications, according to a base news release. Tanner, assigned to the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center (AFOTEC), Detachment 2, was later moved to the Fort Walton Medical Center due to the "serious nature of her condition." She died Saturday afternoon.
read it here

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Six year old girl wants to know why plastic soldiers are not women too...and so do a lot of other people

update Girl’s message for equality received in a big way: Green Army women figurines are on the way


BMC Toys, one of three companies to receive letters from young Vivian Lord — and the only to respond — has begun producing women figurines to be included in the iconic toy set that dates back to the 1930s.

Missing in action: Classic green Army men still have no women figurines, and this 6-year-old is not having it


Military Times
By: J.D. Simkins
August 14, 2019

Young Vivian Lord of Arkansas recently acquired a set of the instantly recognizable plastic green Army men figurines, iconic toys the 6-year-old had been pining after for weeks.
Imel's concept sketches of plastic army women. (BMC Toys)

Excitedly, the little girl from Little Rock sifted through the combat-ready green men, each figure contorted into one of an array of well-known fighting positions, but she couldn’t find what she was looking for.

None of the figures looked like her.

Unsatisfied, Vivian decided to take it up directly with various toy makers, penning letters to three different companies in an effort to add a little enlightenment to some antiquated business practices.

After opening her letter with a quick statement about her budding soccer career, Vivian gets right to the point, calling to the attention of toy makers the scarcity of women figurines, as well as the poorly received pink — still all men — versions some companies produced.
read it here

Female veterans are 25% more likely to commit suicide

Why women veterans are 25% more likely than civilian women to commit suicide


Military Times
By: Kate Henricks Thomas and Kyleanne Hunter
August 14, 2019

"We missed the sense of unit cohesion and good-natured support we’d so often enjoyed on active duty, and struggled to find that same sense of community in our civilian lives." Kyleanne Hunter
The Women in Military Service to America Memorial, the only national museum honoring military women, celebrated its 15th anniversary on Oct. 20, 2012. (Veterans Affairs)
After four years on active duty, Amy left the Army and moved back to her hometown.

However, she struggled to find her tribe. At work, she was told her handshake was a bit too firm and lectured about how her direct communication style made her coworkers uncomfortable. At her local VFW bar, the men stopped talking to stare at her, and her attempts to connect were met with awkward silences. A few other attempts to connect with the veteran communities she saw advertised at the VA and Facebook left her feeling similarly displaced.

“In both civilian settings and veteran settings, I was ‘weird,’” she recalls.

She explored some of the newer veteran service organizations (VSOs), but most failed to include child care or weren’t kid-friendly. Amy was a single parent, so she mentally crossed those options off her list too. She stayed lonely, and slowly sank into a deep depression.

The very word “veteran” calls to mind the image of a man — particularly a male combat veteran. However, there are more than 2 million women veterans in the United States today, and women veterans are the nation’s fastest-growing veteran population. Unfortunately, this unique population, many of whom have deployed during the past 18 years, rarely benefit from the traditional trappings of the hero returned home.
Kyleanne Hunter was a Cobra pilot and is a decorated combat veteran. I served as military police. We spent our 20s in the Corps, and it quickly became both our family and identity. We each deployed overseas and generally loved our time in service. However, transitioning to civilian life was another matter entirely. We were high performing, but — despite appearing “successful” and “normal” on the outside — we each felt a nagging sense of displacement and not belonging. read it here


corrected must have been a typo in the original report from  Military Times

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

First female combat veteran running for President reporting for duty...in National Guard

Gabbard takes presidential campaign break for Army National Guard training


By: The Associated Press
  August 13, 2019
Gabbard is the first female combat veteran to run for U.S. president. She was elected to Congress in 2012.
HONOLULU — Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is taking two weeks off from her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign to participate in Army National Guard training.
Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard speaks at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019, in Des Moines, Iowa. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)


Gabbard announced the two-week break in a statement Monday. She will return to the campaign trail on Aug. 25.

Gabbard is a major in the Army National Guard who has served in the military for more than 16 years and deployed to Iraq in 2004 and Kuwait in 2008.
read it here

Monday, July 8, 2019

Veterans lives saved by boxing club?

'They Saved My Life,' Boxing Club Provides a Healing Outlet for Veterans


The Associated Press
By Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Diana Nelson Jones
7 Jul 2019
Boxing isn't for every veteran who needs an outlet, but for those it does help, it is a testament to the power of physical activity in improving mental health
.
Brandy Horchak-Jevsjukova, left, helps Tysh Wagner with stretches after a workout at Warrior's Call Boxing in Baden on Monday, June 10, 2019. Wagner served two tours of duty as a medic in Afghanistan and says the boxing workout helps her heal from the trauma of her war experiences. Horchak-Jevsjukova, co-owner of Warrior's Call, served in Iraq. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP)
BADEN, Pa. (AP) — Brandy Horchak-Jevsjukova jokes that she is Tyshie Wagner's service dog.


A veteran's service dog is trained to lean into her to provide comfort, to stand watch behind her, to jump up or paw her to interrupt a crisis.

Brandy has leaned into Tyshie persistently since they met in 2017, when Tyshie was almost 400 pounds, terrified of leaving her house, and imagining — and once attempting — suicide. She had gone through several therapists and had a husband who was at his wits' end.

Cutting through the chronology of their story, we arrive at the Warrior's Call Boxing Club in Baden, Beaver County, one recent morning.

Brandy and her husband, Vitali Jevsjukova, whom everyone calls "V," opened the club in 2015 to be the help to veterans that boxing had been for them during their military service in Iraq.
read it here

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Motorcycle charity ride to help female veteran...by all female club!

Women's motorcycle club holding benefit run to help disabled veteran


NBC 26 News
By: Stacy Engebretson
Jul 03, 2019

The Sapphires not only help military veterans, they also support the Oshkosh Police Department's K-9 unit, Christine Ann Domestic Abuse Services and people battling serious medical issues. Next year, they plan to team-up with the Oshkosh Fire Department as well.

NEENAH, Wis. — The rev of their engines. The breeze in their hair. The camaraderie. There's so much the Sapphires enjoy about their all-female motorcycle group, but number one Is riding for a reason.

"We're a strong sisterhood," said Leslie Schultz, one of 14 members of the Sapphires.
The Sapphires are Oshkosh's chapter of the nationwide motorcycle club the Chrome Angelz . It's a nonprofit organization with 176 chapters worldwide where women ride with a purpose.

"That's pretty much what gets us going is it's the people we support, our sisters and our actual brothers that are out there riding for the same cause," Schultz said.

They're supporting six causes this year including a benefit run for 37-year-old Tatiana Saunders of Neenah.

"I feel grateful," Saunders said. "And I keep wondering why me?"

Saunders served nearly five years in the U.S. Army. A year of that time, she was in a war zone in Iraq.
read it here

Thursday, June 27, 2019

DA's office found police shooting of Iraq veteran in PTSD crisis "justified"

When exactly do we finally admit that all the awareness is useless and it is time to change what we are doing?

Madison County District Attorney’s Office finds fatal Huntsville police shooting was justified


WHNT 19 News
BY BRIAN LAWSON
JUNE 24, 2019
After her Army service in Iraq, Ragland spent time in a Kansas Army facility that helps wounded and ill soldiers transition to civilian life or continued Army service.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - The Madison County District Attorney's Office agrees with a Huntsville shooting review board in finding that the use of deadly force during a police encounter with an Army veteran suffering from PTSD was justified.

On Friday, a police review board determined the officers involved in the shooting acted within department policy.

Madison County District Attorney Rob Broussard told WHNT News 19 Monday that the evidence supports the board's finding.

"The investigator with the Huntsville Police Department met with us and laid out the case," Broussard said. "He showed us the evidence, including the body cams. It was clearly a justified shooting on the part of HPD. There will be no action on our part with respect to presentment to a grand jury, because it was clearly justified."

The fatal incident came after a call from the Stadium Apartments where Ragland lived. Police said they responded to a call of a woman waving a gun and making threats at Stadium Apartments. The woman, 32-year-old Crystal Ragland, served 17 months in the Iraq war and suffered from PTSD. That call proved to be a fatal and tragic collision.
read more here

Monday, June 24, 2019

Arrest made after murder of Air National Guard female soldier and children

Arrested boyfriend of slain Staten Island servicewoman had violent past


New York Post
By Tina Moore, Anabel Sosa and Max Jaeger
June 23, 2019

A Staten Island military man was arrested and charged Sunday in the murder of his Air National Guard girlfriend and their two young sons, police announced.
The scene of the alleged murder (left) and Alla Ausheva Richard Harbus; CNP

The arrest came as new details emerged about accused killer Shane Walker’s violent past — and his Russian-born girlfriend’s tragic story of achieving her American dream only for her life to be cut short at 37.

Cops charged Walker, 36, with murder, manslaughter, arson and criminal possession of a weapon for killing US Air National Guard Airman 1st Class Alla Ausheva along with the couple’s sons Ivan, 2, and Elia, 3.

Ausheva was found bludgeoned to death in her home Saturday near the bodies of their children, who appear to have been drowned.
read more here

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

One Of The Most Successful Women In America...is a veteran!

This U.S. Veteran Is One Of The Most Successful Women In America


FORBES
Deniz Cam
Forbes Staff

Kathleen Hildreth has been around airplanes since she was a child. Five decades ago, she watched her parents fly their Cessna 172 in their small hometown of Trenton, Michigan.
Kathleen Hildreth, U.S. veteran and cofounder of military aircraft maintenance company, M1 Support Services COURTESY OF KATHLEEN HILDRETH
After graduating from West Point, she flew helicopters for the military for five years but today she helps other pilots fly. In 2001, Hildreth cofounded aviation maintenance company M1 Support Services, which pulled in $680 million revenue in 2018. Forbes estimates Hildreth’s fortune at $370 million, thanks to her minority stake in M1 Support, enough for the U.S. veteran to make her debut at No. 57 on Forbes 2019 list of America’s most successful self-made women.


“Anything in the government's [aircraft] inventory, we do work on,” Hildreth told Forbes in a brief phone conversation. “You name it.” (She later declined Forbes’ request for a more extensive interview). The U.S Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and NASA are all clients of M1 Support, which relies entirely on the federal government for business. Most of its revenues come from maintaining military aircraft including fighter jets such as F15s, F16s, and A10 Thunderbolts.
read more here

Thursday, May 23, 2019

USS Arlington investigating death of female sailor

update Navy IDs Officer Who Died Aboard the Arlington; NCIS Probe Continues

Navy officials have identified the woman who died aboard a ship during a port stop in Spain as Lt. Kaylie Ludwig. Ludwig, a medical corps officer, was found unresponsive aboard the amphibious transport dock ship Arlington on Tuesday. She was later pronounced dead aboard the ship.

NCIS Investigating Sailor's Death Aboard Navy Ship Deployed to Europe


Military.com
Gina Harkins
May 23, 2019

An investigation is underway aboard a Navy ship after a sailor was found dead during a stop in Spain.
The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS Arlington (LPD 24) operates in the Atlantic Ocean (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Chris Roys)

A sailor assigned to the amphibious transport dock Arlington was found unresponsive on Tuesday, said Cmdr. Kyle Raines, a spokesman for U.S. 6th Fleet. The sailor was later pronounced dead aboard the ship, he added.

The person's identity has not been released, pending family notification. Navy Times is reporting the sailor was a woman.
read more here

Monday, May 20, 2019

Mom of "Lone Soldier" "No other soldier should come back in a casket

MOTHER OF MICA LEVIT, WHO TOOK HER OWN LIFE, CALLS FOR MORE LONE SOLDIER SUPPORT


Jerusalem Post Israel News
BY ANNA AHRONHEIM
MAY 20, 2019
But the annual State Comptroller report has found major deficiencies in how the military deals with lone soldiers whose needs the IDF has not fully examined.


"No other soldier should come back in a casket."

When Michaela (Mica) Levit joined the Israeli military in November of 2017, her parents knew she was going to be a fighter, but last week she was found dead outside her base in central Israel.

“We knew she wasn’t going to go anywhere else in the army,” her mother Orit Levit told The Jerusalem Post. “She told us she wasn’t going to Israel to be a secretary, she wanted to be a fighter. We knew that if she was going, she wouldn’t do anything else.”

Levit described her daughter as “full of life, positive and happy,” as someone who was always encouraging and supporting her friends in times of need and the life of the party and “glue of the group” during the happier moments.

“She loved everyone, she never had bad word to say... She was so good to her family, never wanted us to worry, to disappoint us. She was an angel.”

What happened “wasn’t anything we expected of her,” Orit said.

“I never felt she was isolated in Israel, she had the support of extended family. She had so many invitations and she told me 'Mum, sometimes I feel bad that I want to stay home on the weekends.’”

And it wasn’t only family, Orit said. “A lot of her friends are sending condolences and [saying] that their hearts are broken and that they will never meet another person like her... She had a community.”

Orit’s middle child, Mica, moved to Israel in June 2017 and settled at Kibbutz Kinneret, where she took ulpan classes before joining the IDF through the Garin Tzabar program in November, drafting into the mixed Caracal combat battalion. She had just moved to an apartment with other lone soldiers in Hadera and was going through the army’s team leader training course (Course Makim) when she took her life.
read more here

This is what a "Lone Soldier" is
LONE SOLDIERSA “lone soldier” is a soldier in the IDF with no family in Israel to support him or her: a new immigrant, a volunteer from abroad, an orphan or an individual from a broken home.

Every day tens of thousands of soldiers are defending the State of Israel and its citizens. These soldiers regularly spend weekends and holidays at home where their parents provide for all of their needs: food, laundry, and even a hug. Challenges for a lone soldier arise when he or she leaves base. While Israeli-born lone soldiers have their families to return home to, lone soldiers are left to fend for themselves while on leave from the army. This can be once a month, or every weekend, depending on where they serve and what part of training they are in. For more than 7,000 lone soldiers, there is no immediate family in Israel to support them. Though highly motivated and proud to serve, when on leave, many of them struggle with basic needs that a family would solve.

Family searching for answers after US-born IDF lone soldier dies by suicide

 

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Were you stationed at Kunia Hawaii? Are you sick?

Kunia veterans blame possible exposure to toxic pesticides for mystery illnesses


Hawaii News Now
By Mahealani Richardson
May 13, 2019
Veterans who worked at Kunia intel site claim pesticide exposure caused cancer, other illnesses

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A group of more than 100 Kunia veterans are suffering from neurological issues, cancer, birth defects and other illnesses after they say they were exposed to toxic pesticides.

Tara Lemieux, 50, of Maryland suffers from hand tremors, memory loss and other health problems.

She believes it stems from her days as an Army specialist from 1991 to 1995 at the Kunia “Tunnel” Field Station near Schofield Barracks.

Lemieux says nine out of the 12 members of her unit have died young.

"They didn't tell us that this beautiful absolutely picturesque once in a lifetime duty station that there was another side to it," said Lemieux.

Back then, the three story underground National Security Agency facility sat below Del Monte pineapple fields.

Lamieux believes she was directly exposed to toxic chemicals in 1991 when a broken water well flooded the underground facility. She and a handful of others were waist deep in water that was oily and smelled like chemicals.
read more here

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Wisconsin Army National Guard assaulted and betrayed getting justice the hard way

Final punishment: As Wisconsin National Guard officer Megan Plunkett took steps to leave the Guard after she said she was sexually assaulted three times, officials tried to revoke her benefits


Madison.com
Katelyn Ferral
May 11, 2019

“I was like, ‘I’m out, I just want to be left alone.’ I don’t want to cause more problems and then he came at me with fraternization. Are you ... kidding me?” she said. “He… assaulted me and how dare they accuse me of fraternization without asking me what happened?”
Eight months after the Wisconsin Army National Guard finished its investigations into 1st Lt. Megan Plunkett’s sexual assault claims, they tried to kick her out.
They did so even though Plunkett was already making her own way out. She was going through a medical discharge for post-traumatic stress disorder connected to alleged sexual assaults by two different men in two different units she served in.

She was not actively training at that time but was having a consensual relationship with an enlisted soldier in her unit. After the relationship ended, Plunkett said that man also sexually assaulted her. As it did in the first two cases, the Guard said her allegations were unsubstantiated, but they went one step further than that, finding Plunkett guilty of “fraternization.” In the military, officers are forbidden to have sexual relationships with enlisted soldiers.
As of today, Plunkett has won some measure of vindication from other agencies. A panel of out-of-state Army officers ultimately rejected the Guard's attempt to strip her benefits and status, though that ruling is not yet final. Separately, the Veterans Administration awarded her full service-connected disability compensation and medical benefits for PTSD, which they determined was caused by military sexual trauma she experienced in the Wisconsin Army National Guard.

'Failure to Protect'
This week, the Cap Times is publishing “Failure to Protect,” a four-part investigation by reporter Katelyn Ferral into the Wisconsin Army National Guard and its treatment of soldiers who are sexually abused in its service. The series is centered on 1st Lt. Megan Plunkett, a soldier who says she was sexually assaulted by three different Guard colleagues over the course of three years.

After she brought those allegations forward, the Guard not only decided that they were unsubstantiated, but took multiple steps to punish her. Plunkett eventually brought her story to the Cap Times, and after a four-month investigation including access to extensive records of a type rarely available to the public, we are sharing her story with you. It is alarming, nuanced and sometimes graphic, but it is important to hear, coming amidst growing concern among government officials in Wisconsin and nationally about the number of military sexual abuse victims and their treatment.

Part one focused on Plunkett’s allegations, the Guard’s responses and also explains its procedures for responding to sexual assault allegations.

Part two took a close look at a yearlong, internal Guard investigation into Plunkett’s first unit, which concluded that it had a longstanding culture of sexual misconduct.

Part three examined the phenomenon of “military sexual trauma” as well as Plunkett’s often frustrating efforts to maintain consistent medical care and legal representation.

Part four (below) describes the Guard’s final — and at this point, unsuccessful — effort to strip Plunkett of military benefits even after she was in the process of getting a discharge for medical reasons.
read more here

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Army Reservist went from homeless to homeowner in Las Vegas

Once homeless, Las Vegas veteran gets 1st taste of homeownership


Las Vegas Review Journal
Briana Erickson
April 26, 2019

Martinez, who starts studying social work at UNLV in the fall, said her next step will be to help other veterans who might be in the same situation she was in.
She had the key, and now it was time for one more thing. The brand-new American flag, still bright and shiny and creased from packaging.

Carrying it to the outside of her new home near downtown Las Vegas, Ana Martinez attempted to erect the flag on the tan house with white finish. But she didn’t have the necessary tools.
Laughing, the 52-year-old veteran used packing tape to secure the metal plate to the wall. As the flag came up, so did the tears. And when the tape didn’t stick, Martinez held onto the flag tightly.

“A lot of people don’t make it back. … They just don’t have an opportunity to live their life and continue giving,” the Army veteran said through her tears. “It’s just a little emotional for me.”

It was the first thing she did Friday morning as a first-time homeowner.

She was determined to put the flag up and to start up the stereo in her living room.

Only two years earlier, she had been homeless, living in her red two-door Mitsubishi Eclipse and working as a chief warrant officer with the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Sloan.
read more here

Saturday, April 20, 2019

Spc. Kamisha Block's family did not settle for what military told them

Army reopens case of 2007 murder-suicide that was originally called 'friendly fire'


STARS AND STRIPES
By ROSE L. THAYER
Published: April 19, 2019

AUSTIN, Texas – One gunshot wound to the chest from friendly fire — that’s the story Spc. Kamisha Block’s family was told about her death in Iraq.
Spc. Kamisha Block was buried in her hometown of Vidor, Texas. Twelve years after she was murdered by a fellow soldier at Camp Liberty, Iraq, the Army has reopened the investigation into her death. Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes


Her family had no reason not believe the two soldiers who arrived at their home in Vidor, Texas in August 2007 to break the bad news to them.

But when Block’s body arrived at their local funeral home with five gunshot wounds, including one in the head, her family started asking questions.

“It’s just lie after lie after lie after lie!” Shonta Block



Shonta Block said family members have questioned the Army about her sister, waiting six months to get the report on her Aug. 16, 2007 noncombat death. The family learned while she was deployed at Camp Liberty, Iraq, the 20-year-old soldier was shot to death by her 30-year-old boyfriend, Staff Sgt. Paul Brandon Norris, who then turned his weapon on himself.


In August, Shonta Block, who works with a remodeling company, said they finally got a glimmer of hope when a phone call from the Inspector General of the Army Criminal Investigation Command informed her that the investigation into her sister’s death was reopened.

“I was on a job painting a door,” Shonta Block said about the call. “I said, ‘Oh my God, thank you.’ I couldn’t stop saying it. I just kept saying thank you.”
read more here

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Fort Bragg Soldier hits 100th marathon!

Soldier Is Running Her 100th Marathon in Boston


DVIDS
By Eve Meinhardt
15 April 2019

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- It all started when she was stationed in Virginia 12 years ago. That's when Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Beofra Butler saw everyone training for the Marine Corps Marathon and decided to give the 26.2-mile race a try.
Chief Warrant Officer 4 Beofra K. Butler, administrative executive officer to the commanding general, U.S. Army Forces Command, poses with her marathon medals on March 22, 2019. She has run 99 marathons since 2008. Around her neck are medals from her five previous Boston Marathons. She will run her 100th race April 15 in Boston. (U.S. Army photo by Eve Meinhardt)

As a soldier, running was already a part of her daily life and physical fitness routine. She had run several other shorter races, including the Army 10-Miler and a few half-marathons, so the challenge of a full marathon appealed to her. She wasn't even afraid of the dreaded "wall" that everyone told her she would hit around mile 20, when her body would start shutting down as energy stores ran low and fatigue set in.
read more here