Parris Island Marine killed in motorcycle crash

Parris Island Marine killed in motorcycle crash was expecting birth of third son
By TOM BARTON
December 28, 2012

A Parris Island Marine killed Thursday while riding his motorcycle on Joe Frazier Road was looking forward to the birth of his third son in April, his family said Friday. Cpl. Cameron P. Branum, 23, was assigned to Headquarters and Service Battalion at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, serving as a company clerk, helping handle administrative matters and barracks maintenance, Gunnery Sgt. Bill Lisbon, base public affairs chief, said Friday.

Branum leaves behind a wife, Timi, who is pregnant, and sons Gavyn, 3, and Ayden, 1; according to his father, Gregory Branum.

The Marine grew up in a military family with service dating back to the Revolutionary War, his uncle Jeff Branum said. Both he, Branum's father and grandfather served in the military. A cousin serves in the Army, according to family.

"Cameron will never be forgotten," said Gregory Branum, who retired as a master sergeant in the Air Force in 2007 after 24 years.

"And as the military says, 'No man left behind,'" he said. "Cameron will be by our sides forever."
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Thieves stole everything from deployed Marine including underwear

Marine at war robbed of everything
Thieves struck while away in Afghanistan; vets offer help
Written by
Gretel C. Kovach
Dec. 28, 2012

Hammond, 34, originally from Peotone, Ill., is serving her second combat tour. Her husband is assigned to the Wounded Warrior Battalion, recovering from injuries he suffered in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2005.

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan
(From left) Maj. Shane Goodwin, Regional Command Southwest Comptroller; Chief Warrant Officer 3 Grant Murphy, RC (SW) Financial Management Resource Officer; and Gunnery Sgt. Jamie Hammond, RS (SW) Comptroller chief, sing during a memorial for Master Sgt. Scott Pruitt who was killed in action April 28, in Zaranj, Afghanistan.

It had been a tough year to begin with. Then Gunnery Sgt. Jamie Hammond discovered that just about everything she owned except the desert camouflage on her back was stolen while she was in Afghanistan.

All her other Marine Corps uniforms, including the ones she got at boot camp 13 years ago. Her baby spoon. Fossils collected with her grandfather. The safe filled with tax returns and other important documents. Bedding, snowboard, shoes.

Everything, gone.

Hammond, a comptroller chief with Camp Pendleton’s 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Afghanistan, had returned for a conference. The day before her flight back to the war zone, she stopped by Cube Smart in Vista on Nov. 30 to drop off some gear.

“When I lifted the door to my storage unit, I was in utter shock, disbelief, panic and rage. All of the items I had acquired during my childhood and adult life were stolen from me,” Hammond recalled in an email. “It is still hard to comprehend the loss.”

When her yearlong tour ends, it will really sink in, “since there is nothing to unpack.”

The thieves pilfered about $25,000 worth of her possessions; insurance will reimburse her for $2,000, Hammond said. They also charged on her cards, passed her checks to an identity theft ring and tried to obtain a fraudulent mortgage.

“They stole her damn underwear!” fumed Neil Kenny, 63, of Staten Island, N.Y., and a Marine veteran of the 1968 siege of Khe Sanh, Vietnam.
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General Cantwell's Battle With PTSD Leads Him to the Brink

General's Battle With PTSD Leads Him to the Brink
CBS
By By KRISTEN GELINEAU
Associated Press
SYDNEY
December 29, 2012 (AP)

In the exploding hell of battle, a single hand poked through the earth.

John Cantwell could see the ridges and calluses of the skin, and the pile of desert sand that had swallowed the rest of the Iraqi soldier. The troops Cantwell was fighting alongside in the Gulf War had used bulldozing tanks to bury the man alive.

This hand — so jarringly human amid the cold mechanics of bombs and anonymous enemies — was about to wedge itself, the Australian man would write decades later, "like a splinter under the skin of my soul." It would lead, along with other battlefield horrors, to the splintering of his mind and to a locked psychiatric ward. And it would lead to the abrupt end of a 38-year military career that saw him ascend to remarkable heights as the commander of Australia's 1,500 troops in Afghanistan.

In the process, Maj. Gen. Cantwell would become two people: a competent warrior on the outside. A cowering wreck on the inside.

He hid his agony to survive, to protect his loved ones and — he admits it — to pursue professional glory. But in the end, the man with two selves found he had lost himself completely.

A disheartening number of veterans suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. What made Cantwell so extraordinary was his ability to hide his escalating pain for so long, while simultaneously soaring through the military's ranks — eventually taking charge of an entire nation's troops in a war zone.
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Major General John Cantwell

Big news, the earth is not round and too many military suicides

Big news, the earth is not round and too many military suicides
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
December 29, 2012

When people thought the world was flat and ships would fall off, it didn't change the fact that the earth was far from flat. Just because people didn't want to believe the truth it did not make what they thought any more true. Now we know the earth is not round. "OBLATE SPHEROID is not as easy to remember as "round," but it is the truth."

Just as ridiculous is what has been floating on the web about military suicides outnumbering combat deaths.

Soldier suicides outnumber combat deaths
In 2012, suicide rates worsened and 212 troops died in combat in Afghanistan
Salon.com
BY NATASHA LENNARD
DEC 28, 2012


The number of soldier suicides this year has outnumbered combat deaths. Combat-related deaths in Afghanistan were down to 212 this year, compared to over 400 in 2011, but the number of soldiers taking their own lives continues to rise. According to stats cited by CBS from the Department of the Army, 303 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard soldiers committed suicide.

Here's some more facts. First this report is missing Marines, Air Force and Navy. This was the latest from the Army suicides at 303. There was another report from the Army with this piece of news.

For 2012, there have been 126 potential not on active-duty suicides (84 Army National Guard and 42 Army Reserve): 97 have been confirmed as suicides and 29 remain under investigation.

Bad enough for you yet? Add this in.

Of that total, the Army accounted for 168, surpassing its high last year of 165

53 sailors took their own lives, one more than last year.

The Air Force and Marine Corps are only a few deaths from record numbers. Fifty-six airmen had committed suicide as of Nov. 11, short of the 60 in 2010.

There have been 46 suicides among Marines, whose worst year was 2009 with 52.

Now let's talk about 18 veterans committing suicide each day. Getting the message yet? While you digest all that, remember, December numbers won't be released until next month. Then there are hundreds more of survivors after they attempted suicides and the over 30,000 saves the Suicide Prevention program claims they saved.

I'll keep posting reports like this and keep hoping that one day some reporter realizes that just because they hear something today, doesn't mean it wasn't happening yesterday.

Sadness in success of Veterans suicide prevention hotline

First read this.

Suicide Hotline Fights To Keep Vets And Troops Alive
by QUIL LAWRENCE
December 28, 2012
At a suicide prevention center in upstate New York, America's troops and veterans are calling in for help.

And that help is needed more than ever. This past year witnessed a terrible death toll from suicide. For the first time in a decade of war, more active-duty troops have taken their own lives this year than have died fighting in Afghanistan.

According to The Military Suicide Report, a blog that follows news on military suicides, 321 active-duty troops killed themselves this year. The U.S. death toll in Afghanistan this year currently stands at 309.

The suicide hotline is just one way to help them. read more here

Now read this.

Mullane says the Veterans Crisis Line has done 30,000 successful interventions across the country since 2007. But they can't save everyone. Sometimes veterans call only to say goodbye or to let the authorities know where to find their bodies, so their family won't have to.

Those are the parts we need to pay attention to. For all the "charities" out there claiming to be taking care of these veterans, all the "mental health professionals" claiming they are helping them, all the money the congress has spent and the DOD spent along with the VA on "programs" that claim to be working, the suicide prevention hotline still had to save 30,000 veterans and they are still committing suicide along with active duty servicemen and women. That has to be the saddest part of all.

Have reporters lost their ability to ask questions? Why isn't anyone being held accountable for any of this?

Yesterday I received an email from a Mom telling me about her son. God must have been watching over him. He's an Iraq veteran and left a suicide note. I cannot go into details but by the time we talked on the phone everything worked the way it was supposed to and he is getting the help he has needed all along. It could have ended much differently and today his Mom could have been planing a funeral instead of how to travel to see her son in the hospital.

I don't know about you but I've been complaining about all of this so long that even a story trying to focus on positive things being done, I read between the lines in total disbelief.