Veteran's improbable survival gives heart to shell-shocked surgeon
CBS News
David Martin
January 3, 2013
(CBS News) AUBURN, Ala. -- The carnage Lee Warren encountered in the combat hospital at Balad, Iraq, in 2005 was like nothing he had ever seen as a neurosurgeon. And no patient was worse-off than a soldier brought in by helicopter after being hit by a roadside bomb.
"I unwrapped his head in the emergency room and looked at him and thought he was dead," Warren says.
He was, Warren later wrote, "one of the most horrifically injured people I have ever operated on."
"His scalp and the front part of his face was all gone, and then I could see his frontal lobe on the left side sort of protruding out onto his face," he says. "His brain was exposed and hanging out."
After four hours in surgery, Warren and three other doctors managed to get him on a medevac flight out of Iraq still alive. Warren called the soldier's father but could offer little hope.
"I just didn't see how anybody with that injury could survive," he says.
Warren left the military and started a successful practice, but he had nightmares about all the wounded soldiers whose fates he never learned.
Finally, he faced his demons by opening a trunk he had brought back from Iraq. He found bullets and shrapnel he had pulled from brains and a thumb-drive with files of his cases, including the soldier with that horrible head wound. Warren looked him up online.
"And he popped up on a CBS interview -- very much alive and well," Warren says.
read more here
Friday, January 4, 2013
Dragoon Guardsman found hanged at home
UPDATE
"He was on top form over Christmas": Devastated family of soldier found hanged speak about tragedy
By Andy Rudd
6 Jan 2013
Trooper Robert Griffiths, who had survived a Taliban bomb blast on the frontline in Afghanistan, was found dead at his home
"He was on top form over Christmas": Devastated family of soldier found hanged speak about tragedy
By Andy Rudd
6 Jan 2013
Trooper Robert Griffiths, who had survived a Taliban bomb blast on the frontline in Afghanistan, was found dead at his home
Afghanistan soldier found hanged at his Swansea homeI get emails from other countries on military suicides. This is just one more example of how very human these men and women are. It doesn't matter where they live as much as they just don't want to live anymore. No nation has taken care of their veterans properly and no nation can claim they really support their troops.
Friday, January 04, 2013
South Wales Evening Post
By Liz Perkins and Jason Evans
A HERO soldier who served on the frontline in Afghanistan has been found hanged at his Swansea home.
Trooper Robert Llewellyn Griffiths, of 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards, also known as the Welsh Cavalry, was discovered at the property in Oldway, Bishopston, on Saturday evening.
He was only 24.
An Army spokesman said: "Police are investigating the death of a soldier who was serving with 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards.
"Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time."
The regiment returned from a challenging seven-month tour of Helmand Province last April.
read more here
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Veterans For Common Sense may be heard by Supreme Court
Media Advisory: Judges to Decide if Supreme Court Hears Landmark Lawsuit
Contact: Veterans for Common Sense
(202) 491-6953 Date: January 3, 2013
In the next few days, the Supreme Court will determine if it will hear arguments in the case, Veterans for Common Sense v. Shinseki. An announcement could come as early as this Friday.
In one of the most important landmark legal cases involving veterans’ access to healthcare and disability benefits in decades, two veterans groups filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on September 5, 2012, asking the Court to hear the case. According to the Supreme Court's web site, our case was distributed for conference of January 4, 2013.
The lawsuit, filed in July 2007 by VCS and Veterans United for Truth (VUFT), centers on one key issue: whether the Veterans Judicial Review Act allows veterans to challenge in federal court the systemic delays in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) provision of mental health care and death and disability compensation.
Learn more about our VCS / VUFT lawsuit at our web site. The New York Times published several news articles about the veteran suicide crisis as well as the enormous disability claim backlog now at more than 1.1 million claims. and the paper also published an editorial supporting the plight of our veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Veterans for Common Sense also appeared on "60 Minutes" three years ago discussing the long waits veterans face when seeking VA assistance.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit formed in the District of Columbia in August 2002, VCS leads the way on many key VA reforms. One major example is VA's new streamlined disability benefits for PTSD based on scientific research announced in July 2010.
Contact: Veterans for Common Sense
(202) 491-6953 Date: January 3, 2013
In the next few days, the Supreme Court will determine if it will hear arguments in the case, Veterans for Common Sense v. Shinseki. An announcement could come as early as this Friday.
In one of the most important landmark legal cases involving veterans’ access to healthcare and disability benefits in decades, two veterans groups filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on September 5, 2012, asking the Court to hear the case. According to the Supreme Court's web site, our case was distributed for conference of January 4, 2013.
The lawsuit, filed in July 2007 by VCS and Veterans United for Truth (VUFT), centers on one key issue: whether the Veterans Judicial Review Act allows veterans to challenge in federal court the systemic delays in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) provision of mental health care and death and disability compensation.
Learn more about our VCS / VUFT lawsuit at our web site. The New York Times published several news articles about the veteran suicide crisis as well as the enormous disability claim backlog now at more than 1.1 million claims. and the paper also published an editorial supporting the plight of our veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Veterans for Common Sense also appeared on "60 Minutes" three years ago discussing the long waits veterans face when seeking VA assistance.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit formed in the District of Columbia in August 2002, VCS leads the way on many key VA reforms. One major example is VA's new streamlined disability benefits for PTSD based on scientific research announced in July 2010.
Military families share roof, sometimes grief at Fisher Houses
Military families share roof, sometimes grief at Fisher Houses
By IAN SHAPIRA
The Washington Post
Published: January 3, 2013
WASHINGTON — There were plenty of times, Bridgit Fennell remembers, when new families checked into the guest house at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and inevitably asked her all the personal questions.
Was your husband in combat theater? What's his prognosis? Sometimes she chafed at having to answer them again and again.
But Fennell, whose husband Ken Fennell, a Navy Band saxophonist, died on Christmas Eve from brain cancer, prefers to recall the moments of kinship: the girlfriend her teenage son met at Fisher House. Or the time she prayed with a Tennessee family after their son died from wounds in Afghanistan.
"We looked in each other's eyes, and we all cried," recalled Fennell, whose Maryland family has stayed at the Walter Reed-based group house for nearly a year and is checking out this month. "We were meant to be together for that moment."
These are the little-seen glimpses of life at the nation's Fisher Houses, group homes at every big military medical campus, as well as two by Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
The Fisher Houses offer free lodging to members of the military, veterans, and their relatives, who need treatment at the nearby military or Veterans Affairs hospital.
read more here
By IAN SHAPIRA
The Washington Post
Published: January 3, 2013
WASHINGTON — There were plenty of times, Bridgit Fennell remembers, when new families checked into the guest house at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and inevitably asked her all the personal questions.
Was your husband in combat theater? What's his prognosis? Sometimes she chafed at having to answer them again and again.
But Fennell, whose husband Ken Fennell, a Navy Band saxophonist, died on Christmas Eve from brain cancer, prefers to recall the moments of kinship: the girlfriend her teenage son met at Fisher House. Or the time she prayed with a Tennessee family after their son died from wounds in Afghanistan.
"We looked in each other's eyes, and we all cried," recalled Fennell, whose Maryland family has stayed at the Walter Reed-based group house for nearly a year and is checking out this month. "We were meant to be together for that moment."
These are the little-seen glimpses of life at the nation's Fisher Houses, group homes at every big military medical campus, as well as two by Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
The Fisher Houses offer free lodging to members of the military, veterans, and their relatives, who need treatment at the nearby military or Veterans Affairs hospital.
read more here
Police Detectives harassed at Denny's over guns?
Police Banned From Denny's Restaurant After Manager 'Harassed' Detectives Over Guns
Huffington Post
Posted: 01/03/2013
A police chief in Belleville, Ill. has banned his officers from eating at a local Denny's and accused the restaurant of "political stupidness" after a confrontation between a group of detectives and the restaurant's manager on New Year's Day, CBS St. Louis reports.
According to CBS, a diner was alarmed after spotting a female officer's weapon and alerted David Rice, the restaurant's manager. Rice subsequently approached the five detectives, who were not in uniform, and asked that they either leave the restaurant or put their weapons in their car. The officers left before being served their meal.'
read more here
Huffington Post
Posted: 01/03/2013
A police chief in Belleville, Ill. has banned his officers from eating at a local Denny's and accused the restaurant of "political stupidness" after a confrontation between a group of detectives and the restaurant's manager on New Year's Day, CBS St. Louis reports.
According to CBS, a diner was alarmed after spotting a female officer's weapon and alerted David Rice, the restaurant's manager. Rice subsequently approached the five detectives, who were not in uniform, and asked that they either leave the restaurant or put their weapons in their car. The officers left before being served their meal.'
read more here
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