A Soldier’s Requiem, Never Fading Away
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
Published: January 12, 2013
WOODBRIDGE, Va. — Each December, Jackie Finken pulls plastic bins from the basement and distributes carefully wrapped Christmas decorations to her three daughters. Each girl has her own ornaments. And each of those ornaments has a story. That is a Finken tradition, one of many.
So there Mrs. Finken was on her kitchen floor a few weeks back, telling tales. About the treble clef that she and her husband, Paul, gave Emilie, the cheerful eldest, when she started loving her violin. About the Cinderella they gave to Caroline, the cranky middle one, when Disney princesses were all the rage. About the mouse they gave to Julia, the mischievous youngest, the year a brigade of vermin feasted on her candy stash.
Suddenly Julia stopped to ponder a decoration adorned with a tiny soccer ball, baseball mitt and football. It belonged to her father, the coach. “Should I hang this one?” she asked her mother. The answer, of course, was “Of course.”
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Sunday, January 13, 2013
Chief Warrant Officer's worst enemy turned out to be burning garbage
Burn pit exposure cuts Poquoson soldier's career short
January 13, 2013
By Hugh Lessig
POQUOSON
Before he got sick, before the tremors, memory lapses and surgeries, Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Lamprecht guarded his buddies from an Apache attack helicopter, with Hellfire missiles at his fingertips.
The 40-year-old Poquoson native completed four combat deployments from 2003 to 2010: three to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.
He'd go back tomorrow if he could.
The narrow front seat of the lethal gunship was his second home, surrounded by laser range finders and target designators, a video monitor near his lap, a side-mounted helmet camera that offered a view similar to a two-way mirror.
That kind of multitasking and razor-sharp communication would be impossible today. Lamprecht can't feel much below his knees, and the simple act of standing up can make him dizzy.
"Sometimes my feet don't do what I want them to," he said. "I'll stammer my tongue. I know what I want to say, but my tongue just vapor-locks and I won't make the word."
He can't blame the Taliban or al-Qaida, and it wasn't battle stress or nerves.
His worst enemy turned out to be burning garbage.
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January 13, 2013
By Hugh Lessig
POQUOSON
Before he got sick, before the tremors, memory lapses and surgeries, Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Lamprecht guarded his buddies from an Apache attack helicopter, with Hellfire missiles at his fingertips.
The 40-year-old Poquoson native completed four combat deployments from 2003 to 2010: three to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.
He'd go back tomorrow if he could.
The narrow front seat of the lethal gunship was his second home, surrounded by laser range finders and target designators, a video monitor near his lap, a side-mounted helmet camera that offered a view similar to a two-way mirror.
That kind of multitasking and razor-sharp communication would be impossible today. Lamprecht can't feel much below his knees, and the simple act of standing up can make him dizzy.
"Sometimes my feet don't do what I want them to," he said. "I'll stammer my tongue. I know what I want to say, but my tongue just vapor-locks and I won't make the word."
He can't blame the Taliban or al-Qaida, and it wasn't battle stress or nerves.
His worst enemy turned out to be burning garbage.
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Army psychologist couldn't heal himself, lost battle to PTSD
UPDATE January 17, 2013
Department of Veterans Affairs Statement on Dr. Peter Linnerooth
UPDATE
The latests figures are at least 22 veterans a day take their own lives but the national media outlets are not interested in reporting these stories. What is worse is that no one is being held accountable for any of this.
Department of Veterans Affairs Statement on Dr. Peter Linnerooth
UPDATE
Former Army psychologist critical of military commits suicideWe tell them to seek help to heal from where they've been. Linnerooth not only did that, he tried to be there for others to go to. He was aware of burnout and tried to do something about that too. As a psychologist, his family would have known enough to know how to support him. Everything seems to have been in place for him to be able to heal. So what didn't work? What has been failing him and far too many others everyday in this country?
By Andy Greder, Sarah Horner and Will Ashenmacher
Pioneer Press
Posted: 01/13/2013
On Jan. 2, Linnerooth, 42, killed himself in Mankato.
Linnerooth was awarded a Bronze Star after an honorable discharge in 2008 and became critical of the military's limited work on providing mental health care to soldiers, especially to those with PTSD, in the pages of Time magazine and the New York Times. Capt. Linnerooth will be buried with full military honors at 11 a.m. Monday, Jan. 14, at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.
"He was really, really suffering," Linnerooth's widow, Melanie Walsh, told Time for its story on his death. "And it didn't matter that he was a mental health professional, and it didn't matter that I was a mental health professional. I couldn't help him, and he couldn't help himself."
The latests figures are at least 22 veterans a day take their own lives but the national media outlets are not interested in reporting these stories. What is worse is that no one is being held accountable for any of this.
Former Capitola veteran Peter Linnerooth loses battle with PTSD
By Shanna McCord
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Posted:01/12/2013
He was the lead author of a 2011 piece on such "professional burnout" among his peers who, like him, had gone off to witness the worst of war.
SANTA CRUZ -- Peter J.N. Linnerooth, a Bronze Star-winning Army psychologist, died earlier this month after a long battle with post traumatic stress disorder. He was 42.
The Army captain who worked as a counselor at the Santa Cruz County Vet Center in Capitola from 2009 to 2011 took his own life on Jan. 2 in Mankato, Minn.
Linnerooth served in the Army from 2003 to 2008, working primarily as a mental health officer helping combat troops deal with the anxiety and depression associated with post traumatic stress disorder, a severe mental illness he also suffered.
He is credited with helping hundreds of soldiers with mental health illnesses throughout his Army career, but could not find solace himself.
Friends such as Santa Cruz resident Jeremiah Ridgeway, 30, described Linnerooth as a friendly guy, easy to talk to and easy to relate with.
Linnerooth and Ridgeway, an Army veteran who spent 15 months in Afghanistan, worked together at the Santa Cruz County Vet Center on 41st Avenue.
"The young guys coming back from Iraq loved him because he's been there as well," Ridgeway said Saturday. "I could see the impact of what he did for these guys. He's just a great guy."
Family and friends said Linnerooth returned from a year deployment in Iraq a changed man.
The time he spent in Iraq, August 2006 to August 2007, came at what is considered one of the bloodiest points in the ongoing war -- the height of the surge.
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Saturday, January 12, 2013
Bay Pines tends to male and female military sexual assault victims
Bay Pines VA program tackles military sex cases
By HOWARD ALTMAN
The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 12, 2013
SEMINOLE
"Get in the jeep."
Joseph Sebastiano knew it would be bad.
A few days earlier, his sergeant had forced him to have sex in the barracks shower. Now, with the other men in the platoon done for the day, the sergeant told Sebastiano he had "extra duty." His voice drops to a near whisper as he describes what happened next.
More than three decades later, Sebastiano, 54, is finally coming to grips with the attacks in February 1976 at Fort Polk, La. Sitting in the safety of the Center for Sexual Trauma Studies at Bay Pines VA Hospital, Sebastiano talks about his experience as a victim of military sexual trauma and the residential treatment program helping exorcise his ghosts.
There are many like him. An estimated 19,000 troops were victims of rape and sexual assault in the military last year alone, according to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Air Force recently released the findings of a series of rapes by drill instructors at its training facility at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
And on Friday, military leaders spoke about the problem at a conference in Washington, D.C.
As the military struggles to cope with the problem among active-duty members, the Veterans Health Administration is facing challenges treating the estimated half-million veterans, like Sebastiano, who have experienced military sexual trauma.
A Veterans Affairs inspector general's report released last month found that the VA is not doing a good enough job connecting victims to programs like the one at Bay Pines, which was lauded in the report for providing training to other centers.
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By HOWARD ALTMAN
The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 12, 2013
SEMINOLE
"Get in the jeep."
Joseph Sebastiano knew it would be bad.
A few days earlier, his sergeant had forced him to have sex in the barracks shower. Now, with the other men in the platoon done for the day, the sergeant told Sebastiano he had "extra duty." His voice drops to a near whisper as he describes what happened next.
More than three decades later, Sebastiano, 54, is finally coming to grips with the attacks in February 1976 at Fort Polk, La. Sitting in the safety of the Center for Sexual Trauma Studies at Bay Pines VA Hospital, Sebastiano talks about his experience as a victim of military sexual trauma and the residential treatment program helping exorcise his ghosts.
There are many like him. An estimated 19,000 troops were victims of rape and sexual assault in the military last year alone, according to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Air Force recently released the findings of a series of rapes by drill instructors at its training facility at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
And on Friday, military leaders spoke about the problem at a conference in Washington, D.C.
As the military struggles to cope with the problem among active-duty members, the Veterans Health Administration is facing challenges treating the estimated half-million veterans, like Sebastiano, who have experienced military sexual trauma.
A Veterans Affairs inspector general's report released last month found that the VA is not doing a good enough job connecting victims to programs like the one at Bay Pines, which was lauded in the report for providing training to other centers.
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63 years after his death, soldier's remains going home
Remains of decorated Army soldier to be returned to local family 63 years after his death
By: Anu Prakash
(WXYZ) - The remains of a decorated Army soldier are being returned to a local family 63 years after his death.
"I didn't really know him," says Sue Prill of Shelby Township.
However, Prill remembers her mother talking about her uncle, Private First Class Ernest Fuquay Jr. He was killed in action in North Korea back in 1950. He was 20 years-old.
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By: Anu Prakash
(WXYZ) - The remains of a decorated Army soldier are being returned to a local family 63 years after his death.
"I didn't really know him," says Sue Prill of Shelby Township.
However, Prill remembers her mother talking about her uncle, Private First Class Ernest Fuquay Jr. He was killed in action in North Korea back in 1950. He was 20 years-old.
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