Iraq Veteran Honored At Healing Field on Veterans Day

Veterans celebrated at healing field, as one of their own is awarded a special gift
Kokomo Tribune
By Cara Ball
Nov 12, 2016

Kelly Lefferty Gerber Kokomo Tribune

Skydivers drop from a plane over Vietnam Veteran grounds during Howard County Vietnam Veteran Organization's Vetgerans Day celebration November 11, 2016

GREENTOWN - To commemorate Veterans Day, the healing field at the Howard County Vietnam Veterans Organization welcomed service men and women to fellowship and support one of their own.

“Jesse is a veteran who has had two tours in Iraq and he has been in and out of the hospital,” said Chuck Simons, President of the Howard County Vietnam Veterans Association.

He’s not been able to work. He purchased a house about five years ago and he had three payments to make on it, and because of his inability to work and his sickness, Marco’s has stepped up and said we will take care of it.”

The veteran Simons is referring to is Jesse Miller, a nine-year veteran of the army, and the company that stepped in to help is the national pizza chain, Marco’s Pizza.

Miller was presented a check, cleverly disguised in a pizza box, of $1,250 to assist him in paying off his mortgage.

Janelle Lucas, franchise owner of Marco’s Pizza in Kokomo and a veteran herself, said presenting Miller with this check was an emotional moment for her.

“This is something, being a veteran myself, means a lot to me,” Lucas said. “And to support veterans, and especially those that have been wounded… it just feels good to be able to give.”
read more here

Different Generations of Veterans Open Up About PTSD

Veterans open up about struggles with PTSD
WFAA
Sonia Azad
November 14, 2016

Up to 20 percent of Veterans who served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom; 12 percent of Gulf War veterans; and an estimated 30 percent of Vietnam veterans, in their lifetime. 

Ed Reith, Jess Johnson and Timothy Jackson are bound by brotherhood.

“Primarily, we're warrior mentality,” said Reith, who served in Vietnam. “You don't want to admit weakness."

The three men are veterans who are haunted by the troubles of healing after war.

“You can't concentrate,” explained Johnson, a cancer survivor who served as a combat medic during the Vietnam War. “All you're thinking about is your friend who died in your arms -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Johnson is intimately familiar with the horrors of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“I don't want to hear any noise, I want to be quiet, I don't want to meet new people,” recalled Johnson. “There's always a residual effect to post traumatic stress, but my ability to interact with people has improved tremendously.”

Reith, a retired staff sergeant, still fights tremors in his hands.

“Getting mad and throwing a knife through a table is not a normal reaction,” said Reith. “Getting mad and throwing a water bottle is not a normal reaction."
read more here

Coming Home With PTSD, Changed to Breaking Point

Former soldier's suicide exposes perils of PTSD
WWL 4 News
Karen Swensen

“He had texted me and said, "I don't tell you often enough just how much I love you and appreciate everything you've done for me and all the support you've given me.”
They're words that comforted Jerri Pierce then but haunt her now. Within a month, Adam was dead. He never knew his girlfriend had just conceived Addie.

As three-year-old Addie tugs at her favorite dolls, her every move tugs at her grandma's heart. Jerri Pierce is raising Addie but how she wishes her son were here to do that instead.

“She helps me to remember him with just a glance,” Pierce said.

Her son Adam was the all-American kid, she said: a Boy Scout, a high school athlete and ultimately a member of the National Guard who, at the young age of 20, left behind his wife, daughter and mother to deploy to Iraq. He had no idea he had less than 2 years to live.

Pierce remembers with agonizing clarity the day she found out he was dead. A knock at the door delivered the news. But as much as she'd worried about her son, she was not prepared for this.

“He hung himself,” she explained. At 22, Adam Thornton took his life. He left no note, but by then a wife, three kids, including little Addie whom he never knew had been conceived, and a trail of signs that only hindsight brought into frightening focus. “I wanted his homecoming to be super special and he just couldn't adapt,” his mother said.

After a year in Iraq, Adam had returned a different man. He seemed overwhelmed-quick tempered, impatient with his kids. His mom suggested he be screened for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

Not everyone is that lucky. WWL-TV and our parent company TEGNA have investigated a policy whereby some troops with arguable mental health issues receive "less than honorable" discharges. They're kicked out with no benefits and no way to get help.

“You lose the health benefits, you lose the medical benefits, you lose retirement, you lose everything,” said Larry Jones, a local veterans service officer. A veteran himself, he now helps others file and fight for benefits. The problem, he says, is when troops get into trouble for things that could be related to mental health, they're unlikely to bring up those issues because of the stigma, so many don’t fight the "less than honorable discharge" at the outset. “And when they try to come back, it becomes more difficult,” he said.
read more here

Family Wants Change After Vietnam Veteran Committed Suicide At Bay Pines VA

Veteran suicide epidemic: Family members call for action
WTSP News
Phil Buck
November 11, 2016

“There’s still so much going on over there, there are so many young kids coming back that are in the same position. This is going to continue unless they change that whole system.” Linda Aurin

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WTSP) – Thousands of veterans have gone to the VA medical center at Bay Pines in Florida for various types of health care. On August 25th, 2015, former U.S. Marine Gerhard Reitmann, a Vietnam War veteran, went to Bay Pines for a different reason.

That morning Gerhard called his brother Stephen, then went to a parking lot on the Bay Pines campus and shot himself. After years of living with post-traumatic stress from his tours in Vietnam, Gerhard Reitmann decided he could not endure another day.

“That’s one of the biggest reasons why he did it at the V.A.,” said Stephen Reitmann more than a year after his brother’s suicide. “He wanted to show ‘you’re not taking care of me’.”

Now having had time to reflect and go over the final years of his brother’s life in hindsight, Stephen and his partner Linda Aurin saw the warning signs were there.

“You could see what he was thinking by seeing all these little tidbits,” said Stephen, describing what he found in Gerhard’s apartment after his suicide. “Little notes here, a bible, and you put it all together and you go ‘oh, this is how you’re supposed to feel when you’re committing suicide’.”

“We could have helped him and because of who he is, he didn’t ask. And that’s the horrible part about suicide,” said Aurin. “The last time we stopped in and saw him we noticed that he had newspapers covering his walls, all his blinds were closed because he was very paranoid, he was asking us did we want to take stuff. At that point we didn’t realize but that was pretty close to when it happened.”
read more here

Seven Suicidal Veterans Called IAVA In One Day

One Day We May Stop Accepting Veteran Suicides
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 13, 2016

What Veterans Are Expecting From President Trump is the headline on PBS. Judy Woodruff interviewed Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America about what veterans expect from President-elect Donald Trump.

"We had a day last year we had seven suicide calls to IAVA in one day alone. So, I think it does start with prioritizing it. It also starts with understanding that it’s not just a veterans issue or a government issue. It’s a national health priority." Paul Rieckhoff, IAVA

Think about that for a second. Seven calls from veterans in crisis in one day. Those calls would not have come from older veterans making up over 65% of the veteran suicides that day. Those calls would have come from this newer generation of veterans.

These same veterans, with no wound different from other generations, receiving all the attention and most of help from all of these new charities, are still taking their own lives after a decade of "efforts" to help them stop doing it.

When do we change the conversation from repeating the number we think are taking their own lives after surviving military service to one about what they need to actually learn they still have a lot worth living for? In the military, there was a reason to lay down their lives and that reason was for the men and women they served with. To know they are not able to survive when they come home is a disgraceful statement on what the American public have been willing to accept.

We accept it because we haven't done much about it. We do not do our own research to discover the reports from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows the number of veterans taking their own lives has remained consistent despite the fact the number of living veterans has dropped by over 5 million since 1999.

We accept the fact that decades after veterans over the age of 50 are defeated by the enemy they have been fighting since Vietnam, Korea and, yes, even since WWII. Plus we accept the fact that most Americans have not paid any attention to them even though they are the majority of veterans in this country trying to heal Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD claims more lives after combat than war itself.

We accept the fact that every politician has been doing a lot of talking, writing bills and spending money on repeated efforts that have failed because they have absolutely no understanding of what these veterans need to live. The worst factor is, these politicians have not taken any of this seriously enough to change the direction they have been on for over a decade.

So, please, make sure you drop and do 22 pushups to make yourself feel better. As long as you feel good about doing something you won't be seeing the simple fact that doing "something" has done nothing for them.