"It happened all in a moment"
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 22, 2018
Tia Coleman got onto a Duck Tour boat with her family hoping to have a nice ride. A thunder storm rolled in.
Video captured by a passenger on a nearby vessel shows a duck boat capsize and sink during a severe thunderstorm in Missouri, killing at least 11 people. Source: CNN
Eleven people died. Nine from Tia's family.
Duck boat accident survivor mourns her 9 relatives who drowned
"I said, 'Lord, please, I've got to get to my babies. I've got to get to my babies," she said Saturday at a news conference at Cox Medical Center Branson, where she has been hospitalized since the incident that took 17 lives, including her husband, three children and five other members of her family.
Duck boat survivor describes sinking
CNN Newsroom
Duck boat survivor Tia Coleman tells how she survived the incident that killed nine members of her family. Source: CNN
In Los Angeles people were shopping at Trader Joe's. A gunman walked in after his grandmother was shot multiple times, which he is being charged for. Another woman, shopping in the store was killed.
"It happened all in a moment. He came out of the car, the cops were already shooting at him in that instant, right before he came out of the car," said Miguel Jeffrey Trujillo Cerventes, who saw the end of the police chase and the suspect emerge from his car.
That is the cause of every case of PTSD. It happened! One moment the world you live in is "normal" and in the next, chaos.
For citizens it is the moment you do not expect to come.
For military folks, it is the moment you dread will happen.
For firefighters and police officers, it is the moment they know may come with the next one.
Responders prepare to do what has to be done to save the rest of us. They also deal with the same traumas the rest of us do, but the simple fact is, they are willingly rushing to those events for the sake of others.
That is how PTSD starts. That is the only way it happens. The term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder actually says that clearly.
Post means "after" it happened.
Trauma means "wound" and the "stress" surviving causes the survivor. The "disorder" part seems to the the term people have the most problem with, but that is simply because they do not know what that means.
"Disorder" means that things were one way one moment and out of order in the next moment.
Nothing is ever the same after you survive a traumatic event. It is not supposed to be back to "normal" moments the moment before it happened.
The key is that you can change again, just as you did from "victim" to "survivor" and defeat what is still trying to kill you.
Veterans Commit Suicide in Public
Combat PTSD
Kathie Costos
July 21, 2018
Thursday a friend of mine, Sgt. Dave Matthews of Remember the Fallen covered what the National News used to think was important. The shocking number of veterans committing suicide in pubic! Yes, in public. It happened at least 12 times since March of 2018, and this is just July.
Dave read about John Michael Watts setting himself on fire in front of the Georgia state Capitol. He was furious that it happened but shocked the press did not give his scream for help the attention he deserved. We did. I had it up 3 hours after Military Times covered it.
Dave called me after he saw it and wanted to do a show on his death. I asked Dave why just him and not all the others committing suicide in public. He was shocked and had a hard time getting his head around the others when I sent him the link to the post.
It took me about an hour to put it together. After all, I was limiting the search down to this year but with over 29,000 articles, there are far more times when veterans took this one last step of being heard.
So who heard them before they ended their lives this way?
When the national news reporters are too busy for those who serve this nation, none of us should be shocked when a veteran decides to turn in the blank check they wrote to this country. The "up to and including" their lives was never supposed to be about the nation turning our backs on them.
We settle all too easily for what gets the image of them of them lying dead out of our heads.
We settle for slogans and support the "cause" of people raising awareness that it is happening but refuse to support the people working to change the outcome. That was abundantly made clear when the Federal Trade Commission decided to put an end to all the bogus charities taking advantage of veterans for their own incomes.
We settle for the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs using a slogan of "one is too many" but never pay attention to the reports they release showing nothing has changed.
We settle for members of Congress getting their names on Bills that have done very little since 2007 when they passed the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act and the number of veterans committing suicide has not changed since then.
As a matter of fact the number of military suicides went up after Congress became "aware" of what was going on.
If anyone really wants to know why veterans are facing off with members of law enforcement every week, committing murder-suicides in every state, and taking the lives that survived service, all they have to do is listen. Listen to the screams of those who all of the above never paid attention to before it was too late!
Twins in Vietnam
The Mountaineer
Mike Schoeffel
July 20, 2018
What he and his twin brother, Fred, both 71, did was serve in the Vietnam War, one of the most divisive and brutal military engagements in United States history. What's more is their deployments overlapped, making them – to Ted's knowledge – one of just seven sets of twins to serve in Vietnam simultaneously.
VIETNAM VETS — Fred Underwood, left, and his twin brother, Ted, are one of the few sets of twins to have served in Vietnam simultaneously. The brothers are active in a number of veteran organizations, including DAV Chapter 89 (Keith Mehaffey), of which Fred is the commander.
Ted Underwood likes to whittle. It helps him relax.
He mostly makes small wooden soldiers. One of them is a boy – or, rather, a young man – clutching a duffel bag and a discharge notice. A wide grin is etched on his face.
"That's me [leaving Vietnam,]" he says.
Another of Ted's creations is a soldier wearing a flak jacket, carrying a toolbox and a rifle. As Ted explains, this little guy is about to be helicoptered into the middle of the jungle to fix a tank.
That's him, too.
"It seems to calm me," says Ted of his newfound hobby. "It gets your mind off all this mess. I say mess, but it's an honor to do what we done."
read more here
Another interesting story is about six brothers who served during the Vietnam War
During the 1960s and early 1970s, a time when many young men of draft age were trying to avoid military service, six brothers from Montgomery County volunteered to serve in the U.S. armed forces.Terry, Bill, Max and Jim Graybill were in the Army, Bob in the Navy and Joe in the Marines. They didn’t wait to get drafted. Every one of them volunteered.
Upstate veterans association surprises fellow vet in hospice with motorcycle rev up
FOX Carolina
By Ashley Minell
Updated: Jul 20, 2018
"In my opinion, God puts certain people in place at the right moment. And I see Matthew Dordal and the association and all the people that showed up that night as that," said Dordal.
GREER, SC (FOX Carolina)
On July 17, 68-year-old Vietnam veteran and motorcycle lover, Jerry Palmer, got the surprise of a lifetime.
"My husband tried to explain that they were coming for him and he didn't believe it until we saw... Jerry started crying. My husband was there and choking them back as well. We all felt the chill," said Joyce Tebault, Jerry's friend.
The people on the bikes felt it too.
"When you see the emotional connection Jerry had with motorcycles and hearing them roll up and us being fellow veterans. It was emotional for all of us," said Matthew Dordal, Chapter Commander of Combat Vets Association.
read more here
FOX Carolina 21
Arrest in Vandalism of Monument Honoring MOH Recipient Michael Murphy
Stars and Stripes
By Chad Garland
20 Jul 2018
Michael Murphy's mother was crying early Friday when she called his father to say that the damage felt to her "like they killed Michael all over again."
The Suffolk County Police Department is investigating the recent act of vandalism that took place at Lt. Michael P. Murphy Memorial Park in Lake Ronkonkoma. (SUFFOLK COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT FACEBOOK)
Police arrested a 14-year-old boy and charged him with vandalism on Friday after a memorial to a slain Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor recipient was found smashed to pieces at a Long Island lake.
New York state will pay to replace the stone, inscribed with the image of Lt. Michael P. Murphy and his Medal of Honor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier in the day. The new stone is expected be nearly impossible to shatter.
Cuomo said in a statement he was "appalled and disgusted" by the vandalism, promising the state would fully fund the replacement.
"I hope this brings comfort to his family and community," the governor said. "The people of this state and this nation owe Lieutenant Murphy a debt of gratitude, and I personally thank him for his service."
Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL who served with Murphy and wrote about his heroism in his book "Lone Survivor," also donated money for a replacement, said Murphy's father Daniel Murphy, who got the call from the governor's office about a replacement stone on Friday.
read more here
