Trauma in Iraq leads to drama in Oregon

If you think for a second that soap operas are more interesting than what is happening right here in this country with our veterans, you are really missing a lot.

The audience for soap operas is
By the Numbers
Total Ratings for All Shows
16.1
+0.600 from last week
according to www.soapcentral.com

It's an easy guess that there are not 16.1 million people in this country with any kind of knowledge about what is really going on when the men and women we sent into Iraq and Afghanistan come home. So few are even interested since they have their own problems. That is a very sad statement to make. While we have our own problems, we need to remember they do too on top of leaving their families to go where we send them and do what they are told to do.

There is not a soap opera or movie out there that can come close to comparing with the drama they live with everyday. Reality TV could only dream about coming up with a show that reflects their lives. It's really doubtful there are more interesting people in this country and not many more deserving of our attention.

Read this story and the next time you turn on a soap notice what the characters lack and what you're missing from real lives.

Trauma in Iraq leads to drama in Oregon
By Julie Sullivan, The Oregonian
October 31, 2009, 3:00PM

JOHN DAY -- Later, after the defense attorney wept and the judge put away his robe and the jurors drove home in the fading light, the consequences of war hung over this town of 1,845 like wood smoke on an autumn eve.

Fourteen months earlier, a young woman lay down with a terrible burden. She was pregnant. Her fiancé, Jessie Bratcher, was so thrilled he kissed the home pregnancy test kit. He researched how a baby develops and what the mother should eat.

But Celena Davis was not sure the child was his.

As Bratcher sat on the foot of their bed, she told him that two months earlier, she had been raped.

The Iraq veteran dropped to his knees and cried. Bratcher went to the living room and put the barrel of an AK-47 in his mouth, then stopped. He grabbed scissors and cut off half of Celena's long dark hair. They stayed up all night. When she complained of cramps, he walked her to the hospital at 6 a.m., so tense that nurses shooed him away.

War has changed the Oregon Army National Guard, which has deployed troops on 8,400 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. It turned the state's emergency volunteers into combat veterans.

read more here

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/post_25.html

Fire at 9-11 Chapel caused by "craven and contemptible" monsters

Mayor Bloomberg used the words "craven and contemptible" but the word monsters was mine. Can you imagine anyone doing something like this after the pain so many people were in and have been carrying since 9-11?

NYC probes fire at chapel for 9/11 victims

By VERENA DOBNIK,

Associated Press Writer – Sat Oct 31, 5:54 pm ET
NEW YORK – A small fire at the temporary home for the remains of thousands of World Trade Center victims was likely arson committed after a break-in on Saturday, authorities said.

The smoldering flames in a section of the facility's chapel on Manhattan's East Side were quickly extinguished.

Firefighters got a call at about 9 a.m. to respond to Memorial Park, a weatherproof tent on Manhattan's East Side where the city is storing the remains of 9/11 victims who have yet to be identified.

The fire damaged a wooden bench, while mementos — pictures, notes, flowers — honoring the dead disappeared.

"Anyone who would set fire to the inviolable Memorial Park chapel is craven and contemptible," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.
read more here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091031/ap_on_re_us/us9_11_remains_fire
linked from RawStory

Volunteering Marine family wins award

Volunteering Marine family wins award

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Oct 30, 2009 13:52:00 EDT

Thirteen-year-old Jordan Leanes fixes up broken bikes and donates them to charities. His twin sister Syvannah organized a project to help wounded warriors through their church.

The twins, along with the other five members of their Marine Corps family — volunteers all — were named the National Military Family Association’s family of the year in the association’s 40th anniversary celebration Oct. 28.

It was all about military families, from first lady Michelle Obama’s videotaped message honoring and pledging support to military families, to videotaped messages from each service’s senior leader describing the accomplishments of the nominated families. And while members of Congress and a number of senior defense and civilian officials attended, the stars on stage and the constant focus were the military families.

Before he presented the award to the Leanes family, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recognized military families “past, present and future.”
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_familyaward_103009w/

Women at Arms After Combat, Anguish

Women at Arms
After Combat, Anguish

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: October 31, 2009
For Vivienne Pacquette, being a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder means avoiding phone calls to her sons, dinner out with her husband and therapy sessions that make her talk about seeing the reds and whites of her friends’ insides after a mortar attack in 2004.


As with other women in her position, hiding seems to make sense. Post-traumatic stress disorder distorts personalities: some veterans who have it fight in their sleep; others feel paranoid around children. And as women return to a society unfamiliar with their wartime roles, they often choose isolation over embarrassment.

Many spend months or years as virtual shut-ins, missing the camaraderie of Iraq or Afghanistan, while racked with guilt over who they have become.

“After all, I’m a soldier, I’m an NCO, I’m a problem solver,” said Mrs. Pacquette, 52, a retired noncommissioned officer who served two tours in Iraq and more than 20 years in the Army. “What’s it going to look like if I can’t get things straight in my head?”

Some psychiatrists say that women do better in therapy because they are more comfortable talking through their emotions, but it typically takes years for them to seek help. In interviews, female veterans with post-traumatic stress said they did not always feel their problems were justified, or would be treated as valid by a military system that defines combat as an all-male activity.

go here for more

After Combat, Anguish New York Times

No normal rules of engagement apply in Iraq or Afghanistan. No safe zones or safe jobs to do. Any day on any road a bomb could blow up anywhere. If this was not bad enough, women in the military have to worry about something more. Sexual abuse and sexual assaults. Even if they were not a victim of this, the chances are, they're well aware of some other woman it happened to.

Last year I did a radio program with two female veterans. During the discussion, the fact that many deployed female soldiers were avoiding drinking anything after noon so they would not have to use the latrine at night, showed how deep this fear is.

If you cannot understand how this can happen then think of your own life. When you read about a robbery in your neighborhood, you are more apt to be very vigilant with your own security even though nothing happened to you. You may spend the next days or weeks startled by the sound of a barking dog in the middle of the night with apprehension taking control of your thoughts as you picture hooded thugs lurking around your house trying to get in. You timidly look out of your window only to discover the barking dog is not trying to warn you but simply barking at a cat roaming around. It is the same when you are placed into harms way as it is and then discover someone just like you was victimized by people she was supposed to be able to trust.

When they come home, who can they trust? They feel they cannot trust the government since they are made to fight for whatever they get from the DOD or the VA. They feel they cannot trust friends or family members with what's going on inside of them and then they try to hide it all. They cannot hide the changes. They can only hide the reasons why they changed.

The truly depressing thing in all of this is that this is just the beginning of what is coming as more and more discover they cannot heal on their own and they cannot "get over it" unless they are helped to do it. First they need to be able to trust someone and that is often the hardest thing to do when they feel betrayed by people they trusted already.

VFW Post Makes Push To Recruit Young Vets

Great idea! All service organizations need to step out of their comfort zone and start filling the need zone if they are going to survive and really serve all veterans.

VFW Post Makes Push To Recruit Young Vets
by Melissa Block


October 29, 2009
All around Portland, Ore., Veterans of Foreign Wars posts have closed their doors in recent years as members died and funds dried up.

But this summer, one post in Tualatin, Ore., outside Portland, has made a point to attract young veterans to revitalize membership, including moving out of a dump into a fancy new home.

VFW Post 3452's new hall is full of light with a shiny professional kitchen, granite countertops, a 52-inch flat-screen TV. It's named after a young veteran, Marine Cpl. Matthew Lembke.

Lembke served two tours in Iraq. And he was on foot patrol in Afghanistan this past June when he stepped on an IED. He died of complications several weeks later. He was 22.
read more here
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114285238

Vietnam Vet forced to prove he's not dead yet

Declared dead by VA, Curles struggling to prove otherwise


Kevin Hall


MOULTRIE — Tommy Curles wants the world to know he’s alive.


Especially the Department of Veterans Affairs, because he says they haven’t gotten the message yet.

Curles, an Air Force veteran, told The Observer last week that he receives a pension from the VA because of a 20 percent hearing loss he suffered during the Vietnam War. He was a crew chief on B-52 bombers and KC-135 air tankers, serving in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Guam, and the loud jet engines damaged his hearing.

He said the checks were mailed to him at home. He had tried to get Direct Deposit, he said, but gave up because the government made it too complicated.
read more here
http://www.moultrieobserver.com/local/local_story_302224828.html

DOD Identifies Army Casualty

DOD Identifies Army Casualty


The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Spc. Robert K. Charlton, 22, of Malden, Mo.,

died Oct. 27 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident Oct. 23 in Wardak, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.

The circumstances surrounding the non-combat related incident are under investigation.

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=13088

DOD Identifies Army Casualty


The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Joseph L. Gallegos, 39, of Questa, N.M.,

died Oct. 28 in Tallil, Iraq, in a non-combat related incident. He was assigned to the 720th Transportation Company, New Mexico Army National Guard, in Las Vegas, N.M.

The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=13089

Decades after the war, veterans return to Vietnam to help other vets heal

Decades after the war, veterans return to Vietnam to help other vets heal

By PAUL FATTIG (Medford) Mail Tribune
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) - When Michael Phillips returned to Medford from Vietnam in 1971, the Army veteran didn't exactly march back into society.

"When I got back, I didn't associate with my family, I didn't join the VFW or anything," he said. "I came close to getting married several times but each time managed to mess it up. I partied a lot, but it was very hard for me to get close to anybody."

"I thought I was invincible because I had survived the war," he said. "But my PTSD was causing severe depression."

In the Army, Phillips was a specialist fourth class who drove in a combat convoy in Vietnam and into Cambodia.

He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which he and counselors say led to drug abuse and homelessness over the years.

He spent two years in therapy for PTSD at the VA's Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center and Clinics in White City, and it is the reason he is returning to Vietnam on Nov. 3.

"I'm not going back there with a lot of feelings of guilt or anger," he said. "I'm going back there to learn how to help other veterans heal, although I anticipate there will be moments when I have my issues."

Phillips will be among 20 people on the trip, including eight veterans, their spouses and several others with ties to Vietnam or the war.
read more here
http://www.katu.com/news/local/67760317.html

For these women veterans, a home to call their own

Gulf War veteran Tinamarie Polverari greeted a fellow resident at Jackie K's House for homeless women veterans. (Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe)

For these women veterans, a home to call their own
By Brian MacQuarrie
Globe Staff / October 31, 2009
NORTHAMPTON - An oversized stuffed tiger lies across a bedspread in a brightly colored room where Tinamarie Polverari has draped a New York Yankees cap on a lampshade.

She feels safe here.

Polverari, a 38-year-old Army veteran, lives in a duplex cottage run by the nonprofit group Soldier On. A victim of repeated rapes during the Gulf War, she returned in 1993 to an unhinged civilian life of heroin, crack cocaine, and desperate homelessness.

She is among a growing legion of female veterans who have turned to the street after a failed transition from military to civilian life. At a time when women are assuming an ever-expanding role in the armed forces, the number of homeless female veterans is rising.

Women last year accounted for an estimated 5 percent of all homeless veterans, or 6,500 former servicewomen, a figure that is 67 percent higher than the number reported in 2004, according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs. By contrast, the total number of homeless veterans decreased by 33 percent in the same period, to 131,000 from 195,000.
read more here
For these women veterans, a home to call their own

PTSD Ghosts and Goblins you need to treat

from actionflickchick

As the kids get dressed up to play the part of scary characters or creatures of their dreams, Halloween night fills them with dreams of getting more candy than their friends. Sugar highs are sure to follow over the next few days. This night has not always been about costumes and candy. It was a night to acknowledge souls.

We love horror movies. Most TV stations will be playing some kind of Halloween theme program. We love to be frightened because we know none of it is real. As soon as the program is over, we can rest assured our lives are not in danger and it is safe to take a shower without worrying about someone coming to hack us to death.

Imagine being frightened everyday of your life from the replays of your life playing over and over again in your mind.

Imagine not knowing where you are when you wake up in the middle of the night from such a vivid nightmare, you ended up smelling, hearing, seeing and feeling it all as if it were in real time.

That's what PTSD does. It takes you back to where your worst nightmares came true. It takes you back to the horrors you saw. Your blood pressure rises as your heart pumps harder. Your muscles tense. Your eyes move wildly as fear of the next thing takes over. You sweat as listen carefully for the softest sound. You know there is not a harmless friends trying to scare you but there are ghosts following you from your past.
PTSD Ghosts and Goblins you need to treat