Veterans find help and hope

When a veteran, especially a Marine, hears the words, Traumatic Brain Injury, it seems a lot easier to deal with, cope with and heal, but when they hear Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, they assume they are being told there is something mentally wrong with them, they are somehow "soft" in the head, just not tough enough, not prepared and it is their fault. Yes, they are still getting this message from others. Why?

TBI comes from an outside force. The force of a bomb blast or head injury, just as the term states clearly. It is an injury so it is easier for the veteran to make peace with it, talk about it and do what they can to help themselves return to "normal" as closely as possible.

PTSD which actually means "after wound" and in other words, injury, yet they assume that it's their fault they have it. Why?

It is still the same part of the body that is injured. It is injured and not "defective" but they think of it that way. It is because they have been told it is their fault with the training they have received as the military tells them they can prevent it by becoming "resilient" and toughen their minds.

While they stand in uniform with weapons, face danger, risk their lives, go through the gates of hell in combat, they have the idea they are trained to be tough. They assume they should be able to take anything and still stay the same. They assume they are also trained to stop being human. They think all the compassion they had inside of themselves all their lives is suddenly gone but it isn't. The military tries to freeze it out of them but it is still there and that's perhaps the biggest problem of all.

Had the military taught them how to understand every part of them can go into making them a better soldier or Marine, or sailor or airman or National Guardsman, then they would put it all into use without considering even a fraction of who they are inside as an enemy. They would be able to make peace with what they see as weakness while using the other "parts" of themselves to support what is not as strong, what is wounded, what is injured.

So much the military could be doing if they finally came to terms with what makes the men and women in their command as valuable as they are.

Veterans find help and hope

By Pamela Dozois/Lifestyle Editor pdozois@syvnews.com
John Stephens, a Marine serving near Fallujah, Iraq, was exercising in camp when a mortar landed about 125 feet from him. The blast threw him to the ground but he immediately got back up, thinking he was fine.

But he wasn’t.

He remained on active duty for two more years, even though he began to notice symptoms of fatigue, memory and concentration problems and other emotional and psychological changes just a few weeks after the mortar blast.

Eventually he was told he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, was given counseling and some anti-depressants, and was told to “get over it.”

But he didn’t.

He returned home a changed man; someone who had been social and active in his church was now someone who isolated himself, spoke very little and flew into fits of uncontrollable rage.
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Veterans find help and hope

Vietnam Vet killed while trying to deposit money for WWII veterans

Two generations of veterans have just been attacked by this. This Vietnam veteran was part of a bigger picture. Most service organizations are now headed by Vietnam veterans because of the aging WWII and Korean War veterans. They took on taking care of the older veterans and the money to be deposited was for WWII veterans. The robber has no conscience.

If you know who did this, contact the police and turn them in. This was about a brotherhood of veterans trying to do some good and trying to take care of each other. They put the needs of everyone in this nation ahead of their own and now one is dead because someone decided to take what was not their's.

Vietnam veteran robbed, killed on his way to deposit VFW money
William Burtner had helped raise money for WWII vets' trip to Washington

Tribune staff report

November 20, 2009


Army veteran William Burtner survived Vietnam and dedicated his life to helping other veterans.

On Monday, Burtner was about to enter a bank in Midlothian to deposit money that the south suburb's Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2580 had raised during a benefit.

He never made it inside.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-vietnam-veteran-dies-20-nov20,0,391111.story

Woman wounded at Fort Hood thought shooting was a drill

Monona woman wounded at Fort Hood thought shooting was a drill

Steven Verburg 608-252-6118
sverburg@madison.com
Posted: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:45 pm
A Monona woman who was among the wounded in the Fort Hood massacre told a fellow officer Wednesday that while the shooting was happening she thought it was a drill.

Army Reserves Capt. Dorothy Carskadon and two other wounded members of the Madison-based 467th Medical Detachment have been medically cleared and should be coming home soon, said Capt. Robert LaFountain.

They were among the 15 members of the 467th who were being processed for deployment to Afghanistan on Nov. 5 when an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, allegedly opened fire and killed 13 soldiers, including three from the 467th.

She was sitting in an office cubicle in the processing center when the shooting started.

"Almost through the whole ordeal she thought it was a training exercise," LaFountain said.

She remembered being hit by what she thought was a paint ball round, and the unit commander Maj. Laura Suttinger pulling her to a safe area and propped her up with another soldier, LaFountain said.
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Woman wounded at Fort Hood thought shooting was a drill

Soldier's family brings fight with contractor to Congress

Soldier's family brings fight with contractor to Congress
By DAVID GOLDSTEIN
McClatchy Newspapers
Army Lt. Col. Dominic "Rocky" Baragona was killed in Iraq on the very day he was going home.

He was en route, heading south on the road between Baghdad and Kuwait City, when a tractor-trailer lost control, jackknifed across the highway and crushed his Humvee.

That was more than six years ago, when the Iraq war was barely two months old, and Baragona's family has been fighting to hold someone accountable ever since.

His parents, Dominic and Vilma Baragona, and a sister, were on Capitol Hill Wednesday to tell a Senate hearing how their quest for justice after his death has been a frustrating effort.

"Never could I have imagined that I would sit here six years later with no justice, no criminal investigation, few answers," Dominic Baragona Sr. told the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.

The family has been asking questions ever since it learned of Baragona's death.

The tractor-trailer that killed Baragona was owned by the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co., an overseas U.S. government contractor that has earned millions of dollars from its work for the military.
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http://www.kansascity.com/444/story/1578986.html

What do you do with a Legion post that is losing its members?

It is not that the newer veterans are not coming but the Legion, along with too many other posts across the country, are not asking them.

When

New service organizations had to form a few years after Afghanistan was invaded, that should have caused alarm bells to go off in every established post. There would have been no need of them had the needs of the veterans been met by a welcoming neighborhood post showing they cared enough to know what the need was.

Young families wouldn't mind hanging around with people old enough to be grandparents if they knew they were cared about. Since we live in a time where families are no longer staying in their home towns they miss having someone older around to spoil them emotionally. Home could have been where the post was but they wanted to stay the same way they had been while the newer veterans needed oh so much more.

They needed accessibility to online resources but they also needed something the Legion was in a perfect position to deliver on. Experience. They would be able to just be an example of surviving even after what they went through in wars now reported in history books instead of newspapers. Wives could have helped new wives know that their marriages are not hopeless when love is there and support is available. There is so much they could have been doing but maybe its a case of no one ever giving them advice, or showing them how, or in some cases, just doing if for them. The age of these commanders does play into what was not being done and it's easy to jump to the conclusion they simply didn't know how to do any of it.

What do you do with a Legion post that is losing its members?

Nov, 17-2009 4:05 pm

By JACKIE HANUSEY
Staff Writer
LINWOOD – Linwood American Legion Post 353 sits at 23 Elm Ave., old and in disrepair.

The building’s yellow paint is peeling; the once-red door faded. From the outside, the curtains look worn and moth-eaten.

Birds live in the roof, and the portico over the front porch is rotted and unstable, according to City Councilman Tim Tighe. Sometimes, the grass is unkempt.

Tighe said the city has been wrestling with what to do about the building for several years.

He said it is a shame that the building needs so much work. Owned by the American Legion, it was constructed in 1900. It is on an undersized lot, which would make it hard to sell.

But perhaps the biggest problem to overcome is not the age of the building, but its membership.

“It’s a touchy situation. No one has any intentions of hurting the veterans,” Tighe said. “We don’t understand where the younger veterans are.”
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