Heroes we ignore

Dakota Meyer was a hero before his heroic act, but as with most heroes, we didn't notice. We were too busy making heroes out of movie stars, singers and sports stars. We were focused on celebrities as if anything they did really mattered to our own lives. They entertain us. Military folks, well they are just too busy protecting us most of the time but when a video shows up on YouTube with them dancing or acting silly, it goes viral with millions of people watching what they do. When they are risking their lives, no one wants to pay attention.

Why?

Kentuckian deserves Medal of Honor, said brother of deceased Marine
By Jim Warren — jwarren@herald-leader.com
Jul 26, 2011

Pikeville's Chase Goodman is hoping that Kentucky native Dakota Meyer gets nationwide recognition for the Medal of Honor he's to receive for braving enemy fire to retrieve the bodies of four buddies in Afghanistan in 2009.

And he hopes the medal will make more Americans aware of the military errors and oversights that, Goodman believes, led to the four men's deaths.

Goodman has a personal interest in the story: his half-brother, Marine 1st Lt. Michael Johnson of Virginia Beach, Va., was one of the four men Meyer tried to save.

"I think that at some point Dakota probably knew they were already dead," Goodman said Monday.

"But the simple fact of his determination to rush in there and try to pull them out regardless ... it's just extraordinary. I'd really like for him to get some recognition for what he did."


Read more: Kentuckian deserves Medal of Honor

This is one of the few nominated for the Medal of Honor. The least we can do is pay attention to what they did with their lives for the sake of our lives and not the sake of their own lives.

Read about what happened here and watch video report.

We were pinned down

Marine, father of four killed in motorcycle crash

Tuesday, Jul. 26, 2011

Motorcycle crash in Horry County claims life of Marine, father of four
Deceased a Loris native

By Gina Vasselli - gvasselli@thesunnews.com

A Loris man and active duty Marine died Sunday afternoon after crashing his motorcycle near the Loris airport.

Jeffery Bennett, 29, died about 6 p.m. at Grand Strand Regional Medical Center, said Deputy Horry County Coroner Darris Fowler.

Bennett died from head trauma following the motorcycle accident, which happened about 1 p.m., Fowler said.

Read more: Motorcycle crash in Horry County claims life of Marine

Funeral service scheduled for Tuesday for Neb. National Guard soldier

Funeral service scheduled for Tuesday for Neb. National Guard soldier who died in Afghanistan
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: July 24, 2011

MAYWOOD, Neb. — A Nebraska Army National Guard sergeant who died in Afghanistan will be laid to rest this week.

A funeral service for 28-year-old Omar Jones, of Maywood, is scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday at Fort McPherson National Cemetery in Maxwell.

The guard says Maxwell died of a noncombat injury last Monday at a base in Balkh Province. His death is under investigation by military officials.
read more here
Funeral service scheduled for Tuesday for Neb. National Guard soldier

Homeless Vietnam Vet, Seabee, laid to rest with honors

Homeless Vietnam vet buried with full military honors, paid by funeral home program
By Elinor Brecher, The Miami Herald
9:43 p.m. EDT, July 21, 2011

When William Gaunt returned from Vietnam in the late '60s, he was scarred inside and out. You could see the shrapnel wounds. You could only guess at the emotional damage through his struggles with alcohol and drugs.

A heavy smoker, he died at Fort Lauderdale's Imperial Point Medical Center on July 3, beset by diabetes, emphysema, hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.

Gaunt might have been consigned to a pauper's grave. Instead, he was laid to rest with military honors Thursday at the South Florida National Cemetery in Lake Worth through a funeral-home chain's homeless veterans burial program.

Taps was played and three sailors saluted Gaunt's flag-draped casket.

"He deserved it,'' said Ben Harris, one of nine friends who came to mourn Billy Gaunt.

Gaunt was born May 30, 1949, in Newark, N.J., and served with the U.S. Navy's Seabees from 1967 to 1969.

"Billy would have felt very proud and honored to be sent off this way,'' said Ed Stephens, another Navy veteran of the Vietnam War.

"He was a proud Seabee who loved his country,'' said Patrick Birk, his roommate at a Pompano Beach "sober house,'' who accepted Gaunt's folded coffin flag from two sailors in summer whites.
read more here
Homeless Vietnam vet buried with full military honors

Veterans court for troubled vets marks year anniversary

Specialized court for troubled vets marks year anniversary
by Jessica Mador, Minnesota Public Radio
July 25, 2011

St. Paul, Minn. — July marks one year since the state launched its first Veterans Treatment Court, one of several dozen problem-solving courts around the country to help veterans who commit crimes stay out of the criminal justice system.

Veterans who land in trouble with the law can be referred to the Veterans Treatment Court in Minneapolis as an alternative to jail. That's how 56-year old Army veteran Cecil Wooten ended up in the program. He credits the court with helping him get clean.

"I got my third DWI and they had a vets court, and I was fortunate to get involved in it," Wooten said. "And I was thankful from then on."

Wooten lives in temporary Veterans Administration housing and has been sober for about a year now. Hennepin County Judge Charles Porter, who oversees the court, said Wooten's case is typical.

"The original thought was that what we would have is mostly Afghanistan and Iraq veterans," Porter said. "What we have mostly had is Vietnam veterans and they are a little bit of a harder case."

Many of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans Porter sees have combat-related traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of the approximately 70 defendants in the program over the past year have serious mental health issues. Many are addicted or chronically homeless or both. Many of whom have cycled through the criminal justice system for decades without treatment.
read more here
Specialized court for troubled vets marks year anniversary

Cycling to battle veteran homelessness

Guest View: Cycling to battle veteran homelessness

Juventino "J" Gomez
Posted: 07/24/2011

For many veterans in the San Gabriel Valley, the price of freedom is felt every night as these heroes pitch a tent, unfurl their sleeping mats and take up temporary residence under a freeway overpass or in a local park.
The number of men and women who return from war only to find themselves homeless, and without proper post-combat mental health care is intolerable.

Experts estimate that 11 percent of the 8,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles County live in the San Gabriel Valley. According to a 2009 report on homelessness by the Veteran's Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are at higher risk of homelessness induced by mental illness than those from earlier conflicts. Reasons include the length and number of deployments, as well as the nature of the conflict, exposure to roadside bombs and other explosions that cause traumatic brain injury. California alone has welcomed more than 30,000 veterans home - many of whom end up homeless after 18 months of being discharged.

Upon taking office, President Barack Obama committed billions of federal dollars to end the shame of veteran homelessness. The 2012 budget includes $939 million to prevent and reduce homelessness among veterans - a 17.5 percent increase from previous years. However, these funds in past years have sat unused due to bureaucracy and an infrastructure ill-equipped to handle the heavy load of veterans in need of workforce training, housing services and healthcare.

So, to rally support and encourage the distribution of long-overdue federal funding, a local group of strong-willed U.S. service members have taken matters into their own hands. Through aggressive "vet hunting," which includes scouring homeless camps, overpasses and parks for homeless veterans, this group has dedicated themselves to a 1,900-mile bicycle ride in the name of their veteran brothers and sisters. They call themselves Vet Hunters - they are homeless veterans themselves, former service members who have suffered combat disabilities, and active-duty Iraq and Afghanistan service members.

Read more: Cycling to battle veteran homelessness

Uncle Sam wants psychiatrists

Uncle Sam wants psychiatrists
Published: July 25, 2011 at 12:55 AM

FORT KNOX, Ky., July 25 (UPI) -- Uncle Sam wants psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and social workers as well as graduate students entering these fields to consider the U.S. Army.

Col. R. Scott Dingle, the U.S. Army's Medical Recruiting Brigade commander, says the military is one of the largest healthcare organizations in the world and offers behavioral health providers the chance to work in the areas of mental resilience, combat and operational stress control.

read more here
Uncle Sam wants psychiatrists

Helping as fort blacksmith proves therapeutic

Vet finds he’s iron-willed
Helping as fort blacksmith proves therapeutic

By Sue Vorenberg
Columbian Staff Reporter
Sunday, July 24, 2011

Photo by Steven Lane
Stoking the fire at the blacksmith shop at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Lee Pisarek prepares to work with some hot iron. The disabled Army veteran, who suffers from PTSD, said his time volunteering at the fort has been therapeutic.

Peace and calm radiated from Lee Pisarek’s face as he rhythmically pounded the piece of red hot iron with a mallet wrapped in his large, skilled hand.

A metallic, slightly smoky odor saturated the blacksmith shop at Fort Vancouver National Site, adding another layer to the historic accuracy of the place.

Re-enacting a profession from 1845 is about as far away as you can get from the battlefields of Operation Desert Storm, where Pisarek severely injured his right leg after getting caught between a mine field and artillery fire, which “didn’t go well,” he said with an odd smile.

But for the Army veteran, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, learning to become a blacksmith has been a fulfilling way to use some of the same mechanical and technical skills he worked with in the service, he said.

“I was a lifer, I expected to stay in for 30 years, but in 1992 after my injury I opted for the early-out program,” said Pisarek, who joined the service in 1982.

His military job, as a field expedient weapons instructor, was something he really enjoyed, and it was hard to give it up, he said.

“(It) requires looking at an object for what it’s capable of, not necessarily for what it’s designed to do,” Pisarek said.

Volunteering to work as a blacksmith has given him a new creative outlet, and a way to fulfill the same mechanical and intellectual curiosity, he added.

read more here
Helping as fort blacksmith proves therapeutic

Waiting too long for help from VA

Waiting too long for help from VA
The Virginian-Pilot
© July 25, 2011
Veterans diagnosed with mental health problems also have to cope with dangerously long delays in getting the care they deserve from Veterans Affairs facilities.

That problem is not new. More than 202,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been seen at VA facilities for potential cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Nevertheless, stories of long waits for treatment remain legion, as was clear at a Senate committee hearing earlier this month.

It's perhaps no coincidence that the VA monitors how long it takes for a vet to receive his first appointment but doesn't keep track of how long a vet has to wait for treatment.

As past wars have taught the nation, the number of returning soldiers suffering from mental illness will never be truly known. Some psychiatric problems take years to manifest. Others are buried beneath drugs or drink. Still other mental health problems lead veterans onto the streets and society's margins.

The best opportunity to reach mentally injured veterans comes in the military's own system and in the days, weeks and months following a soldier's rotation back home.

That's not happening enough in the VA system, several veterans told the senators.
read more here
Waiting too long for help from VA

Female soldier raped, then tossed out for admitting she was gay?

We read a lot of stories about gay soldiers being kicked out of the military. We read a lot of stories about female soldiers being raped. This one combines both and it is pretty shocking to discover what happened to this woman after being raped and betrayed over "don't ask, don't tell." In her case, did the military try to tell her she shouldn't have talked about being raped too?

A nightmare that lasted nine years
02:49 PM EDT on Sunday, July 24, 2011
By Lynn Arditi

Journal Staff Writer

Pvt. Valerie J. Desautel swore under oath to an Army investigator that she would tell the truth about the night she was raped.

She was 20, a fresh-faced soldier from Rhode Island who was in training at Fort Lee, Va.

Desautel admitted to the investigator taking her statement that she’d been socializing the previous night at an officer’s club, got drunk, and accepted a ride from a man whom she’d only just met.

The officer sounded skeptical. You went with this man to a hotel, she remembers the officer saying, and you want me to believe that it wasn’t consensual?

Then, before the young private had time to think it through, she blurted out the words she’d been warned never to say in the military: “I’m gay…”

Eight weeks later, plagued by anxiety and flashbacks, she was ordered to pack her bags and was handed a plane ticket home. Her discharge sheet read: “homosexual admission.”

“Instead of rehabilitating me,” she said, “they threw me out like a piece of trash.”
read more here
A nightmare that lasted nine years