Operation: Supply Drop: Fighting PTSD And Bolstering Troop Morale, One Video Game Care Package At A Time
Forbes
Michael Venables, Contributor
March 1, 2013
My Forbes colleague, John Gaudiosi, recently wrote an excellent post on the Matheson bill introduced Jan. 15 in the House. H.R. 287 proposes to make it unlawful to sell or rent violent or Mature-rated video games to minors, making it punishable by a fine of up to $5,000. With the culture war over video games evident in full force, it’s a distinct pleasure to highlight the inspiring story of Operation Supply Drop’s Captain Stephen “Shanghai Six” Machuga. Now retired from active military service, Machuga is a former airborne Army Ranger who created Front Towards Gamer, a site that provides video game reviews, editorials, geek content and the Claymore Podcast Network. Operation Supply Drop is the charity wing of the site, a military-themed charity organization that raises money to build video game care packages for soldiers deployed to high-threat provinces in Afghanistan and hospitalized veterans in Army hospitals in the U.S. Machuga got the nickname “Shanghai Six” after having been “stop-lossed” in the Army following 9/11. Originally only supposed to do four years in the Army, he ended up doing a total of eight years instead, thus the “Shanghai-ed” moniker. The “Six” is used in military radio chatter to designate the unit’s leader. In two and a half years, Operation Supply Drop has raised over $150,000 in support of getting video games and gear to troops deployed overseas to combat zones.
read more here
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Fighting PTSD And Bolstering Troop Morale with video care packges
Call of Duty to fight PTSD? I don't think so!
Gay Marine Colonel recalls ‘don’t ask’ investigation
Gay colonel recalls ‘don’t ask’ investigation
Marine Corps Times
By Rick Maze
Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 1, 2013
An Army colonel retiring April 30 after 26 years of service said the nine years he spent living with the possibility of separation for admitting he was gay was something that he “wouldn’t wish … on anybody.”
“It was a miserable experience,” said Col. Gary Espinas, whose final military assignment is as an instructor at the prestigious Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, Calif. In retirement, Espinas will be director of chapter and membership services for OutServe-SLDN, a newly created position in the new joint organization that includes the division that gave him legal support when he faced the possible end of his career in 2003.
Espinas, a career foreign area officer and Russian specialist, was a major at the time, assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, when a State Department security officer questioned him about his list of local contacts, which included only men.
“I had a wide network of Russian friends,” Espinas said. “All of the contacts were men.”
The embassy security officer asked a direct question about whether Espinas was gay. “I knew lying was not a good option,” he said. “I responded I was, in fact, gay.”
read more here
also
Closeted gay soldiers more likely to attempt suicide
Marine Corps Times
By Rick Maze
Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 1, 2013
An Army colonel retiring April 30 after 26 years of service said the nine years he spent living with the possibility of separation for admitting he was gay was something that he “wouldn’t wish … on anybody.”
“It was a miserable experience,” said Col. Gary Espinas, whose final military assignment is as an instructor at the prestigious Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, Calif. In retirement, Espinas will be director of chapter and membership services for OutServe-SLDN, a newly created position in the new joint organization that includes the division that gave him legal support when he faced the possible end of his career in 2003.
Espinas, a career foreign area officer and Russian specialist, was a major at the time, assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, when a State Department security officer questioned him about his list of local contacts, which included only men.
“I had a wide network of Russian friends,” Espinas said. “All of the contacts were men.”
The embassy security officer asked a direct question about whether Espinas was gay. “I knew lying was not a good option,” he said. “I responded I was, in fact, gay.”
read more here
also
Closeted gay soldiers more likely to attempt suicide
Fort Hood shooter may take plea deal
Fort Hood suspect must describe shooting rampage if he pleads guilty to lesser charges
Published March 01, 2013
Associated Press
FORT HOOD, Texas – More than three years after the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, an Army psychiatrist may soon describe details of the terrifying attack for the first time, if he's allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges.
Maj. Nidal Hasan would be required to describe his actions and answer questions about the Nov. 5, 2009, attack on the Texas Army post if the judge allows him to plead guilty to the lesser charges, as his attorneys have said he wants to do.
Any plea, which could happen at the next hearing in March, won't stop the much-anticipated court-martial set to begin May 29. He faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder.
Under military law, a judge can't accept a guilty plea for charges that carry the death penalty. Hasan's lawyers have said he is ready to plead guilty to charges of unpremeditated murder, which don't carry a possible death sentence, as well as the 32 attempted premeditated murder charges he faces.
read more here
Published March 01, 2013
Associated Press
FORT HOOD, Texas – More than three years after the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, an Army psychiatrist may soon describe details of the terrifying attack for the first time, if he's allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges.
Maj. Nidal Hasan would be required to describe his actions and answer questions about the Nov. 5, 2009, attack on the Texas Army post if the judge allows him to plead guilty to the lesser charges, as his attorneys have said he wants to do.
Any plea, which could happen at the next hearing in March, won't stop the much-anticipated court-martial set to begin May 29. He faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder.
Under military law, a judge can't accept a guilty plea for charges that carry the death penalty. Hasan's lawyers have said he is ready to plead guilty to charges of unpremeditated murder, which don't carry a possible death sentence, as well as the 32 attempted premeditated murder charges he faces.
read more here
Fort Hood cuts could hit training and operations
Fort Hood cuts could hit training and operations, lead to civilian furloughs
By Juan Castillo
American-Statesman Staff
March 1, 2013
FORT HOOD — More than 5,200 civilian workers at Fort Hood face possible furloughs, and operations and training would be reduced at the Army post under deep, across-the-board federal spending cuts that President Barack Obama authorized Friday night.
The spending cuts won’t affect uniformed soldiers, however, because military personnel are exempt, as are Social Security and Medicare.
The realities of the cuts, known as sequestration, came into focus as the president, who opposed the spending cuts, signed the order putting them into effect Friday night after Congress failed to reach a deal to stave them off.
read more here
What is Wounded Times?
What is Wounded Times?
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
March 2, 2013
Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a lawyer looking for some more information on a story he found on Wounded Times. I told him what he wanted to know and when I thought he was ready to hang up, he asked me what this blog was all about. I figured it was a good time to remind people in case they forgot.
Everyone knows about Stars and Stripes, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Military.com but while these sites are really great, they don't cover everything and too many news reports end up getting lost under the big news stories. That's just the way it is.
When I started out in the 90's working online, I had to search for too many hours doing research on PTSD but these searches ended up linking me to story after story about veterans I wouldn't have known otherwise. I decided to do something about it. Wounded Times is the latest in a series of blogs and websites I started but this one is the most successful.
This one started out because I received an email from a Marine telling me he was always in my old blog because he wanted to know about PTSD but didn't want to read my "political crap" looking for reports. I was a hothead back then. Couldn't help it. While today we're reading that the Iraq War ended up benefitting Iran, most of the people I know knew that already. To me, sending the troops into combat demanded our attention but too few were thinking beyond the rhetoric. Anyway, the Marine was in Iraq and I shamefully defended my right to use my free speech and post what I wanted. Yep, I hit the roof on him. He responded back with a very short question. "Are you doing this for yourself or us?" I cried. He was right. I started out wanting to do something for them and ended up doing it for my own ego. I fell into the same political minefield everyone else was in. I promised him that I would start another blog that would not be political. I kept that promise.
There is enough publications online with an agenda owing something to some company for financial support. I owe nothing to no one except the men and women serving this country today and those who came before them. Plain and simple, they are my agenda.
I am independent of corporations and politicians so that I can post what is real. Democrats think I am a Republican because of all the posts about how much Washington is doing wrong and Republicans think I'm a Democrat because most of the time I complain about the same thing, but the truth is still the truth and the shameful fact is, the troops and our veterans deserve so much more than what they are getting.
They deserve the truth from us and to know what is going on. When you read their stories as much as I do it is obvious they don't think much about the politics behind what got them deployed into combat. They have a lot more important things on their minds like staying alive and making sure their buddies get home too. None of them ask "are you a Democrat or Republican" before they will use their own bodies to shield another soldier or pull them to safety.
Wounded Times is about the troops and veterans, especially those wounded by Combat and PTSD. Families don't know what to do to help and the troops get the wrong messages from their leaders because they get bamboozled by corporations and researchers giving them the wrong information. Most mainstream reporters are just as culpable. They fail to learn the facts so when they get assigned a story, they believe whatever they are told with absolutely no follow-up questions. That's how we ended up with the wrong information on military suicides from 2012 and worse, no one being held accountable for them.
They have the power of well funded publicity but while that power came with the obligation to report facts, they didn't even hold themselves accountable.
In 1982 when I started out researching PTSD I thought all that had to be done was to get this secret inner combat out in the open, never once thinking 30 years later I'd still be trying to do that.
I told a friend the other day that I was tired of feeling ashamed. He couldn't believe I said that. When you consider how long I've been doing this people finding my work by the accident of a Google search is pretty pitiful. When you factor in 12-14 hours days 7 days a week without a paycheck, that is about as bad as it gets.
The ads you see on here are from Google and I don't owe them anything. Honestly considering how little I make off them, I rather see them gone but in order to do that, readers have to kick in some funds and then I'd know if what I do is of value to them or not. So far that hasn't happened and even begging didn't work. The more time I spent asking for money the less time I had to do this work and the less time I had to help families get through this.
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
March 2, 2013
Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a lawyer looking for some more information on a story he found on Wounded Times. I told him what he wanted to know and when I thought he was ready to hang up, he asked me what this blog was all about. I figured it was a good time to remind people in case they forgot.
Everyone knows about Stars and Stripes, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Military.com but while these sites are really great, they don't cover everything and too many news reports end up getting lost under the big news stories. That's just the way it is.
When I started out in the 90's working online, I had to search for too many hours doing research on PTSD but these searches ended up linking me to story after story about veterans I wouldn't have known otherwise. I decided to do something about it. Wounded Times is the latest in a series of blogs and websites I started but this one is the most successful.
This one started out because I received an email from a Marine telling me he was always in my old blog because he wanted to know about PTSD but didn't want to read my "political crap" looking for reports. I was a hothead back then. Couldn't help it. While today we're reading that the Iraq War ended up benefitting Iran, most of the people I know knew that already. To me, sending the troops into combat demanded our attention but too few were thinking beyond the rhetoric. Anyway, the Marine was in Iraq and I shamefully defended my right to use my free speech and post what I wanted. Yep, I hit the roof on him. He responded back with a very short question. "Are you doing this for yourself or us?" I cried. He was right. I started out wanting to do something for them and ended up doing it for my own ego. I fell into the same political minefield everyone else was in. I promised him that I would start another blog that would not be political. I kept that promise.
There is enough publications online with an agenda owing something to some company for financial support. I owe nothing to no one except the men and women serving this country today and those who came before them. Plain and simple, they are my agenda.
I am independent of corporations and politicians so that I can post what is real. Democrats think I am a Republican because of all the posts about how much Washington is doing wrong and Republicans think I'm a Democrat because most of the time I complain about the same thing, but the truth is still the truth and the shameful fact is, the troops and our veterans deserve so much more than what they are getting.
They deserve the truth from us and to know what is going on. When you read their stories as much as I do it is obvious they don't think much about the politics behind what got them deployed into combat. They have a lot more important things on their minds like staying alive and making sure their buddies get home too. None of them ask "are you a Democrat or Republican" before they will use their own bodies to shield another soldier or pull them to safety.
Wounded Times is about the troops and veterans, especially those wounded by Combat and PTSD. Families don't know what to do to help and the troops get the wrong messages from their leaders because they get bamboozled by corporations and researchers giving them the wrong information. Most mainstream reporters are just as culpable. They fail to learn the facts so when they get assigned a story, they believe whatever they are told with absolutely no follow-up questions. That's how we ended up with the wrong information on military suicides from 2012 and worse, no one being held accountable for them.
They have the power of well funded publicity but while that power came with the obligation to report facts, they didn't even hold themselves accountable.
In 1982 when I started out researching PTSD I thought all that had to be done was to get this secret inner combat out in the open, never once thinking 30 years later I'd still be trying to do that.
I told a friend the other day that I was tired of feeling ashamed. He couldn't believe I said that. When you consider how long I've been doing this people finding my work by the accident of a Google search is pretty pitiful. When you factor in 12-14 hours days 7 days a week without a paycheck, that is about as bad as it gets.
The ads you see on here are from Google and I don't owe them anything. Honestly considering how little I make off them, I rather see them gone but in order to do that, readers have to kick in some funds and then I'd know if what I do is of value to them or not. So far that hasn't happened and even begging didn't work. The more time I spent asking for money the less time I had to do this work and the less time I had to help families get through this.
Veteran Gets Dying Wish To Walk Deck Of Old Ship
Veteran Gets Dying Wish To Walk Deck Of Old Ship
CBS Charlotte
March 1, 2013
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — Korean War veteran Gerald Bowman gamely walked up the gangplank to board the ship he had not seen in almost six decades. The 82-year-old is suffering from congestive heart failure with only about a year to live and his dying wish was to walk the decks of the USS Laffey on which he served four years, including three tours off Korea.
Wearing a USS Laffey hat, he led reporters through the ship at the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum on Charleston Harbor Friday, stopping by his old bunk and then into the engine room where as a machinist mate he worked, sometimes in sweltering temperatures of more than 120 degrees.
He choked up and paused when asked how it felt to be back.
“I just wanted to come back and see actually what happened to me in my early 20s,” the Elkins, Ark., man said. “I think the bottom line was the four years changed me. I was a different person when I left.”
read more here
CBS Charlotte
March 1, 2013
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — Korean War veteran Gerald Bowman gamely walked up the gangplank to board the ship he had not seen in almost six decades. The 82-year-old is suffering from congestive heart failure with only about a year to live and his dying wish was to walk the decks of the USS Laffey on which he served four years, including three tours off Korea.
Wearing a USS Laffey hat, he led reporters through the ship at the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum on Charleston Harbor Friday, stopping by his old bunk and then into the engine room where as a machinist mate he worked, sometimes in sweltering temperatures of more than 120 degrees.
He choked up and paused when asked how it felt to be back.
“I just wanted to come back and see actually what happened to me in my early 20s,” the Elkins, Ark., man said. “I think the bottom line was the four years changed me. I was a different person when I left.”
read more here
Raleigh WW II veteran honored for heroism
Finally, Raleigh WW II veteran honored for heroism
News Observer.com
Published: March 1, 2013
By Matt Caulder
RALEIGH
Approaching his 91st birthday, Kenneth Wilbur Keplar told his son a war story the son had never heard and about a medal Keplar never received: the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After hearing it last week, the son, Kenneth Wyley Keplar, got on the phone to a nephew at the State Department. The mission: track down his father’s medal.
The nephew had a connection at the Pentagon, and through quick work, the records were found in time for the younger Keplar to present the medal to his father at his birthday party Thursday night.
And Thursday night, before pulling the medal out of a gift bag, the son asked his father to tell the story of Dec. 19, 1944, again for multiple generations assembled at a North Raleigh home.
read more here
News Observer.com
Published: March 1, 2013
By Matt Caulder
RALEIGH
Approaching his 91st birthday, Kenneth Wilbur Keplar told his son a war story the son had never heard and about a medal Keplar never received: the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After hearing it last week, the son, Kenneth Wyley Keplar, got on the phone to a nephew at the State Department. The mission: track down his father’s medal.
The nephew had a connection at the Pentagon, and through quick work, the records were found in time for the younger Keplar to present the medal to his father at his birthday party Thursday night.
And Thursday night, before pulling the medal out of a gift bag, the son asked his father to tell the story of Dec. 19, 1944, again for multiple generations assembled at a North Raleigh home.
read more here
Iraq veteran who lost leg tries out for Los Angeles Dodgers
Iraq veteran who lost leg tries out for Los Angeles Dodgers
Published March 01, 2013
Associated Press
GLENDALE, Ariz. – A war veteran from Iraq who lost part of his leg in an explosion has tried out for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Daniel "Doc" Jacobs was among 80 hopefuls Thursday at the spring training complex of the Dodgers.
He was encouraged to attend by Hall of Famer and former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. read more here
Published March 01, 2013
Associated Press
GLENDALE, Ariz. – A war veteran from Iraq who lost part of his leg in an explosion has tried out for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Daniel "Doc" Jacobs was among 80 hopefuls Thursday at the spring training complex of the Dodgers.
He was encouraged to attend by Hall of Famer and former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. read more here
Tampa Vietnam veteran gets long-delayed Bronze Star
Vietnam veteran gets long-delayed Bronze Star
William R. Levesque
Times Staff Writer
Friday, March 1, 2013
TAMPA — The 22-year-old Tampa kid, a radioman in Charlie Company, wasn't thinking about medals or heroics. He crawled in the muck of a rice paddy in Vietnam with a radio on his back that felt like a big bulls-eye.
It seemed as if the entire Viet Cong army was out to kill him.
Three companies of the Army's 9th Infantry Division had just walked into an ambush on the afternoon of June 19, 1967, in the Mekong Delta. Hundreds of enemy guns opened up. The radio operator tried to crawl to the only cover he could see — the earthen wall of a dike no more than a foot high.
Somewhere behind him in a village the Americans had just cleared, a sniper's aim settled on the radioman's back. A trigger was pulled.
The draftee would never reach the dike.
read more here
William R. Levesque
Times Staff Writer
Friday, March 1, 2013
TAMPA — The 22-year-old Tampa kid, a radioman in Charlie Company, wasn't thinking about medals or heroics. He crawled in the muck of a rice paddy in Vietnam with a radio on his back that felt like a big bulls-eye.
It seemed as if the entire Viet Cong army was out to kill him.
Three companies of the Army's 9th Infantry Division had just walked into an ambush on the afternoon of June 19, 1967, in the Mekong Delta. Hundreds of enemy guns opened up. The radio operator tried to crawl to the only cover he could see — the earthen wall of a dike no more than a foot high.
Somewhere behind him in a village the Americans had just cleared, a sniper's aim settled on the radioman's back. A trigger was pulled.
The draftee would never reach the dike.
read more here
Friday, March 1, 2013
Vietnam Veterans took their own lives 28 times a day in the 70's
It is stunning what you can discover online without even looking for it. I was searching to validate a claim made by someone in Alaska about the number of Vietnam veterans they had when I came across this.
Evidence supporting Vietnam suicides exceeds combat deaths on a site called Teach Peace.
I keep saying nothing we're seeing today is new and this proves it.
I tracked down a couple of fascinating claims to the original sources and you'll be stunned as well.
If you think military suicides are bad now, this is what reporters missed when Vietnam veterans came home.
What makes all of this more disgraceful is the simple fact back then no one was doing anything on PTSD and few reporters cared. We didn't have the internet. The generation serving today grew up with it. The information is all out there. 40 years of research has gone into defeating PTSD but today we lost at least another 22 veterans to suicide. Why? Because people just don't invest the time to discover anything.
Evidence supporting Vietnam suicides exceeds combat deaths on a site called Teach Peace.
I keep saying nothing we're seeing today is new and this proves it.
I tracked down a couple of fascinating claims to the original sources and you'll be stunned as well.
Delayed effects of the military draft on mortality. A randomized natural experiment.
US National Library of Medicine
National Institute of Health
Hearst N, Newman TB, Hulley SB.
Abstract
To study the effect of military service during the Vietnam era on subsequent mortality, we analyzed a randomized natural experiment, the military draft lottery of 1970 to 1972.
Between 1974 and 1983, there were 14,145 deaths among California and Pennsylvania men whose dates of birth were in the years for which the draft lottery was held. The group of men with birth dates that made them eligible for the draft had a higher mortality rate than the group with birth dates that exempted them from the draft: suicide was increased by 13 percent (P = 0.005 by two-tailed test), death from motor-vehicle accidents by 8 percent (P = 0.03), and total mortality by 4 percent (P = 0.03). Only 26 percent of the men who were eligible for the draft actually entered the military.
If military service (rather than draft eligibility) was the actual risk factor, suicide and death from motor-vehicle accidents would have to have been increased by 86 percent and 53 percent among men who served in the military, to produce the increased risk that we observed among all draft-eligible men. A separate analysis that compared the causes of death in veterans and nonveterans yielded similar estimates: veterans were 65 percent and 49 percent more likely to die from suicide and motor-vehicle accidents, respectively. We conclude that the most likely explanation for these findings is that military service during the Vietnam War caused an increase in subsequent deaths from suicide and motor-vehicle accidents.
If you think military suicides are bad now, this is what reporters missed when Vietnam veterans came home.
Testimony presented to the Massachusetts Commission on the Concerns of Vietnam veterans in Greenfield, Massachusetts on May 4, 1982, declared that "Vietnam veterans have nationally averaged 28 suicides a day since 1975, amounting to over 70,000."
What makes all of this more disgraceful is the simple fact back then no one was doing anything on PTSD and few reporters cared. We didn't have the internet. The generation serving today grew up with it. The information is all out there. 40 years of research has gone into defeating PTSD but today we lost at least another 22 veterans to suicide. Why? Because people just don't invest the time to discover anything.
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