Navy SEAL's body still missing after dive in 2013

Navy: SEAL Died in Dive Full of Safety Lapses
Honolulu Advertiser
by William Cole
Apr 21, 2014

Leathers was described as a "super-nice guy" who would give others the shirt off his back, according to friends and media reports. He was the father of three young children and had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The disappearance last year of a Pearl Harbor Navy SEAL who was spearfishing with other unit members on a training free dive off Kaena Point was accompanied by sweeping procedural and safety violations, according to the Navy's investigative report.

The death of special operations Petty Officer 1st Class Matthew John Leathers, 33, was likely caused by drowning due to shallow-water blackout during the breath-hold dive training, the command investigation concluded. No scuba gear was used for the exercise.

Leathers, a member of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1, was wearing an estimated 8- to 10-pound weight belt on the day of his disappearance, Feb. 19, 2013, according to the report.

He was likely negatively buoyant, which would have kept him under water after a blackout, the report said. His body was never found.
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Marine and 2 year old son battling brain cancer

Marine father, toddler son both diagnosed with brain tumors
WCTI12 News
By Amber Roberts
Apr 20 2014

HAVELOCK, CRAVEN COUNTY
First, a Havelock family learned their 2-year-old son has brain cancer. Then, the toddler's Marine father learned he has a brain tumor too.

Devon and Valerie Morse, both 24, have a 2-year-old son named David. The family lives at MCAS Cherry Point, where Devon has been stationed as a Marine for the past six years.

The Morse family said they discovered in March that David was not feeling well. The toddler was vomiting, suffering from nose bleeds, and couldn't balance while walking. The family took David to Carteret General Hospital, and he was later airlifted to Vidant Medical Center.

Doctors said the 2-year-old boy had a tumor on the right side of his brain-- the size of a tangerine. After more examinations, the family found out the tumor was malignant. David has brain cancer.

"I stopped and I cried and I cried," Valerie said. "And my husband had to walk out of the room, just to take a breather real quick. And my son looked up at me, and said, 'What's wrong, mommy?' And I just lost it."

David underwent surgery, and doctors were able to remove the majority of the tumor, his family said. He is now undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

But just as Devon and Valerie were coming to terms with their son's long journey ahead, they learned more bad news.

In April, Devon went to Carteret General Hospital after suffering from numbness in his body. Doctors later discovered that Devon has a tumor in his head as well. Doctors said the tumor is too small for surgery, but serious enough for him to seek additional medical treatment and begin taking medicine to prevent it from worsening. Devon is continuing his visits to doctors to figure out how serious his condition is and how to handle it.

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19 Year Old Soldier Earned Bronze Star for Valor, 69 Year Old Receives It

Vietnam veteran honored
Marblehead native to join Ohio Military of Fame
Sandusky Register
ALEX GREEN OC
MARBLEHEAD
APR 20, 2014

Marblehead native John Henderson will never forget his time in Vietnam for a number of reasons. For one, his year-plus spent serving his country in the war is precisely detailed in his 12-inchthick binder. It neatly holds everything from war photos to maps of where he was deployed.

He doesn’t need it to remind himself of the horrors, however.

Plenty of memories are still triggered almost 50 years later as part of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he experiences frequently.

He was 19 years old when he departed for ’Nam. “It’s tough at 19 to handle that,” Henderson said.“It made life harder for me”

Both good and bad memories will always live with Henderson, but strictly good memories will be linked with Henderson’s name throughout eternity.

He will soon be inducted into the Ohio Military Hall of Fame for Valor.

“I never thought I’d be inducted into the hall of anything,” Henderson joked.

He’ll patch up his original green U.S. Army uniform and wear it to the May 2 induction ceremony at the Ohio Statehouse.

Yet another pin will be added to his already colorful collection — a bronze star medal with a “V” device. “It’s quite a deal; it means a lot,” Henderson said.
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Boston Strong Survivor with PTSD Gained Strength From Soldiers

Soldiers Inspire Boston Marathon Bombing Survivor to Run Again
People Magazine
By JOHNNY DODD
04/20/2014

"Army Lt. Col. Brett Sylvia not only helped counsel Clark, but also oversaw the soldiers who reached out to her. Sylvia says he and his men understood what the 37-year-old mother of two was going through and what she needed to hear."

When the Boston Marathon starting gun goes off Monday, runner Demi Clark will have a group of soldiers to thank as she heads out over the 26-mile course.

Clark says she struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after becoming the final runner to cross the finish line while bombs exploded and debris rained down around her during the 2013 race.

"So many people around me were hit with shrapnel," recalls Clark, whose left eardrum was blown out by the blast.

"I had such massive guilt that I walked away uninjured."

Within months of the blast, the guilt and memories of the victims, the blood and severed limbs she'd seen, took its toll on her. She began seeing a therapist, who diagnosed her with PTSD.

"I wasn't sleeping, and I was anxious whenever I went into public spaces," she recalls. "I just wanted to close the drapes and become a hermit."
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National Guardsman fears discharge after surviving suicide attempt

There is something really wrong when soldiers are still trying to commit suicide. There is something even more wrong when they have to fear they survived.

If you have any advice for this Guardsman, read the post on Yahoo.

Military discharge for suicide attempt?
I dont want to hear any opinions or anybody giving me a lecture why i shouldnt have done it because its already happened and cant be undone.

About three weeks ago I attempted suicide by trying to OD on a variety of pills.

I started feeling really sick. Got very scared and went to the hospital. They pumped my stomach and sent me to a behavioural and mental hospital and had me locked in a room. Unfortunately it was the same weekend as my National guard drill.

After three days I was out and sent my documents of my stay to my First sergeant. Of course leaving out most of the information of why I was there in the first place. Then about a week later he called me enraged and kept going on about how he needs all my information and medical paper work from my stay there. He is very suspicious and very angry.

I just signed to have all my paper work released to my First Sergeant. It sounds silly because I just tried to takr my own life but I do not want to be discharge d at all. I fear that when he gets ahold of the paper work he I will be discharge d from the National Guard. Does any one know what they do for attempted suicide????

Nashville Double Amputee Rolling in Boston Marathon

Wounded Nashville vet in today's Boston Marathon
The Tennessean
Heidi Hall
April 21, 2014

(Photo: Photos by John Partipilo / The Tennessean )

What Marine-turned-marathoner Benjamin Maenza calls his arrogance, other people might call his valor. Or tenacity.

Or insanity.

Because Maenza finished his first marathon in 2011, only a year after an IED in Afghanistan efficiently shredded both his legs to above the knee. He used a handcycle to churn out those 26.2 miles without a day's training, and he was hooked.

At 9:22 a.m. today in Boston, the Lipscomb University student will start his seventh marathon. But this one will be like none he's finished before.

He will meet people who lost their limbs — not defending their nation overseas as he did, but because they simply wanted the exhilaration of running in the world's most famous marathon. Three people died and more than 250 were injured when a bomb exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. Some survivors are expected back, some of them in handcycles such as Maenza's.
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Former U.S. Army Ranger thinks he may have shot Pat Tillman

Former U.S. soldier says his friendly-fire shots might have killed Tillman
Reuters
Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis
Sun Apr 20, 2014

(Reuters) - A former U.S. Army Ranger who was in the same platoon as ex-NFL player Pat Tillman has stated in a television interview that he believes he might have fired the shots that killed Tillman in a 2004 friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan.

Steven Elliott, 33, told ESPN program "Outside the Lines" in an interview scheduled to air on Sunday that he regrets joining other soldiers in firing on the spot where Tillman had taken position during a chaotic incident in a mountainous area.

"It is possible, in my mind, that I hit him," Elliott said.

Tillman gave up a multimillion dollar career as a defensive back with the Arizona Cardinals football team to enlist in the military in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks and served in the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, becoming one of the U.S. military's most high-profile service members.

The U.S. military initially said he was shot by enemy fighters in an ambush, but a subsequent investigation determined he was killed by friendly fire.

Elliott's comments to "Outside the Lines" mark his first public statements on Tillman's death. ESPN reported that two other soldiers who previously acknowledged firing at Tillman's position had declined to comment for the sports program.
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Did you hear the one about a woman, a Rabbi and a Chaplain

Did you hear the one about a woman, a Rabbi and a Chaplain walking into a room full of soldiers,,,,and then she began to preach?

Female rabbi, chaplain with 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan, has no regrets
The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer
By Drew Brooks
Published: April 18, 2014

Capt. Heather Borshof, the battalion chaplain of the 330th Joint Movement Control Battalion, 1st Sustainment Command (Theater), speaks at a service at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, on March 14, 2014. JARRED WOODS/U.S. ARMY

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Army Capt. Heather Borshof expects the questions.

"What's that on your uniform?" passers-by ask the chaplain for the Fort Bragg-based 330th Movement Control Battalion. It's the Ten Commandments topped with a Star of David, the symbol for Jewish chaplains.

"Women can be rabbis?" they ask. Yes, they have served in that role for decades.

Borshof, who deployed with her battalion — part of the 82nd Sustainment Brigade — in November, said she is used to the queries.

A female chaplain is a rare sight in the military. A female Jewish chaplain? There is only one other in the active-duty Army, she said. And Borshof was the first in a generation. She follows in the footsteps of Chana Timoner, who served at Fort Bragg in 1993 and died in 1998 from complications with a virus.

This week, Borshof has hosted two Passover seders at Bagram Airfield, where she is the only rabbi to be stationed long-term. But she said her chief role is to counsel soldiers, no matter their religion.

"I travel for our soldiers," she said, referring to the battalion's 19 movement control teams spread across Afghanistan. "I actually don't travel for the religious community."
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Australia War widow touched by Kate's sympathy

War widow touched by Kate's sympathy
News Australia
24 HOURS AGO APRIL 20, 2014

WAR widow Nicole Pearce says her meeting with the Duchess of Cambridge was a surreal and privileged experience, but she desperately wishes it could have been under different circumstances.

It's been almost seven years since a roadside bomb claimed the life of her husband, Trooper David Pearce, just two weeks into a tour of Afghanistan.

Her daughters Stephanie and Hanna lost their father. She lost the man she loved, and, for too many years, any sense of a normal life.

Nothing can bring her 41-year-old husband back but the widow was touched by the duchess's heartfelt concern for her family.

Kate and Prince William spoke with four families who lost loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq during their tour of Queensland's Amberley RAAF base on Saturday.

"She asked how long David had been in the military for and how long he'd been overseas when he was killed," Mrs Pearce told the Nine Network.

"She was sincerely quite sad for us to think David was only over there for two weeks when he was killed. She seemed very, very genuine and she was very sweet."

It was a bitter sweet occasion for the family.
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Returning soldiers now battling homelessness

When it happened to Vietnam veterans no one knew and few cared. With OEF and OIF veterans coming home and facing the same thing, everyone knows but not everyone cares. Think about all we've been told all these years later about what the DOD and the VA have been doing to counter Combat PTSD. Then think of how there is no excuse for any of this still happening. If you care, demand change and accountability because if no one is held accountable, nothing will change and our veterans will keep suffering.

US veterans: returning soldiers now battling homelessness
Channel 4
THURSDAY 17 APRIL 2014

Tens of thousands of US troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, but many are finding their return home is less than heroic, and the substantial number of veterans facing homelessness is on the rise. Sergeant Randy Vaccaro is what most Americans would describe as a hero.

As a US Marine, he did three combat tours in Iraq. During one, he said he was facing attack every day, small arms and Improvised Explosive Devices. He saw two of his closest friends die in front of him during one firefight in Fallujah.

But now, almost three years on from the US troop withdrawal from Iraq, Randy and tens of thousands of his comrades from that war and America’s other 21st century conflict – Afghanistan – find themselves home. But homeless.

An estimated 48,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were homeless in 2013, according to figures from the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Although homelessness among military veterans in general is in decline – down by a quarter in the last four years – the current generation of combat veterans are finding themselves homeless at a rising rate.

We met Randy Vaccaro at the Veterans Village of San Diego.

Yes, an entire village created in 1981 to serve the men and women who served their country, and now can’t find their place in it.
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