Garrison Commander of Fort Bliss Relieved of Duty

Fort Bliss garrison commander relieved of duty
El Paso Times
By Daniel Borunda
El Paso Times, Texas (MCT)
November 1, 2014

(MCT) — The Fort Bliss Garrison Commander has been relieved of duty following an investigation into misconduct allegations, post officials said Friday evening.

Col. Thomas Munsey had been suspended earlier this month when an investigation began.

"Maj. Gen. Stephen Twitty, 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss Commander, officially relieved Col. Thomas Munsey of command on Friday for a lack of trust and confidence in Munsey's ability to command based on the results of the investigation," stated a Fort Bliss news release.

Fort Bliss officials did not disclose what the allegations were against Munsey.

"Due to the Privacy Act and Army policy, the exact allegations of misconduct and details of the investigation will not be released," the news release said.

Officials said that Joseph Moscone, Fort Bliss deputy to the garrison commander, will be the interim manager until the Army names a replacement.
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Wounded: The Legacy of War, UK Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans

Bryan Adams' heart-stopping images of wounded British soldiers to go on show at Somerset House
Taken over the course of four years, Adams' portraits are an astonishing document of the aftermath of war
The Independent
OSCAR QUINE
Friday 31 October 2014

Wounded: The Legacy of War

Marine Mark Ormrod, injured in Afghanistan, aged 24

Bryan Adams

'Silence, a sense of reflection," is the response that Bryan Adams hopes his portraits of wounded British Armed Forces personnel will inspire in those visiting his exhibition at Somerset House over the coming months. But, as tends to be the case with simple ideas expertly executed, one is equally left thinking 'Why has this not been done before?'

In Wounded: The Legacy of War, he presents servicemen and women from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the injuries they have sustained, matter-of-factly. Their missing limbs, prosthetics and scar tissue are seen by the viewer as part of the subjects as they are now.

It may come as a surprise for some that, as well as building a career as one of the biggest-selling musicians of all time, Adams is also a respected portrait photographer. His first commission in the UK came from Marie Claire magazine in the early 2000s. Wounded came about when he was approached by Caroline Froggatt, an ITN journalist, in 2008. After four years of shooting, the portraits came together as a book.
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PBS Craft In America Features Combat Wounded Veterans

Stafford Iraq veteran gains strength from his craft
FREE LANCE-STAR
BY LINDLEY ESTES
November 2nd, 2014

Judas Recendez, 35, of Stafford County will be featured in
Sunday’s episode of the PBS series ‘Craft in America.’

In 2008, not long after he learned how to walk again, Judas Recendez threw a blue and brown glazed Japanese tea bowl on a potting wheel in California.

The 35-year-old Stafford County resident and U.S. Army veteran took a traditionally symmetrical design and gave it a new shape, carving deep scars into the façade of the bowl.

“It represents who I am,” he said. “It has a purpose, it’s useful, but it’s scarred.”

Recendez learned how to create pottery and ceramics in a studio at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center while in rehabilitation for wounds sustained in Iraq.

“Learning how to walk, you take it for granted so much,” he said. “It’s like breathing. You have to push through this amount of pain. It’s just really weird.”

It was in that studio at Walter Reed that Recendez first met Carol Sauvion, creator and director of the Peabody Award-winning PBS series “Craft in America.” His story inspired her to make an episode titled “Service,” which looks at the link between craft and the military.
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Air National Guard Chaplain Talks About Compassion Fatigue

Veterans and 'The Things They Carry'
Post Courier
Norris Burkes
Air National Guard Chaplain
Nov 2 2014

"From all of that, the VA doctor told me I was likely carrying secondary traumatic stress (STS), more commonly called "compassion fatigue." STS is a condition characterized by the gradual decrease of one's ability to show compassion. It's a common side effect for those who care for the injured and dying; STS takes a lot out of one's psyche and soul, so now there's a name for it."

Note to readers: In writing this column, I'm grateful for the inspiration I received from reading Tim O'Brien's Vietnam memoir, "The Things They Carried."

In May 2009, after serving four months as the chaplain for the Air Force field hospital in Balad, Iraq, I checked five pieces of luggage onto the military charter flight that would carry me home.

The five bags were heavy with my uniforms, mementos and military gear. As we approach another Veteran's Day, however, I'm becoming more aware that I carried some unseen baggage, too.

For instance, I was carrying the weight of a job undone. It felt undone because my four-month chaplain rotation was out of sync with the six-month deployment of the hospital staff. I was returning alone while many remained. There were moments where I felt more like a deserter than a returning vet.

Like most vets, I was worried about friends I left behind. I felt much like the only Marine I saw cry during my deployment; she was sent home with a broken ankle and her tears weren't from physical pain, but from the spiritual pain of leaving her squad.
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Starbucks CEO Schultz PTSD Advocate

A Cup of G.I. Joe
New York Times
Maureen Dowd
NOV. 1, 2014

Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, center, in May with leaders from the Third Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, at Fort Benning in Georgia. Credit Courtesy of 75th Ranger Regiment, U.S. Army

WHEN I close my eyes, I can easily flash back to a time when it was cool to call people in uniform “pigs” and “baby killers.”

If you had any family members in the police or military in the Vietnam era, you know how searing that was.

Now we give our veterans respect, early boarding at airports and standing ovations at ballgames. Yet it’s becoming clear that it’s not enough.

With no draft and fewer than 1 percent volunteering to serve, most Americans have no personal connection to anyone who went to Iraq or Afghanistan. There’s a schism between the warriors and the people they were fighting for.

Instead of ticker-tape parades, the veterans returned to find Americans in a crouch, wishing they could forget the military adventures of the last decade. Hollywood was turning out movies showcasing heroic veterans, but they were from World War II. And scandals scarred Walter Reed and an ill-prepared Department of Veterans Affairs.

“The government does a very good job of sending people to war,” Howard Schultz, the C.E.O. of Starbucks, told me in New York this past week, “and a very poor job of bringing them home.”

He has organized a Concert for Valor on the Mall on Veterans Day, featuring stars from Bruce Springsteen to Eminem to Rihanna, a way to celebrate soldiers and urge the public to get involved with veterans’ groups vetted by Gates and Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The free concert, put on by Starbucks, HBO and JPMorgan Chase, will be shown live on HBO, even for those without subscriptions.
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“Dreams of the Fallen” concert salutes veterans

Lincoln-themed concert in Voorhees a salute to vets
Courier-Post
William Sokolic
November 1, 2014

“Dreams of the Fallen” represents the voice inside the head of a soldier, with the orchestra as the sonic landscape of what the soldier might be experiencing at the time, the composer explained.

The Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey will put on a concert honoring veterans
Sunday at the Eastern Center for the Performing Arts in Voorhees

(Photo: Courtesy of Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey )

Jake Runestad is a young composer who was commissioned to write a large ensemble piece to honor veterans.

That piece, “Dreams of the Fallen,” will be performed for only the second time Sunday, Nov. 2, as part of a salute to veterans at the Eastern Center for the Performing Arts in Voorhees.

“The piece was written to honor veterans and is the backbone of the program,” said Matthew Oberstein, music director of the Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey.

The orchestra also will play a musical tribute to each branch of the military as well as Aaron Copeland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” with a reading by actor Dan Lauria.

The day includes a VIP reception with veterans prior to the concert and a pre-concert talk by Runestad and his collaborator, veteran Brian Turner.
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Veterans Take Giant Steps to Healing PTSD Through Art

Veterans with PTSD release their demons through art
New Haven Register
By Kristin Stoller
POSTED: 11/01/14

Vietnam War veteran John Jones displays his collage, featuring his possession from the 1950s. Jones, who struggles with PTSD, said the collage makes him feel good. (Kristin Stoller — New Haven Register)

GUILFORD
Vietnam War veteran John Jones was the only sailor who survived a fire on his ship, and since then he has been plagued by the “what ifs” and demons of post-traumatic stress disorder.

But at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System’s West Haven campus, Jones feels like he can let some of these demons out — through art.

“I saw things that people shouldn’t see,” said Jones, who was only 19 when he served in Vietnam. “You can’t unsee things. They play on your mind, you know?”

The Guilford Free Library is hosting an art exhibit throughout November of pieces by Jones and other Connecticut veterans. The veterans’ service ranges from the World War II era to Afghanistan.

The show includes work from artists representing the Giant Steps Program at the West Haven VA and the Rocky Hill Veterans Center programs, among others, organizer John Henningson said.

“The Giant Steps program is designed for those with a disability who are somewhat reluctant to expose themselves to the public for whatever reason,” he said. “Art, however, gives them a way to express themselves and show another side of their personality.”

In the ’70s, Jones said he turned to the VA when he couldn’t stop crying and screaming weeks after returning from Vietnam, but no one knew what PTSD was back then and he was sent away, he said.

“It was either jump off a building or go to downtown New Haven,” Jones, a Milford resident, said, recounting his turn to drugs and alcohol.

In 2004, he came back to the West Haven VA after the “drugs had taken their toll” and was able to be helped through medication, therapy and art. He displayed a collage he made of pieces from the ’50s that make him feel good, such as his old skateboard and a decal off his old Volkswagen.
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Amputee Afghanistan Veteran Went From Crutches to Running NY Marathon

Defying the odds: US Army veteran with above-the-knee amputation to run NYC Marathon
FoxNews.com
By Melinda Carstensen
Published November 01, 2014

Today, Lychik has proved his doctors— and even himself in the early hours after his injury— wrong. Today, Lychik doesn’t just walk. He runs.

United States Army veteran Edward Lychik joined the military because he wanted to be part of something bigger than himself. But on his 21st birthday, while serving in Afghanistan as a combat engineer, he faced a horrific reality of war that prompted him to rethink his life mission entirely.

On Sept. 30, 2011, about a year into his deployment, Lychik was sitting in the gunner’s hatch of a tank when a rocket struck his vehicle. Lychik remembers feeling a dry thirst in his throat as black smoke engulfed the unit, seeing fire in the background, and reaching down to his left leg, which felt mushy on his fingertips.

“My friend immediately pulled it away and said, ‘You don’t want to do that,’” Lychik, now 24, told FoxNews.com. “They put me on a stretcher and in a vehicle, and that’s when I knew something was wrong.”

Lychik lost most of his left leg in the attack, which doctors later amputated above the knee. Gone were his knee joint, ankle joint and hip joint on that side of his body after undergoing a procedure called hip disarticulation. His medical team said the only way he would be able to walk again was with crutches and assistance.
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New York to pay homeless Marine veteran's family $2.25 million

New York City to pay $2.25M to the family of mentally ill homeless veteran who 'baked to death' in his Rikers Island jail cell
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and MAIL ONLINE REPORTER
31 October 2014

Loss: Former marine Jerome Murdough, 56, died in a mental observation unit on Rikers Island jail on February 15, eight days after he was sent to the facility charged with trespassing

Jerome Murdough, 56, had internal body temperature of at least 100 degrees when he was found dead in a cell in Rikers Island on February 15
Murdough was arrested a week earlier for trespassing after being found sleeping in an internal stairwell on the roof of a Harlem apartment complex
City officials said inmate's anti-psychotic medications made him more sensitive to heat and he also failed to open a vent in his cell

New York City has reached a $2.25 million settlement with the family of a mentally ill, homeless former U.S. Marine who died earlier this year in a 101-degree jail cell, the comptroller said Friday.

Jerome Murdough, 56, died in a mental observation unit on Rikers Island jail on February 15, eight days after he was sent to the facility because he couldn't afford to pay $2,500 bail on a trespassing arrest.

He was found slumped at the foot of his bed with a pool of vomit and blood on the floor and an internal body temperature of 103 degrees. Officials said he wasn't checked on for at least four hours and 'basically baked to death.'

His mother, Alma, filed initial papers to sue the city for $25 million over her son's death. But Comptroller Scott Stringer said Friday his office took the unusual step of settling the case before a lawsuit was filed after a review of the facts of the case.
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Homeless Veteran Baked To Death in New York Jail Cell

Shocked and offended by explicit questions on military sexual assault survey

Military sex-assault survey asking explicit questions draws complaints
The Associated Press
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Published: October 31, 2014

WASHINGTON — Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some U.S. servicemen and women are complaining about a new sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete.

The survey is conducted every two years. But this year's version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts.

Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions, and some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None of them would speak publicly by name, but Pentagon officials confirmed they had received complaints that the questions were "intrusive" and "invasive."

The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce its sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help.

The survey questions, which were obtained by The Associated Press, ask about any unwanted sexual experiences or contact, and include very specific wording about men's and women's body parts or other objects, and kinds of contact or penetration.
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