Canada's Joint Personnel Support Unit Not Equipped to Help Soldiers

Military support unit not properly equipped to help soldiers: review
The Globe and Mail
RENATA D’ALIESIO AND STEVEN CHASE
Published Monday, Dec. 28, 2015

Created in 2008, the JPSU was designed to assist wounded soldiers at a time when casualties from the Afghanistan war were mounting. The unit’s 24 personnel-support centres and eight satellite offices, located at bases and wings across the country, offer programs and administrative support to those deemed unable to fulfill their regular duties for at least six months.

Sergeant Paul Martin, who was diagnosed with PTSD after returning from Afghanistan, was transferred to the JPSU. He was facing a medical discharge from the military when he took his own life in 2011.

A military review has identified serious flaws with a support unit intended to aid ill and wounded troops, concluding that it has too few staff and resources to properly help vulnerable soldiers return to work or adapt to civilian life.

The review of the nearly eight-year-old Joint Personnel Support Unit (JPSU) was ordered by General Jonathan Vance two weeks after he assumed the role of Chief of the Defence Staff in mid-July. The Globe and Mail obtained a draft copy of the review team’s findings and the more than 50 recommendations made for overhauling the JPSU.

The internal probe underscores long-standing problems with the support unit, many of which have been raised in previous investigations. Yet, little significant action has been taken over the years to address the JPSU’s shortcomings, even after several soldiers in the support unit took their own lives.

Gen. Vance is pledging to fix the JPSU. He has ordered a deep examination of the review team’s recommendations and a renewal of the unit’s mandate, design, resources and policies.

“The JPSU needs an absolutely thorough review from top to bottom,” Gen. Vance told The Globe and Mail after considering the recommendations. “I have to make sure the JPSU concept accounts for the requirements of the individual and more closely customizes their care.”

Sgt. Martin is one of at least 59 soldiers and veterans who have killed themselves after serving in the Afghanistan war – a number that came to light as result of The Globe’s investigation. The inquiry into Sgt. Martin’s suicide led to four recommendations aimed at improving the JPSU, boosting mental-health services and improving how the military deals with traumatic incidents. All were rejected by military brass, The Globe investigation revealed.
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Fake Iraq Veteran Got Free Drinks Then Wrote About it?

Backlash grows after column sparks outrage 
Citizens Voice
BY BOB KALINOWSKI
Published: December 29, 2015

The public backlash against the Weekender continues to mount following a column in last week’s edition in which a writer boasted about scoring free drinks at a bar by pretending to be an Iraq war veteran.

Veterans expressed outrage, with some accusing the writer of “stolen valor.”

One of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s leading civil rights activists launched a petition demanding apologies — from the columnist all the way up to the head of the Weekender’s parent company, North Carolina-based Civitas Media, which also publishes The Times Leader.

The writer and the Weekender’s editor have issued public apologies, but some local businesses still vowed to pull their advertising and stop distributing the free weekly entertainment newspaper.

“R bar and grill Nanticoke will NEVER advertise or distribute this paper again. It’s a disgrace to all of NEPA. pathetic!,” Lauren Temarantz Maga, owner of R Bar and Grill, proclaimed on her Facebook page with a link to the column.

“We come from a family of veterans,” Maga said Monday. “The men and women that serve are heroes.”

Maga said the business called the Weekender offices Monday to demand they stop delivering the paper to the restaurant.

River Grille in Plains Township did the same.

“We haven’t advertised with them in a long time anyway, but we don’t want to have the paper even available at the bar anymore,” River Grille manager Erica West said.

The controversial column, titled “Free drinks come at a price,” was written by Justin Adam Brown, who was laid off in November as a full-time staffer, but continued to write his weekly “Sorry mom and dad” column. Last week’s column described his musings about a summer night out when he and a friend ran into a drunk Vietnam veteran. He said it was then he “discovered the secret to getting a free drink” as a man at a bar.

“Just say you’re a veteran,” Brown wrote.
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Troops: "tens of thousands of undiagnosed and untreated brain injuries"

Study: Combat vets wait for 'wake-up call' before seeking help for brain injuries
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Tribune News Service)
By Carl Prine
Published: December 28, 2015

Veterans too often played down their wounds but became detached from friends and family. Many denied their downward spiral until a "wake-up call" forced them to seek help from Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs programs.

Johns Hopkins researchers conducted 38 in-depth interviews with Army combat veterans and their family members, and a model emerged: Veterans too often played down their wounds. Many denied their downward spiral until a "wake-up call" forced them to seek help from Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs programs. DOD

Tens of thousands of American combat veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with undiagnosed brain injuries often were "thrown into a canyon" — falling deeper into despair and sometimes flirting with suicide or addiction — before trying to get help, according to a Johns Hopkins University study.

Written by Rachel P. Chase, Shannon A. McMahon and Peter J. Winch, researchers at the Baltimore university's Department of International Health, the study published in the December issue of Social Science and Medicine builds on previous work at Johns Hopkins. That work uncovered tens of thousands of undiagnosed and untreated brain injuries stemming from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, the signature wound of America's 21st-century wars.

Innovations in body and vehicular armor saved the lives of troops who likely would have died of blast injuries in past wars, but survivors often had higher risk of memory loss, cognitive struggles, mood disorders, migraine headaches, addiction, insomnia and suicide.
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Team Work Got Illinois Disabled Veteran "Home" for Holidays

Note to readers,

“The Wounded Warrior Transition program diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental illnesses right after deployment,” said Scott. “Since I was leaving active duty and returning to the Reserves, these problems sat and pestered me for the next five years.”

is not the famous charity you may be thinking of. The Marines and Air Force have them too.

Home for the holidays
DVIDS
318th Press Camp Headquarters
Story by Sgt. Elizabeth Barlow
December 25, 2015

BERWYN, Ill.-Just in time for the holidays, one disabled service member and his family received a miracle of a lifetime today.

The mayor of Berwyn, Ill., Robert Lovero, and Frank Amaro, a veteran volunteer, present a donated condominium to a disabled veteran on Dec. 23, 2015. Through a partnership with the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and the city of Berwyn, the Olijar family received a fully furnished, permanent new home.
(U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Elizabeth Barlow/Released)

Through a partnership with the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and the city of Berwyn, the Olijar family was handed the keys to a permanent new home.

Currently Scott and his wife, Jennifer, live in a one bedroom apartment in a small rural city in Illinois. They sleep in the living room so their 2-year-old son can sleep in the bedroom.

With help from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and the Berwyn Holiday Fund, the donated condominium was fully furnished and ready to move in for a struggling veteran.

“It’s too good to be true,” said Sgt. Scott Olijar, a Soldier with the 318th Press Camp Headquarters in Forest Park. “I’m waiting for there to be a catch, but there isn’t one. Every once in a while you see someone on the news who seems to get lucky, and you never think that it could happen to you. But it did.”

“I feel like Cinderella,” said Jennifer. “Everything I have ever dreamed of is being granted by a fairy godmother.”
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Family Hasn't Given Up on Mike Robinson, Oregon Missing Veteran

No trace of missing Bend man who left town in July
The Bulletin
By Tara Bannow
Published Dec 26, 2015

Robinson’s military service included a nine-month deployment to Kuwait. In the months before he disappeared, he had struggled with depression and anxiety and had complained about not being able to see a counselor through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Family members and rescue workers say they believe a 23-year-old Bend man missing since late July may have hitched a ride and could be living in another state.

Mike Robinson left Bend in late July with his black lab, Charlie.
His wife reported him missing less than a week later, and his
abandoned pickup was found Aug. 5 near Riley

No one has heard from Mike Robinson, an Army veteran who suffered from depression, since July. His wife reported him missing in early August, less than a week after he left town with his black Labrador, Charlie. Robinson left notes in his apartment imploring loved ones not to come looking for him and to let him “rest in peace.”

The Harney County Sheriff’s Department found Robinson’s abandoned pickup truck Aug. 5 on U.S. Highway 20 near Riley, out of gas. In a note left in the truck, Robinson wrote he was happy now and promised to contact loved ones in the future, said his mother, Becky Deem of Mariposa, California.

Deem said she’s not sure whether Robinson was referring to contact from beyond the grave or from across the country. He has friends and relatives in other states he might have gone to see, she said.

“It’s kind of hard to interpret what he was actually getting at there,” she said. “If he actually decided to commit suicide or if he decided to just disappear and become a homeless person. We really don’t know what to think about it.”
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Thieves Take Fallen Marine's Mementos From Bradenton Family

Florida thieves steal trailer with belongings of Marine killed in Iraq
FOX News
December 27, 2015

“His boots, his uniforms, his battle fatigues…It means nothing to nobody but it means something to me and my daughter.” Keith Dougherty

Thieves stole a trailer containing belongings of Scott Dougherty who died fighting in Iraq. (Fox 13)

Heartless thieves in Florida last week stole a storage trailer that contained the belongings of a Marine who died fighting Iraq.

The items were all Keith Dougherty had left to remember his hero son. Twenty-year-old Scott Dougherty was killed 11 years ago.

“It feels like he died all over again,” Dougherty, 61, told FoxNews.com Sunday.

Dougherty got a call Wednesday morning telling him the trailer he had parked behind Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in Bradenton had been stolen.

Dougherty, a maintenance supervisor at the church, kept his son’s belongings in the trailer, along with other items, like medical records, tax returns and Christmas decorations.

“His boots, his uniforms, his battle fatigues…It means nothing to nobody but it means something to me and my daughter,” Dougherty told Fox 13.
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Cancer Drug Trial Gave Hope to Iraq Veteran, Until It Ended

Cancellation of drug trial brings heartbreak to Anderson Township family
Cincinnati.com
Anne Saker
December 24, 2015

For 18 months, Brad Giesting of Anderson Township has been fighting a rare cancer with an experimental drug. But last week, the drug manufacturer stopped the clinical trial and withdrew the drug, giving Giesting and his family a hard lesson at the holidays about cancer medicine.

Brad Giesting (left) and his wife Annie on a recent

visit with Santa Claus with their daughters, Hailey 5,

and Lucy, who turns 4 on Dec. 27. (Photo: Provided)

“To me, it doesn’t make sense,” said Giesting’s wife, Annie. “I’m sure it happens all the time. But from my perception, it’s not right. I’m just confused by the whole thing.”

Annie Giesting, 29, said that three years ago, Brad, 30, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a member of the 101st Airborne, was diagnosed with liposarcoma, an uncommon cancer that can kill quickly. The couple have two young daughters.

Brad underwent surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. He got a brief reprieve, but the cancer returned. Brad then enrolled in a clinical trial at Ohio State University run by Morphotek Inc., an Exton, Pennsylvania, company. The drug, morab, showed promise in earlier testing in treating liposarcoma.

Annie Giesting said that for a year and a half, her husband went to Columbus every week for treatment with the new drug and for related testing.

“On Brad's last scan, we were given the unbelievable news that all except one tumor have disappeared," Annie Giesting wrote in an email. “We headed into the holiday season with hearts full of joy and so thankful for the blessings that we had received.”
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UK: Double Amputee Funds Own "Legs to Wear"

Afghanistan war veteran has to remortgage home to fund limb surgery
The Telegraph UK
By Tom Whitehead, Security Editor
December 27, 2015

"They are not looking after veterans. I'm stuck in a wheelchair with my life on hold and it's not fair. I want to be out and about but I can't because I've no legs to wear."

War hero Clive Smith, who lost both legs below the knee in a bomb blast, is having to spend £90,000 to go to Australia for pioneering artificial limb surgery

War hero Clive Smith is spending £90,000 flying 10,000 miles to Sydney for a operation which he hopes will transform his life. He said he has been left with no choice because the NHS and the Ministry of Defence have betrayed him, despite pledges that injured veterans would get the best possible care.

Sapper Smith, who stepped on a landmine in Helmand Province in 2010, has been in a wheelchair for 12 months, waiting for new prosthetic limbs.

Clive Smith, sixth right, in a shoot for the Invictus Games

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Daniel Somers Is Gone But Not Forgotten by His Family

EJ Montini of the Arizona Republic wrote "The Internet is fickle" and rightly so. Daniel Somers is gone but his last letter survived his suicide. His parents are left clinging to that letter with an everlasting hope they can spare other families from the same grief. Montini went on to explain what we've all been dealing with, the tendency to forget and move on to what peeks the interests of keyboard commandoes searching Facebook for selfies while the selfless suffer.

Since Daniel Somers committed suicide in 2013, the number "22 a day" may be filling your head however it is yet one more internet rumor that has been passed on while they pass away. No, not 22 a day, but closer to 73 a day if the figures from the CDC are correct and veteran suicides are double the civilian rate.

Who has time to get it right when it has become acceptable to spread a rumor? Who has time to ask simple questions like "If everyone is doing something why isn't anything changing?" Or even take the time to find out what is working and then support it? Oh, it is just so much easier if you have a following to start your own profession off their suffering.

It is a safe bet that most of the hacks didn't even know the majority of the veterans committing suicide are not from the post 9-11 generation but are in fact over the age of 50.

That is exactly the type of response that is creating more grieving families instead of healing veterans.

Montini: Couple completing soldier son's last mission
The Republic
EJ Montini
December 26, 2015

"Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. Abandoned by those who would take the easy route, and a liability to those who stick it out—and thus deserve better. So you see, not only am I better off dead, but the world is better without me in it. This is what brought me to my actual final mission…”

Howard (l) Daniel and Jean Somers (Photo: Somers family)

The last time Howard and Jean Somers heard from their son, Daniel, was on June 10, 2013. He left a long letter for his wife, his parents, his friends… and us.

It begins, “I am sorry that it has come to this. The fact is, for as long as I can remember my motivation for getting up every day has been so that you would not have to bury me. As things have continued to get worse, it has become clear that this alone is not a sufficient reason to carry on.”

Daniel was an Iraq war veteran from Phoenix who suffered mentally and physically from his battle experience, and then struggled to get the treatment he needed from the Department of Veterans Affairs. On June 10, 2013, he took his life.

The letter he left behind went viral on the Internet, with hundreds of thousands of views in a very short time. The number is in the millions by now. Those who read it were inspired, horrified, outraged.

And then most of them quietly moved on.

The Internet is fickle.

The tragic story of a veteran will pique our interest for a while, then Adele releases a new album or Grumpy Cat gets a movie deal or Kim Kardashian poses for a magazine cover with her derrière showing.

We move on. We forget.

Howard and Jean Somers did not move on. They did not forget.
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Homeless Veteran Hasn't Lost Faith After 20 Years

Homeless veteran hopes faith can pull him through holidays and beyond
WLBT News
Mike Lacy
Posted: Dec 25, 2015

“I am a Christian man,” Holton said. “I don’t know if people want to hear that. But I believe in God and God still takes care of me.....My only hope is Christ. I mean, that’s all I got. That’s gotten better. I mean. To know you’ve got somebody that cares for you.”

JACKSON COUNTY, MS (WLOX)
A public rest stop is Chuck Holton’s neighborhood on Christmas day, his SUV is his home and there's no celebration. There never is.

The 51-year-old former Navy firefighter and Marine has lived this way for 20 years.

“When I got out in 1995, I can tell you I never thought I’d be where I am now,” Holton said. “Never thought I’d get down into this deep slump.”

Holton moves according to the season, and he’s been all over the country. Most of the time, he is rousted from his sleep as he bunks. He has a veterans disability pension that allows him to buy meager supplies.

So far, Holton has found friends - including police officers and security guards - who allow him to shift around the Mississippi Interstate rest areas along I-10.
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