Fort Hood Soldier Died After Being Stabbed in Florida

Police: Fort Hood soldier dies after stabbing in Florida
Killeen Daily Herald
Jacob Brooks, Herald staff writer
January 4, 2016

A Fort Hood soldier died after he was stabbed in the stomach in Kissimmee, Fla., during the Christmas break, officials said Monday.

Fort Hood officials Monday identified the soldier as Spc. Victor Badilloalvarez, 26.

Badilloalvarez was stabbed in the early morning hours of Dec. 27 by his wife’s ex-boyfriend, according to a Kissimmee police report released to the Herald.

After getting a call about 3 that morning, police found Badilloalvarez alive and lying in the grass near a house in the 4600 block of Eaglet Lane in Kissimmee.
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Colt Ford "Workin On" PTSD

Just a worthy note here is a reminder that most of the suicides tied to military service are among veterans over the age of 50, but no one wants to mention that simple fact or that they have waited decades longer for help with the same wound called PTSD because they pushed for all the research in the first place.

Colt Ford Calls Attention to PTSD in ‘Workin’ On’ Mini-Movie [WATCH]
The Boot
By Hannahlee Allers
January 5, 2016

With the release of a new short film, Colt Ford is honoring soldiers who are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after serving in the armed forces.

The film features Ford’s song “Workin’ On” and takes the song’s music video a step further by explaining more about PTSD and how it impacts veterans’ home lives.

“There’s men and women that are suffering and struggling with PTSD, that have given everything for us to be able to have the freedoms that we do. And because we can’t see it, a lot of times it goes unnoticed,” Ford says in a press release. “So, I just wanted to try and make as big a deal of it as possible so we can get some help.”

Ford introduces the film — which readers can watch above — alongside Lone Survivor Foundation creator and retired U.S. Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, who founded the LSF after he watched several of his fellow soldiers die during Operation Redwing in Afghanistan in 2007.
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Workin' On (Movie Edition) - Colt Ford and Marcus Luttrell

U.S. Medevac Helicopter Hit, Special Forces Soldier Killed 2 Wounded

46 minutes ago BREAKING NEWS
US servicemember killed in attack in Helmand
Stars and Stripes
By Tara Copp and Heath Druzin
Published: January 5, 2016

KABUL, Afghanistan — One U.S. servicemember was killed and two others were injured Tuesday during operations in Afghanistan's Helmand province, a military spokesman confirmed.

The servicemembers, along with their Afghan counterparts, were involved in a firefight and a mortar attack on a U.S. medevac helicopter, according to U.S. officials.

"U.S. special forces were conducting train advise and assist with their Afghan counterparts," said Col. Michael Lawhorn, spokesman for the international military coalition in Afghanistan.

Details were still forthcoming, but a statement released by U.S. Forces-Afghanistan confirmed one U.S. servicemember died as a result of the incident and two others were injured.

A medevac helicopter responding to the attack was struck by a mortar while it was on the ground supporting the forces, U.S. defense officials said. Lawhorn said the helicopter was not shot down.
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Matthew DeRemer Killed New Years was "As Selfless As Possible"

Veteran Matthew DeRemer Killed Hours After Hopeful New Year's Facebook Message
NBC News
by Jon Schuppe
January 4, 2016

They'd been raised in church, but in 2015 he'd grown closer to God, she said. He was an officer in a Christian motorcycle group.

On the morning of New Year's Eve, Iraq war veteran Matthew DeRemer went on Facebook to reflect on a difficult 2015 and outlined his plan to become a better man in the coming year.

The decorated former Marine corporal from St. Petersburg, Florida, had a new job, stronger faith and a renewed drive to help people.

"My goal this year, while battling all obstacles, is to redefine my life by living as selfless as possible," DeRemer, 31, wrote.

Matthew DeRemer
Surgical Technologist at West Bay Surgical Center
December 31, 2015 at 6:06am ·
Last day of 2015!!!! For me I'll be meditating through all I do, on this entire year. I've lost, I've gained, family is closer and tougher than ever before, loved ones lost, and new friends found. There has been many times where I've been found on my knees in prayer for hours (relentless) and other times leading a group of people in prayer, my faith (that I love to share) is an everyday awakening (to me) that people, lives, and circumstances can change for the better OVER TIME. I look back at 2015's huge challenges that I've overcome, shared with others, and have once again found myself... To say thank you and BRING ON 2016, much works to be done!

And I really don't know where I'll end up tonight but I do know where I windup is where I'm meant to be.
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I sincerely doubt God's plan for this veteran was to be hit by someone and left for dead. Seems more like an amazing person left this life because someone didn't care what else he could have done.

Fire Destroyed Iraq Veteran's Home, Community Restored Hope

Fire destroys South Texas home of Iraq War veteran, opens wounds
San Antonio News Express
By Martin Kuz, Staff Writer
January 4, 2016

“It’s just humbling to know how many people love you. As tough as this experience has been, that compassion and concern makes you feel good.” Sabastian Vasquez

Photo: JERRY LARA, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

The orange flames painting the dusk sky. The acrid stench of black smoke. The sharp crack of gunfire.

Memories of three combat tours in Iraq swirled in Sabastian Vasquez’s mind as he watched his childhood home in Tivoli burn to the ground Dec. 6.

The 33-year-old Marine veteran, along with his parents, brother and sister, were uninjured in a blaze that reduced the house, which had been there for decades, to piles of ash. The family suspects that a candle his mother lit in an upstairs bedroom after a power outage ignited the fire.

But for Vasquez, who struggles with the lingering effects of post-traumatic stress order and a traumatic brain injury from his time in Iraq, the sights, smells and sounds of the night reopened psychological wounds.
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Camp Pendleton Marine Family’s Tragic Crash

‘Please God, Don’t Let It Be Them’: Camp Pendleton Marine Family’s Tragic Crash
NBC San Diego
By Bridget Naso and Samantha Tatro
January 3, 2016

It wasn’t long ago that Staff Sergeant Evaan Ball and his wife Ashley attended the Marine Corps Ball in San Diego, but today it feels like a world away as Ashley fights for her life in a New Mexico hospital after a deadly crash that killed her brother.

“I thought I’d be the one in the hospital one day, not her,” SSgt. Ball told NBC 7 San Diego in a phone interview this week.

Ashley’s brother, Steven Marrow, was helping the couple move from Camp Pendleton to SSgt. Ball’s new post in Louisiana on Dec. 23. Ball drove one car, with the couple’s two children in the back. Marrow drove the second car with Ashley sitting in the passenger seat.

As the group drove down State Route 550 in Farmington, New Mexico, Marrow lost control of the car while passing a truck and crossed over the divide, crashing into an oncoming tractor-trailer, Ball told NBC7. Ball was driving ahead of his wife and her brother and had successfully passed the truck.
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Veteran-Pastor Disarms Vet During New Year's Service

North Carolina Pastor Disarms Vet During New Year's Service
NBC News
by TIM STELLOH
January 3, 2016

Bishop Larry Wright had been preaching for about 20 minutes on New Year's Eve when he saw the front door of his North Carolina church swing open. In marched a young disheveled man whom he'd never seen before. In one hand the man had a semi-automatic assault rifle; in the other, a magazine.

As the man approached the pulpit — and as Wright carefully moved toward him — some of the 60 or so congregants at Wright's Heal the Land Outreach Ministries in Fayetteville believed the gunman was a prop, Wright told NBC News, that their pastor was using an unusual method to emphasize a point he had been making at that precise moment about gun violence: "At any moment your life could be taken from you."

He wasn't.

Wright, 57, is a City Council member. But he was also a career military man — a former paratrooper and drill sergeant who retired in 1997 — so his training kicked in as he descended the pulpit's three steps: Was there a bullet still in the chamber? Would he need to tackle the man? Would he need to subdue him?

Wright began with a simple question.

"I asked him, 'Can I help you?'" Wright recalled. "He said, 'Can you pray for me?'"
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Fallen Soldier’s Father Dies Days After Son’s Burial

Gatesville: Fallen Soldier’s Father Dies Days After Son’s Burial
KWTX News
Our Town Texas
Paul J. Gately
January 1, 2016

GATESVILLE (January 1, 2016) The father of a soldier who died during the Vietnam War and who was repatriated just last month has died five days after his son was buried at the Texas State Veteran’s cemetery in Killeen.

Billy Hugh Hill, 91, father of U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Billy David Hill, died December 22 in Gatesville, just five days after the soldier’s remains were repatriated.

The younger Hill died in Vietnam in 1968 near Khe Sanh when his helicopter was shot down.

His December 17 funeral was attended by veterans from across the nation, including a dozen or so Vietnam veterans who served with him.

Billy Hugh Hill, a former truck driver, was too ill to attend his son’s funeral but was able to watch parts of the ceremony on News 10, his daughter said.

The elder Hill did meet with some of his son’s Vietnam buddies after the funeral.

His health had declined in the three weeks leading up to the funeral.
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Samuel L. Jackson Blames Police Officers and Veterans With PTSD

It is really typical for an actor to speak his or her own mind but even more typical for them to speak up about things they know nothing about. Samuel L. Jackson has done just that. First he went after Vietnam veterans.

"In the sixties or whatever, guys went to Vietnam, and they came home and people hated them; they were 'baby killers' or whatever, and a lot of them became cops 'cause that was the job — 'Oh, you have ex-military service?"

Then he blamed Veterans serving the country in the military and then as members of police officers for what happened between "white cops and black youth." You can read more of this appalling interview 'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Samuel L. Jackson ('The Hateful Eight') Hollywood Reporter, by Scott Feinberg.

Samuel L. Jackson Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Transitioning to the conflict between white cops and black youth — a subject that recently got Tarantino in hot water — he says, "In the sixties or whatever, guys went to Vietnam, and they came home and people hated them; they were 'baby killers' or whatever, and a lot of them became cops 'cause that was the job — 'Oh, you have ex-military service?

You can become one of the boys in blue.' And because they were so vilified by everybody outside, they formed this 'blue wall' that's now still a part of what that is, but now it's kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and now they've identified PTSD — but that's not one of the tests they give for people who put on the uniform.

So, consequently, you've got people out there who are used to looking at people as 'the enemy' 'cause that's what it was — people were trying to kill them every day. It was like, 'Oh, my God' — you see a guy, the guy jumps up, 'Hold it!' And young black men are threatening, you know, and it just happens. So all these things snowball and snowball."

What can we expect from someone without a single clue as to when PTSD was linked to military service or even the simple fact there are police officers with no military experience at all with PTSD? Or Firefighters? Or Emergency Responders? Or Civilians? Must be nice to get to pretend they are all sorts of things when they never have to put others ahead of themselves first. This was linked from Inquisitr

Female WWII pilots barred from Arlington National Cemetery

Female WWII pilots barred from Arlington National Cemetery 
Associated Press
By Matthew Barakat
Published: December 31, 2015

But in March, the Secretary of the Army ruled that WASPs never should have been allowed in and revoked their eligibility.

U.S. Air Force Col. David Kirkendall, 647th Air Base Group Commander and Deputy Commander of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam tours the Arizona Memorial with Kathryn L. Miles, World War II Women's Airforce Service Pilot (WASP), and her daughters Beth Tillinghast and Anne Miles, June 6, 2014, at JBPHH, Hawaii. WASPs performed non-combat missions to enable male pilots to fill combat roles in the war effort. Members of the 747th Communications Squadron Spouses Group hosted the tour.
CHRISTOPHER HUBENTHAL/U.S. AIR FORCE
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