Iraq Veteran Murdered in Phoenix Remembered

Family, friends release balloons for Marine veteran murdered in Phoenix park
AZ Family
Derek Staahl
August 10, 2016

PHOENIX (KPHO/KTVK)
Family and friends returned to the west Phoenix park where a Marine veteran who was murdered to share memories and release balloons Tuesday in his honor.

Dozens came out to remember the life of Dustin Shirk. (Source: KPHO/KTVK)

The ceremony was held on what would have been Dustin Shirk’s 31st birthday. The Iraq war veteran was killed July 26 in Cielito Park while jogging after his late-night shift at UPS, according to his mother. Police have not identified a suspect.

Many of the people who gathered Tuesday were Shirk's co-workers at UPS, where he worked before and after his military service.

"He was kind of, I guess my inspiration," said Mitchell MacKenzie, a UPS employee who worked in the finance department with Shirk. "He kind of helped me move along to join the Navy."
read more here

PTSD: Sheriff Says South Carolina Veteran Committed Suicide By Cop

Sheriff: Veteran With PTSD Committed “Suicide by Cop”
ABC Columbia Staff
August 9, 2016

Little Mountain, S.C. (WOLO) — Richland County Coroner Gary Watts has identified than man involved in Monday’s officer involved shooting as James W. Jennings Jr.

According to Watts, autopsy results show Jennings died of multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body including one that was self inflicted. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott tells ABC Columbia, Monday evening deputies responded to a domestic dispute on Wash Lever Road to find Jennings barricaded inside his home. Lott explains that after hours of negotiation the man shot himself twice before pointing the gun at officer, who returned fire.

“We tried to use non lethal means to subdue him, that didn’t work and when he actually threatened the officer and pointed the gun we didn’t have a choice at that point. You know, he was trying to get us to kill him.” says Lott.

The Sheriff says Jennings was a military veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
read more here

PTSD Awareness Up And So Are Suicides

Things Changed For The Worst
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 10, 2016

In 1982 when I started trying to do something about PTSD, I thought if people knew, things would change. I just never expected they would make it worse.

Back then there was a lot of work already being done for about a decade before I even heard the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It wasn't as if it was on the nightly news.  When I started to read about it at the library, it was obvious a lot of people were trying to change what had happened to veterans going all the way back to the invention of war itself.

In 1978 the Disabled American Veterans did a study on PTSD called The Forgotten Warrior Project which is a perfect title considering what they learned back then has been forgotten about.  Everyone seems to think all they have to do is make folks aware of PTSD and suicides without ever considering how much work is necessary to change the outcome.  The easy part is talking about a problem.  The hard part is investing the time to research it, understand it and then, try to make a difference in a good way.

So far most of what I've seen are a bunch of people running around the country, collecting cash talking about suicides when they do not even bother to read the reports they quote.  They act like they are the ones who will do something about it as if no one else had done the same exact thing before and produced the same abysmal results.

Wounded Times is 9 years old today. 

You can see a lot of what I do on this site but there is more you will never know about. I learned from the best over these decades, that we can accomplish a lot more by working with the veterans for their sake and not our own publicity.

There are a group of veterans and their families doing exactly that and I am very proud to be a part of them.  Point Man International Ministries started in 1984 quietly by a Vietnam veteran/Seattle Police Officer because he understood that most of the veterans he was arresting were more lost than anything else.

It worked.  It worked because it was understood that the families needed help in order to help the veterans.  That is, if they were lucky enough to still have a family by their side. 

It worked because peer support was provided. Yes, they knew how vital that was way back then.  That the wound hit the emotional part of the brain, so it had to healed first especially when the center held the soul paying the price for surviving the hell of combat.

Guess what? It still works. The thing is, you don't see them doing interviews with the press or jumping up and down about how many lose hope to the point where they no longer believe the next day could be any better than their last day on earth. They are there to give them back hope and walk right by their side until they can turn around and do the same for another veteran.

It is Christian based, so the press would not take an interest no matter how good it is or how man miracles happen every day. They are much like the 72 Jesus sent out but no one knows their names.

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

The demons we battle are all that comes with PTSD beginning with the false notion that they are mentally weak instead of emotionally strong paying the price for risking their lives for the sake of someone else. The demon telling them they are evil because of all the saw and did, when in fact there was nothing evil about doing all of it to save lives, which is at the core of what caused them to act. The demon that tells them their suffering is some kind of punishment and they are suffering because they were judged instead of hurting because they cared.

When the world walks away from them, turns their backs so they cannot see the pain in their eyes, settling for the moniker of "it is invisible" so they dismiss them, God sees all that very clearly and He remembers those who are suffering for His sake.  He also sees those who use their pain for their own purpose, be it for fame or fortune.

On a final note I will leave you with this important fact.  With no one making this suffering headline news back in 1999, the VA reported 20 veterans a day took their own lives. There are almost 7 million less veterans, everyone talking about PTSD and suicides, the VA is reporting 20 veterans a day taking their own lives. It got worse because too many put themselves first instead of those they claim to be raising awareness about.

Petty Officer and Nurse Saved 84 Year Old Ready to Jump From Bridge

Navy aircrewman, nurse, team to stop San Diego bridge suicide
The San Diego Union-Tribune (Tribune News Service)
By Pauline Repard and Lyndsay Winkley
Published: August 9, 2016

It was a life-or-death moment on the San Diego-Coronado Bridge Monday in San Diego, Calif. when a Naval aircrewman pulled over to stop a man from leaping into the bay.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Nick Pisano, shown here in an undated photo, and an unidentified nurse helped stop an elderly man from jumping off the San Diego-Coronado Bridge and were reunited via social media later that day. VIA FACEBOOK

As the two struggled, the 21-year-old Petty Officer 3rd Class Nick Pisano screamed for someone to help him talk the man down. Dozens of motorists whizzed past, until a nurse stopped, and calmed the man down until authorities arrived.

Pisano told the San Diego Union-Tribune Tuesday that there was no way he was going to let the man jump.

“I made sure I had a good grasp on his arm so he couldn't make his way closer to the ledge,” the native San Diegan said. “He was making it very clear that he wanted to end his life, and I did what I could to make sure that didn't happen.”

Pisano didn’t think to grab his phone in his haste to get to the man, so he started waiving down motorists, hoping someone would help. He didn’t even notice the nurse until she was at his side.

“She went right at it,” he said. “She was cool, calm, collected and knew exactly what to say him.”
read more here

Purple Heart Veteran Getting Thousands to Send Trump to Earn One

Purple Heart recipient raises money in Trump’s name, but not to help Trump 
Boston Globe
By Kevin Cullen
GLOBE COLUMNIST
AUGUST 08, 2016

Kerr responded to all this not with anger but satire. He put up a GoFundMe page asking people to donate money to send Donald Trump to a combat zone where he could earn a Purple Heart. “I figured I’d get 150 bucks,” Kerr said.

By Monday, after various news outlets picked up his story and it spread on social media, more than 2,000 people had donated more than $54,000.

There was a high-end fund-raiser for Donald Trump on Nantucket over the weekend, where donors were asked to fork over as much as $50,000.

Cameron Kerr, a prolific but neophyte fund-raiser, couldn’t make the island gig, or another Trump fund-raiser at posh Oyster Harbors on the Cape. Still, the 29-year-old Kerr, a Massachusetts native, has raised more than $50,000 in Trump’s name in just five days.

It’s money Trump will never see.

To understand this, you have to go back to Stow, where Cameron Kerr grew up and decided to join the Army. He joined because of what he saw growing up. His parents mentored the orphans of African civil war, the Lost Boys of Sudan. He became friendly with a lot of the Lost Boys who resettled around Worcester.

Kerr was deeply affected by their stories of loss and survival, the kindness that Americans showed in helping them resettle, the Lost Boys’ resilience. He joined the Army to combat extremism, to protect the innocent, to hold accountable the very sort of people who would murder the families of his friends, the Lost Boys.
read more here

Korean War Veteran And Wife Pass Away After 63 Years Minutes Apart

After 63 years of marriage, Platte couple dies 20 minutes apart
KSFY News
By Courtney Collen
Aug 07, 2016

"The VA was doing as much as they could until about 7-8 weeks ago. Said there isn't more they could do," Lee explained.

After some recent falls, Henry's condition worsened.

"He said, 'I need to go to the nursing home'. They put mom and dad in the same room which was very sweet," Lee said with a smile.

It's one of those stories that rarely comes around once in a lifetime. A story of an elderly man and woman with incredible faith and 63 years of marriage.

As their health got worse, their faith and love for God, their family and each other grew stronger until the very end.

After they married in 1953, the journey of life took Henry and Jeanette De Lange to Platte, South Dakota. He was a Korean War Veteran. She was a musician, worked at the Platte Care Center and took care of their five children.

It wasn't until Sunday, July 31, 2016 when their children got a call from the Platte Care Center.

"They said both your mom and dad aren't doing very well at all. Highly recommended that we get there as soon as we could," son Lee De Lange said.

Lee's mom, at 87 years-old, suffered from Alzheimer's Disease and had been in nursing home care since 2011.

"Dad visited mom once a day, twice, or maybe three times a day. It was very sweet," Lee said. "Wednesday or Thursday, she had stopped eating. She was dehydrated."

The clock on the wall said 5:30 p.m. when Henry went to heaven, twenty minutes after his beloved wife.

"We're calling it a beautiful act of God's providential love and mercy. You don't pray for it because it seems mean but you couldn't ask for anything more beautiful."

It doesn't end there; the clock told another story.
read more here

Wounded Times Challenging PTSD and Suicide Awareness Groups

Marines march in "silkies" to raise awareness about military suicides. Sounds good but the number of members of the military, National Guards and Reservists are not part of the often quoted "22 a day" so not so much truth awareness being raised there. Actually there is not much truth awareness being shared at all and that, that my friends, has left me sick to my stomach.

How about they raise awareness on something like this considering it came from the DOD.

The DSPO has an annual budget of $24 million. The Pentagon also is the largest single supporter of suicide prevention research, funding 61 studies in recent years at a cost of more than $100 million, according to a Rand Corp. report.

Suicide prevention training is mandatory in all five military services, including the Coast Guard, whose suicide statistics are not included in the Defense Department tally.

According to the report, 120 soldiers, 39 Marines, 43 sailors and 64 airmen died by suicide in 2015. The number of Air Force deaths marks the highest for the service in the past decade.

Among the reserves and National Guard, 88 Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine reservists died by suicide in 2015, while 100 Army National Guard members and 21 Air National Guardsmen killed themselves.

Actually it is worse considering that the DOD started that "prevention" training in over a decade ago when there were more serving but less committing suicide. The Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act came about in 2006 because there were 99 suicides that entire year. The bill was signed by President Bush in 2007.

These are the "military" suicides for the first quarter of 2016

In the first quarter of 2016, the military services reported the following:
 58 deaths by suicide in the Active Component
 18 deaths by suicide in the Reserves
 34 deaths by suicide in the National Guard

And here is a better way to see what is going on.

Mission 22 is a collaboration between Elder Heart, a veteran non-profit organization, and a global advertising agency. Elder Heart is comprised of Delta Force and Special Forces operators Tom Spooner, Magnus Johnson, and Mike Kissel. Because of their personal battles with PTSD and TBI they have made it their mission to raise awareness, enlist support, and end veteran suicide in America.

In 2012 48 Marines committed suicide. 2013 it was 45 followed by 34 in 2014, 39 in 2015 and for 2016 first quarter it was 12. Really not good considering how long they have been "preventing" them topped off with there have been less and less serving every year.

No evidence it worked while they were in the military and more than enough evidence it failed them when they got out of the military.

In 1999 the VA put the number of suicides at 20 a day while no one was talking about them.  

There were about 7 million more veterans in the country back then.  Now the latest report from the VA has the number at,,,,ding, ding, ding, hope alarm bells are going off, because it is right back to 20 a day.

So what exactly has all this "awareness" raising been hoping to achieve? Spreading something that is lacking solutions? Spreading rumors that are baseless especially when you read the reports and understand that while everyone has been pushing up, taking walks, running and doing a hell of a lot of talking, too few actually know what is going on and even less know how to stay alive instead of committing suicide.

I challenge every group out there with good intentions to actually stop doing what is easy for them and start doing what if necessary to change the outcome.

Here are just a few of them but they are happening all over the country.

History of #22KILL: Honor Courage Commitment, Inc. started the #22KILL movement in 2013 after learning about the staggering statistic that an average of 22 veterans are killed by suicide every day. HCC has committed to researching and understanding the genesis of this epidemic, and educating the general public on the issue. #22KILL is a platform to raise awareness not just towards veteran suicide, but also to the issues that can lead them to suicide. These mental health issues can stem from Post Traumatic Stress, Traumatic Brain Injury, or the struggles and stresses of transitioning from military to civilian life.

22 Too Many is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that cares deeply and passionately about our nations veterans and their families. Through athletic events, we seek to serve as a living memorial, reduce the stigma by increasing public knowledge and awareness of PTS, share helpful resources, and provide support and comfort to the grieving families left behind.

Stop Soldier Suicide We’re Veterans who understand the military mindset and training. While we are not a crisis center and don't provide direct clinical services or therapy, we do offer a high-touch service with connection to resources for many of the stresses faced: job loss, relationship issues, mental health needs, financial worries, housing and more.

The challenge is simple. Since I've been doing this for over 3 decades, tracked reports right here for 9 years with over 26,000 posts, stun me.  Take the time to do a video about what you are doing and put it up on YouTube. Send me the link.

It should be simple to answer the following questions,

What is your goal?
How do you plan on achieving it?
What is the money you are raising for?
How many lives have you saved?
How many people are doing more than just talking about the problem?
What are you doing?
How is what you are doing different from everyone else?

Keep in mind, I started doing videos on PTSD back in 2006, so won't be easy to show me something new.

I'll share your video but will add my two cents to it.  That is a chance you'll have to take but if you believe in what you are doing, then that should not be a problem.

If you stun me, I'll post your video along with a full guest post to spread the word about what you are doing. Right now this is the traffic on Wounded Times.

It started on August 10, 2007 because a Marine dared me to stop posting political rants and keep this about the truth.  I kept my word after he asked me if I was doing this for "them" or myself.

The count started May 2010 with 2,812,685 page views, 79,670 page views last month. Plus I do all this for free. I lose a couple of thousand dollars every year. I have a regular job to pay my bills and I give away more than I get from Google ads.



It is read all over the world.

United States
1861484
Germany
145137
France
141682
Russia
96605
Spain
52740
United Kingdom
49471
Canada
33561
Ukraine
29659
Bulgaria
16494
China
16084

Time to step up the real challenge here because the truth is, we're losing this battle after war. They are running out of time for us to change the outcome.


UPDATE

Received the first response from an old friend, Bob Bambury
Veterans Multi-Purpose Center
Founded: 1992

South Carolina PTSD Veteran Died in Standoff with Deputies

Sheriff: Man Who Died in Standoff with Deputies Had PTSD 
WLTX News 
August 09, 2016

Richland County deputies respond to a standoff

with a man in Little Mountain on August 9, 2016.

(Photo: WLTX)

Richland County, SC (WLTX) - Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says the man who died in a confrontation with his deputies Monday night was a military veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
read more here

Vietnam Veteran Will Not Give Up On Their Brothers

When I took some time off the end of July to spend with family in New England, I was supposed to be unplugged and just relaxing. I was walking around Portsmouth when I came upon a strange thing.  

Naturally I had to stop and talk to him while my daughter gave me the look like, "You're supposed to be off this weekend." It turns out that Peter MacDonald is a Vietnam Veteran.  As you know, that is the generation everyone forgets about and the one that got me started doing this work.  

They came home with the same wounds all the other generations did but they decided to fight to have it treated.  You know, the things everyone seems to think only happens to the OEF-OIF generation. 

They came home and fought to have PTSD diagnosed and treated as well as compensated for this wound.  They came home and ended up homeless walking the streets, living in the woods and depending on anything a kind heart bothered to share with them.

These were the numbers of veterans most walked away from.

Approximately 40% of homeless men are veterans, although veterans comprise only 34% of the general adult male population. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans estimates that on any given night, 200,000 veterans are homeless, and 400,000 veterans will experience homelessness during the course of a year (National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, 2006). 97% of those homeless veterans will be male (Department of Veterans Affairs, 2008). The National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients reports that veterans account for 23% of all homeless people in America (U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Urban Institute, 1999).

They suffered when no one else was looking. 

As the public has once again decided to cross the street instead of offer even a smile, they have proven how magnificent they really are.  They still haven't give up on the rest of the people in this country. They sure as hell are not giving up on each other.

It makes them very sad that with all the talk about helping the younger veterans, no one is talking about helping them, but not for the reason you may think.  They are sad knowing that the younger generation would not have to be going through the same suffering they did had all of us paid attention when they came home.

I was glad I stopped because this veteran was once homeless himself and decided that after he had been helped to get back on his feet, he would do the same for others.

I looked online and found a news report about him. Here it is.

Former Homeless Vet Vows To Help Others By Building Tiny Homes
WBZ-TV
By Chantee Lans
July 12, 2016

LEE, N.H. (CBS) – Peter MacDonald served as a Marine sergeant in Vietnam in the 1970s. He became homeless when he returned to New Hampshire.

“A person who became my friend found me. He was a Vietnam veteran that got back a year before me and realized what I was going through when he found me living under dumpster in Dover,” explained MacDonald.

He and his wife later met through his veteran rehabilitation services. Three years ago, they used their retirement money and life savings and held fundraisers to start a non-profit called Veteran Resort Chapel. The goal is to build 12 tiny homes on 11-acres of land for homeless combat veterans.

“This is something that should’ve been done years ago and I really hope that other people will see the idea of tiny homes for homeless combat veterans to given them a chance to find themselves to come home mentally as well as physically,” said MacDonald.
read more here

Canada: Military Missed Opportunity to Save Suicidal of Soldier

Military had chance to "lessen the likelihood" of soldier suicide, judge says
The Canadian Press
By Chris Purdy
Posted: Aug 06, 2016

PTSD-diagnosed soldier "would have been handled entirely differently" if diagnosis was known

A fatality inquiry into the death of Cpl. Shaun Collins,

a 27-year-old Canadian Forces soldier, suggested the military

could have lessened the likelihood of his death. (Supplied)

A judge says the military had several opportunities to prevent or lower the risk of suicide for an Edmonton soldier who hanged himself in a holding cell five years ago.

Cpl. Shaun Collins, 27, killed himself at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton after he was arrested by military police for drunk driving on March 11, 2011.

Provincial court Judge Jody Moher said in a fatality inquiry report released late Friday afternoon that things could have been done to try to save the soldier.

"It is irrefutable that there were a number of potential opportunities to obviate or lessen the likelihood of Shaun Collins committing suicide that evening," she said.

​Moher said no one did a computer search that night on Collins after his arrest.

A search would have found that Collins, a member of the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after he returned from his second tour in Afghanistan in 2010. He had also tried kill himself, or threatened to kill himself, four times and was being transitioned out of the military.

The judge wrote that information on the soldier's mental health was available on a military computer system. But a comssionaire, dispatcher and three military police officers on duty did not do a check and placed him alone in a cell.
read more here

Fort Bragg Soldiers Flipping For Homeless Veterans

3 soldiers team up to provide homes for homeless vets
Fayetteville Observer
By Amanda Dolasinski Staff writer
August 7, 2016

Three specialists with an innate devotion for giving back hope to provide a special Thanksgiving for a homeless veteran - by putting their comrade in a home.

Specialists Tony Brown, Devonta Birden and Carla White - three friends who serve at units at Fort Bragg - created Southern Comfort Care Inc., a company that plans to buy property to build or renovate homes to flip for homeless veterans in Cumberland County. The company needs to raise at least $25,000 to purchase the first home by October so the family can be in for Thanksgiving.

"It's about giving back and making somebody else's life better," said Brown, president and founder of Southern Comfort Care Inc. "I'm trying to look out for people who paved the way for me."
read more here

Veterans Fighting Wars and 114 Sessions of Congress

Veterans were supposed to receive more than "gratefulness" from this nation even before it was a nation.

From the beginning, the English colonies in North America provided pensions for disabled veterans. The first law in the colonies on pensions, enacted in 1636 by Plymouth, provided money to those disabled in the colony’s defense against Indians.

Other colonies followed Plymouth’s example.

Members of Congress have been in charge of how veterans are treated in this country since beginning of it. So why do they forget that as they are responsible for everything they complain about?

History of the VA

Revolutionary War

In 1776 the Continental Congress sought to encourage enlistments and curtail desertions with the nation’s first pension law. It granted half pay for life in cases of loss of limb or other serious disability.

At most, only 3,000 Revolutionary War veterans ever drew any pension. Later, grants of public land were made to those who served to the end of the war.

1812 National effort to provide medical care for disabled veterans. 

Civil War
1862 Congress established National Cemetery System to provide burial for the many Union dead of the Civil War.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the nation had about 80,000 war veterans. By the end of the war in 1865, another 1.9 million veterans had been added to the rolls. This included only veterans of Union forces. Confederate soldiers received no federal veterans benefits until 1958, when Congress pardoned Confederate servicemembers and extended benefits to the single remaining survivor.

Immediately after the Civil War, the number of disabled veterans in need was so great that Congress in 1865 authorized the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. The name was changed to the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1873.

First Veterans Group

After the Civil War, veterans organized to seek increased benefits. The Grand Army of the Republic, consisting of Union veterans of the Civil War, was the largest veterans organization emerging from the war.

As part of the effort between 1865 and 1870 to rebury battlefield casualties, 70 national cemeteries were opened and 300,000 remains gathered and reburied. Of the total buried, 142,000 were unknown. In 1873 Congress authorized national cemetery burial for all honorably discharged Union veterans.

Aid and Attendance

The Consolidation Act in 1873 revised pension legislation, paying on the degree of disability rather than the service rank. The Act also began the aid and attendance program, in which a disabled veteran is paid to hire a nurse or housekeeper.

Until 1890, Civil War pensions were granted only to servicemen discharged because of illness or disability attributable to military service. The Dependent Pension Act of 1890 substantially broadened the scope of eligibility, providing pensions to veterans incapable of manual labor. Within the next three years the number of veterans on the pension roll increased from 489,000 to 996,000 and expenditures doubled. Legislation passed in the 19th century had established a general pension system that could be applied to future pension recipients. As a consequence, new pension laws did not follow the Spanish-American War in 1898 or the Philippine Insurrection, 1899 to 1901.

The first important pension law in the 20th century was the Sherwood Act of 1912, which awarded pensions to all veterans. A similar law in the 19th century had limited recipients to Revolutionary War veterans. Under the Sherwood Act, veterans of the Mexican War and Union veterans of the Civil War could receive pensions automatically at age 62, regardless of whether they were sick or disabled.

As a result, the record shows that of the 429,354 Civil War veterans on pension rolls in 1914, only 52,572 qualified on grounds of disability.

Veterans Protest 1932

As the Depression worsened, veterans began calling for immediate payment of their “bonuses,” as the certificates came to be called. In March 1932, a small group of veterans from Oregon began marching to Washington, D.C., to demand payment. Word of the march spread like wildfire and soon small bands of unemployed veterans from across the country began descending on the nation’s capital.

There is no way of knowing how many veterans joined the “Bonus Expeditionary Forces,” as the marchers were called. By the summer, some estimates put the force at between 15,000 and 40,000. They camped wherever they could. Some slept in abandoned buildings or erected tents. But many lived in makeshift shacks along the mudflats of the Anacostia River. With no sanitation facilities, living conditions quickly deteriorated in the “shanty town.”

Veterans Administration Created 1930

President Hoover, in his 1929 State of the Union message, proposed consolidating agencies administering veterans benefits. The following year Congress created the Veterans Administration by uniting three bureaus — the previously independent Veterans’ Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions and the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. President Hoover signed the executive order establishing the VA on July 21, 1930.

GI Bill of Rights Servicemen's Readjustment Act 1944


Veterans Preference Act 1944

VA Hospitals and Waiting in Line

On Feb. 1, 1946, Bradley reported that the VA was operating 97 hospitals with a total bed capacity of 82,241 patients. Hospital construction then in progress projected another 13,594 beds. Money was available for another 12,706 beds with the construction of 25 more hospitals and additions to 11 others. But because of the demobilization, the total number of veterans would jump to more than 15 million within a few months. The existing VA hospitals were soon filled to capacity, and there were waiting lists for admission at practically all hospitals. In addition, there were 26,057 nonservice-connected cases on the hospital waiting list. Until more VA hospitals could be opened, the Navy and Army both made beds available.

To handle the dramatic increase in veterans claims, VA Central Office staff was increased in two years from 16,966 to 22,008. In the same period, field staff, charged with providing medical care, education benefits, disability payments, home loans and other benefits, rose from 54,689 employees to 96,047.

Every session of Congress, from the 1st to this 114th, have managed to forget that no matter which party controlled what got done and what went wrong, to blame everyone but themselves.  They are still doing it.

Vietnam Veteran Still Trying To Get "Brothers" Home

Veteran anxiously awaits mission to bring soldiers' bodies home from Vietnam
The Times-Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)
By Bill O'Boyle
Published: August 5, 2016

Pfc. Anthony John (Tony) Pepper, left, and Cpl. James Mitchell Trimble.

VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL FUND

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (Tribune News Service) — Ed Zimmerman’s long journey may soon be over.

Zimmerman, 67, of Bear Creek, will head to South Vietnam on Aug. 10 to assist the U.S. government’s recovery effort to search and, hopefully, recover the remains of Pfc. Anthony John (Tony) Pepper, 20, of Richmond, Virginia, and Cpl. James Mitchell Trimble, 19, of Eureka, California.

“This has been quite an undertaking for me,” Zimmerman said Thursday. “I’ve gone over it mentally so many times. But I’m very confident we will find the location and bring them back.”

Zimmerman said all the preparations for the trip have been made and he can’t wait to get to Vietnam to direct the recovery team to the exact spot where he last saw Trimble and Pepper.

“I’ve been going over things in my mind and I have clarity,” he said. “A lot of the cobwebs have gone away. I know I can find the spot where they were.”

In a Times Leader story in June, Zimmerman said he has not been able to rest, often having nightmares, since learning the bodies of two dead Marines he saw in a ravine in South Vietnam were never recovered — never returned to their families for burial.
read more here

Jerusalem Post Report: Healing PTSD Lives With Film

Healing Lives With Film on Jerusalem Post covers the use of film to help heal PTSD. In the article they also talk about veterans. Very interesting read since the notion that PTSD, suicide and grieving does not exist in Israel because of strong sense of community. Guess he didn't spend much time in the veterans community where they suffer and heal together.

Junger Thinks Society to Blame When Troops Come Home?

"In his book, Mr. Junger marshals history, psychology, anthropology and statistics to make his case. He suggests that in countries with a strong sense of community, such as Israel, incidence of PTSD is low even though that nation exists in a state of near-constant conflict."

Healing Lives With Film
Jerusalem Post
Judith Siegel-Itzkovich
August 6, 2016

Using video to treat trauma is a “very Israeli project,” said Miri Boker, head of the videotherapy center and an occupational therapist who spoke at the beginning of the five-hour conference. “We did this to embrace our soldiers and bereaved families.” The conference began with a 24-minute film made by Hagai, an IDF medic who participated in Operation Protective Shield in Gaza, and his friend Ariel. Unlike films made by bereaved fathers, they actually wanted their work to be shown, and the movie – Ma Rodef Samal Rishon? (What Pursues a Staff Sergeant?) was presented a few months ago at Docaviv.

They served together in the war, in the Sufa Battalion.

When the battle ended, Ariel bought an old Peugeot, while Hagai purchased a video camera.

One of them is shown living out of his car, even sleeping in it. He moves around the country, returning to scenes near Gaza, cooking vegetables, chicken and ground beef on a camping stove and watching passing sheep. He recalls that “horrible things happened in the war.” He is clearly unable to settle down after the trauma of his buddies’ deaths. In one of the film’s sequences, a soldier is sitting on an armored car. The narrator explains that an IDF physician told the soldiers to wear their bullet-proof vests, but that some ignored his advice. A mortar suddenly lands, killing one of the soldiers. The storyteller was saved because he by chance bent down to reach something. He was saved, but a friend was killed.

“His eyes and mouth were open. I knew he was dead. I felt his last two heartbeats before he died. I tore myself away and put on a vest.”

War, he said, “messes you up. Many guys I know suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. You can’t survive such an experience without getting shell shock.” They dedicate the movie to the memories of Daniel Marash, Liran Adir and Noam Rosenthal, who were killed in action.

“From World War I, shell shock was recognized. At first,” said Ariel, “it was thought it resulted from some chemical in the gunpowder. In later wars, especially Vietnam, it was realized that the problem was psychological trauma.”
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Death of Air Force Lt. Col. Under Investigation

Washington airman dies from non-combat injury in Asia
KING 5 News and Associated Press
August 06, 2016

LANSING, Mich. - A U.S. airman assigned to Washington's Camp Murray has died in southwest Asia from an injury not related to combat.

Lt. Col. Flando Jackson (Credit: Washington Military Department)

The Defense Department says Saturday that Lt. Col. Flando Jackson's death on Thursday is under investigation.

Officials say the 45-year-old Jackson was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military campaign against Islamic State forces and terrorists at war against the governments of Iraq and Syria.
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Las Vegas Vietnam Veterans Learned to Heal PTSD Together

Las Vegas psychiatrist helps Vietnam veterans heal ‘invisible wounds’
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
By KEITH ROGERS
August 7, 2016

Until he began therapy sessions with Dr. Steven Kingsbury to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder, Marine veteran Lonnie Coslow was in denial about his invisible wounds from the Vietnam War.

“I told him that if the Marines wanted me to have PTSD they would have issued it to me,” Coslow, 71, said Thursday.

Looking back, Coslow now understands how Kingsbury, a wheelchair-bound psychiatrist at the North Las Vegas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, helped him realize how to live with the nightmares, flashbacks and pent-up emotions that have simmered since 1968.

Kingsbury became a mental health expert after earning degrees, completing residencies and serving on faculties at universities like Harvard, Loyola, Miami, Texas and Southern California. Through his knowledge and experience he gradually won Coslow’s confidence.

After 10 years of private sessions with Coslow, the affable doctor persuaded him to join the Tuesday gatherings of a group of about 20 other Las Vegas area combat veterans.

“One of the great things we had going was we saw these guys in a group and they were able to help each other,” Kingsbury said. “Any trust issues that they had with me, they still had trust among themselves.”

When issues like suicidal thoughts, marriage problems and anger flare-ups surfaced, he said, 


“They were there for each other and they could call each other and just get away for awhile.”
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PTSD EVOLUTION
There wasn't a specific name for post-traumatic stress disorder when Dr. Steven Kingsbury first began working with combat veterans a few years after the Vietnam War ended in 1975.

PTSD didn't become part of the VA's vocabulary until the American Psychiatric Association's manual for mental health disorders was revised in 1980.

Some symptoms had been described as "shell shock" or "war neuroses" for World War I veterans; or "combat stress reaction" from "battle fatigue" for World War II veterans, according the VA's National Center for PTSD.

During the Korean War era, the association's manual from 1952 made reference to "gross stress reaction" as a symptom of traumatic combat events. The diagnosis, however, was struck from the revised 1968 manual and replaced with an "adjustment reaction to adult life." That was later described on the center's website as "clearly insufficient to capture a PTSD-like condition."

In 2013, more than 500,000 veterans were receiving treatment for PTSD at VA facilities.

WWP Still Doesn't Get What Accountability Should Be

There is a report on Stars and Stripes about Wounded Warrior Project employees bracing for some layoffs. In the report there was this.

The difference, he said: Wounded Warrior Project invests heavily in fundraising in part because of the scope of services it provides to wounded veterans and their families.

The problem is that no one has addressed the fact that WWP does not "provide" all the help they claim by themselves. They give out donations (grants) to other charities and colleges leaving donors to wonder why WWP assumed they had the right to use their money without providing them the opportunity to say no.

Here are some of the charities getting their money last year.

This cycle’s grant recipients are Catch a Lift Fund (Baltimore, MD), Shepherd Center Foundation (Atlanta, GA) Rocky Mountain Human Services (Colorado Springs, CO), Northeast Nebraska Community Action Partnership (Pender, NE), Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council (Independence, WI), Brain Injury Services of Southwest Virginia (Roanoke, VA), Yellow Ribbon Fund (Bethesda, MD), Colorado State University Foundation (Fort Collins, CO), and David Lynch Foundation (New York, NY).

Stunning, Sexy, Nude Veterans

Amputee Veterans Reveal Why They Showed Off Their Battle Scars in Latest Nude Photo Shoot
Inside Edition
by Johanna
August 2, 2016

These sexy veterans are back, and they're wearing nothing but their battle scars.

Just when our hearts and loins thought they've had enough, photographer Michael Stokes of Los Angeles is back behind the lens shooting amputees in a steamy sequel to his wounded veteran series, and he guarantees: "Yes, they are nude."

Stokes said he reached out to 13 new veterans to be featured in Invictus, and revisited five models he photographed for his first book, Always Loyal.

Of the 18 veterans he photographed for his series on battle scars, 17 are amputees.
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Read: Go Behind the Scenes as Naked Wounded War Veterans Pose for Steamy Photos

Vietnam Veteran's Son Killed Fighting ISIS Wanted to Be a Marine

Colorado mother struggles to bring her son’s body home from Syria
“Jack” Shirley of Arvada was killed fighting the Islamic State with Kurdish forces in Syria
Denver Post
By CLAIRE CLEVELAND
PUBLISHED: August 6, 2016

Frustrated that his eyesight rendered him unfit for the U.S. Marines, Jack joined the war on terror, against the wishes of his government, by volunteering with the People’s Protection Unit, a Kurdish group clashing with the Islamic State in northern Syria. Amid the tangled geopolitical alliances of the Middle East, the YPG — shorthand for Jack’s unit — falls under a political wing believed to have ties to yet another group the U.S. has classified as a terrorist organization.

Joe Amon, The Denver Post
Susan Shirley with a picture of

her son Levi Jonathan Shirley that
died in Syria as a volunteer with
an armed Kurdish group, the YPG to
fight ISIS.

Day after day, Susan Shirley sits at the round, wooden table in her Arvada kitchen, her blue eyes intensely scanning e-mails or Facebook messages on her laptop and then, eventually, wandering past the window into the yard where her son once played.

She refocuses on the spiral notebook before her and logs another entry in a minute-by-minute to-do list of grief: 10:30: …request info costs embalming etc….

The notes go on for pages, chronicling a mother’s complex quest to bring home her son, 24-year-old Levi Jonathan “Jack” Shirley, who was killed on a Syrian battlefield while fighting the Islamic State.

And so news of his death, the second among an estimated 100 Americans who have volunteered with such militias, arrived not with a hero’s accolades and the thanks of a grateful nation, but with a logistical burden heaped upon sorrow at the loss of a son.

Russell Shirley, who served two tours in Vietnam and has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and readjusting to civilian life, felt relief when Jack was disqualified from the Marines. He figured that put an end to the possibility of his son joining a foreign battle.
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Veterans Charities Waiting for No-Show Donations From McGraw Concert

Veterans still waiting for donations from McGraw show
Press of Atlantic City
Michael Miller
August 5, 2016

Vietnam Veterans of America officer Vincent DePrinzio said the groups would understand if the show didn’t generate a profit for donations.

Scenes from the July 4th Tim McGraw concert on the beach in Wildwood.
Monday July 04, 2016. (Dale Gerhard/Press of Atlantic City)

WILDWOOD — Four veterans groups that partnered with the Celebrate America Weekend featuring Tim McGraw on July 4 said they have not received any donations promised from proceeds of the beach concert.

Promoter Boardwalk Entertainment Co. Inc., of Ocean City, promised to donate proceeds from ticket sales to Wildwood’s American Legion Post 184 and Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 955, and Operation First Response in Virginia and the Michael Strange Foundation in Pennsylvania. Boardwalk Entertainment President Amanda Thomas said she expects to be able to announce the donations next week.

“We’re still going through all our numbers and our books, trying to determine how much the groups will get,” she said.

Thomas said her company offered the groups 10 percent of profits from ticket sales.
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