Homeless Veteran "Army Strong, Saved His Own Foot!

A Homeless Veteran’s Struggle to Survive on the Streets of Sacramento
FOX 40 News
BY KARMA DICKERSON
JANUARY 5, 2017

SACRAMENTO -- He told doctors he operated on himself on the streets of Sacramento.

This homeless veteran's struggle to survive is amazing and heartbreaking. For years, he was on his own, but two homeless programs came together and helped save his life.

Army Strong, to Greg Metcalf, it’s not just a recruiting slogan.

“I did what I had to do when it was time for me to do it ,” said Metcalf.

It’s the frame of mind that led him to self-treat a life-threatening wound while living on the street rather than let a doctor amputate his foot.

According to what Metcalf later told Veteran Administration doctors, in 2012 he developed gangrene in his left foot from exposure to the cold. When emergency room doctors told him they’d need to take his foot, Greg left the hospital.

“Then took himself behind a dumpster, sterilized a pocket knife with a lit flame and went about using his knowledge he got from his military training about how to treat wounds," said Doctor Michael Yanuck.

Two years later Greg told his story to Doctor Yanuck with the VA’s Homeless outreach program -- Homeless Patient Aligned Care Team.
read more here

Gunman in Custody After Airport Shooting Left 5 Dead

Fort Lauderdale airport shooting: Multiple people killed, suspect in custody 
CNN
By Catherine E. Shoichet
Updated 3:18 PM ET, Fri January 6, 2017

(CNN)Gunshots erupted at the Fort Lauderdale airport on Friday, leaving multiple people dead. Authorities say the gunman, who appeared to be acting alone, is in custody. 

Here's the latest on what we know: 

• Five people are dead, and 13 injured people were transported to hospitals, Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN. • Multiple reports on social media -- including tweets from former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer -- described the shooting. read more here

Sailor Wants To Change a Letter in PTSD?

My heart breaks for him but, changing the name will do no good. As for how veterans think about PTSD, that is where real change begins. Getting them to understand what it is and why they have it will do a lot more to remove the stigma than changing a couple of letters. We've been at this for over forty years because Vietnam veterans came home and fought for all the research, including the name itself. It means after trauma, which is Greek for wound, you go into stress and things get out of order. You can change again. PTSD is only caused by surviving a traumatic event.

San Diego sailor starts petition to get PTSD classified as injury
ABC 10 News
Hannah Mullins, Kevin Beckman
Jan 5, 2017

"We're here to honor him and those like him and those like him," he said. PTSD is a big culprit when it comes to veterans killing themselves.

SAN DIEGO — A local sailor, Will Gibson, is on a mission to battle veteran suicide by renaming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to an injury.

It is something Will Gibson, who is a Navy sailor, knows too well. Gibson's old college buddy, Tony Briley, was injured in the Army and could no longer serve. Physical pain led to mental anguish.

"We lost Tony this year in August," he said, then he hung his head and cried. "It makes me sad that I couldn't do more to help him," Gibson said.

Briley became one of an estimated 20 vets a day who kill themselves. He left behind a wife and two girls. Gibson has since learned a lot about veteran suicide.
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Fort Bliss Wasn't Looking for Two Missing Soldiers?

Two soldiers are missing. Their families say the Army refused to look for nearly two weeks
Washington Post
By Avi Selk
January 5, 2016

Pfc. Jake Obad-Mathis (center) in a family photo after his enlistment in 2015. He

and Pfc. Melvin Jones have been missing from their base for more than two weeks.

(Courtesy of Carin Obad)

As his mother describes him, Jake Obad-Mathis does not look like most soldiers.

At age 20, after more than a year in the Army, he is still thin and small. He stands a head shorter than most of his comrades at Fort Bliss, Tex. He’s shy and talks with a slight stutter.

Or so he did, before the private first class disappeared Dec. 19.

If you have seen her son, Carin Obad would like to know. She has been searching for him for more than two weeks.

So has the family of his friend, Pfc. Melvin Jones, who disappeared on the same day from the same base.

Now — after nearly two weeks of rejections, excuses and abrupt dial tones from police and military brass, Obad said — the Army is finally looking, too.
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Veteran Finds Out He's Not The Father, VA Wants Money Back?

Very poorly written report. First there is a difference between "Retirement Pay" that is from the Department of Defense. Then there is Disability Compensation that is from the VA and is rated by degree of a Service Connected Disability. There is a VA Pension with these requirements

In addition to meeting minimum service requirements, the Veteran must be:

• Age 65 or older, OR

• Totally and permanently disabled, OR

• A patient in a nursing home receiving skilled nursing care, OR

• Receiving Social Security Disability Insurance, OR

• Receiving Supplemental Security Income

There are different rates of compensation for a single veteran as well as a veteran with a spouse and/or child.  So is this about the VA paid for the child that turned out to not be his and they want the money back?

Either way, this veteran is stuck with a huge headache topped off with a reporter that did not do basic research on the subject that was important enough to write about.

Army veteran says VA taking his money to pay child support for a boy who is not his BY TRIBUNE MEDIA WIRE POSTED 2:38 PM, JANUARY 4, 2017

AURORA, Colo. -- An Army veteran in Colorado says the Department of Veterans Affairs is wrongly garnishing his retirement pay.Elmo Jones, a retired Green Beret, served our country for more than two decades. But he's going up against a behemoth bureaucracy to stop child support payments for a boy who is not his.The VA is taking a big chunk of his retirement pay each month to pay support for the now-5-year-old boy.It's something a Colorado court already ruled the ex-wife is not entitled to receive."This is America? Really?" Jones said.The 57-year-old served in the U.S. Army for 21 years, including combat in the Persian Gulf War. But he's finding the toughest mission of his life is on home soil.read more here

Fort Carson Soldiers Rescue Woman Trapped in Car

Fort Carson Soldiers credited with helping a woman pinned by a vehicle
KKTV 11 News
January 3, 2016

"I mean, at the minimum they prevented further injury they could have even saved her life," said Trooper Timothy Deen with the Colorado State Patrol.

FOUNTAIN, Colo. (KKTV) - Several Fort Carson Soldiers are being hailed as unsung heroes. Members of the Colorado State Patrol are hoping to give credit where credit is due.

A rollover crash Tuesday morning left a woman pinned by part of her red SUV. The crash happened at about 7 a.m. on I-25 near the Mesa Ridge Parkway exit.

Good Samaritans that stopped to help say there were at least three men, likely from Fort Carson, that held the vehicle up off the woman until the fire department arrived on scene.

"She was pinned and trapped, she was able to speak and let us know that she didn't believe that she was injured in anyway," said Sgt. Sean Hartley with the Fountain Police Department. "However half of her body was in the vehicle and the other half was out with the vehicle on its side and kind of leaning towards the rest of her body."

The crash was believed to be caused by icy road conditions. The conditions didn't keep the group of unidentified soldiers from attempting to help the trapped woman.
read more here

Nova Scotia Abandoned PTSD Veteran--Family Paid Price With Gunshots

I struggled with the headline I used. There is no other way to put it. Governments, like the US, send them to fight battles yet do not seem interested enough in making sure they are properly taken care of afterwards. Now a veteran is gone. His family is gone. As you will read, he tried to get help that should have been ready and waiting for him. Much like weapons, uniforms, supplies and transportation are prepared to welcome them to the war zones. No one welcomed them to the war zone of having to fight for the care they needed because they went.

Veteran, his wife, child and mother found dead in apparent murder-suicide
CBC News
By Elizabeth McMillan, Sherri Borden Colley
Posted: Jan 04, 2017

Lionel Desmond appears to have shot himself, 3 others died of gunshot wounds, RCMP say

Lionel Desmond was part of the India Company, 2nd battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, in Afghanistan in 2007. (Facebook)

A military veteran, his newly graduated nurse wife, their 10-year-old daughter and her grandmother are dead after an apparent murder-suicide that has rocked a rural Nova Scotia community.

CBC News has confirmed the deceased are Lionel Desmond, 33, his wife, Shanna Desmond, 31, their 10-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, and Brenda Desmond, 52, who was Lionel's mother.

Nova Scotia RCMP said Lionel Desmond appeared to have shot himself, and the three others died of apparent gunshot wounds. Police said they found two guns in the house and are continuing to search the area.

Police were called to the house in northeastern Nova Scotia, about 29 kilometres north of Guysborough, shortly after 6 p.m. AT. Insp. Lynn Young, officer in charge of the Nova Scotia RCMP major crimes unit, told reporters two people found the bodies and called 911.

"This is incredibly tragic for everyone involved," she said.

Shanna Desmond's aunt, Catherine Hartling, said she went to the home in Upper Big Tracadie on Tuesday night because she thought Lionel Desmond had taken his own life. She arrived to learn everyone inside was dead.

'No beds available'

Rev. Elaine Walcott, who lives just outside of Halifax and is related to the victims, said Lionel Desmond had recently spent time in a Montreal clinic for post-traumatic stress disorder.

"He's been crying out for help from the mental health system," she said.

Shanna Desmond recently graduated as a registered nurse and was working at St. Martha's Regional Hospital in Antigonish, N.S. — the same hospital where her husband had tried to get treatment within the last week, Walcott said.

"I understand that there were no beds available," Walcott said.

"He suffered in physical ways, he suffered in emotional ways, and spiritual ways," she said of his tours in Afghanistan.
read more here

Hell No! Congress Seeks To Privatize or Pulverize the VA?

Congress has been writing the rules, bills and funding (or underfunding) the VA since 1946. Here is what they were supposed to be responsible for.

Legislation Within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs

1. Veterans' measures generally.

1. Pensions of all the wars of the U.S., general and special.

1. Life insurance issued by the government on account of service in the Armed Forces.

1. Compensation, vocational rehabilitation, and education of veterans.

1. Veterans' hospitals, medical care, and treatment of veterans.

1. Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief.

1. Readjustment of servicemen to civilian life.

1. National Cemeteries.

Complete Jurisdiction of the Committee

The Department of Veterans Affairs

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was established March 15, 1989, with Cabinet rank, succeeding the Veterans Administration and assuming responsibility for providing federal benefits to veterans and their dependents. Led by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, VA is the second largest of the 14 Cabinet departments and operates nationwide programs of health care assistance services and national cemeteries.
Care for veterans and dependents spans centuries. The last dependent of a Revolutionary War veteran died in 1911, the War of 1812's last dependent died 44 years ago, the Spanish American War's, in 1962. There are widows and children of Civil War and Indian War veterans who still draw VA benefits. Some 2,190 children and widows of Spanish-American War veterans are receiving VA compensation or pension benefits.  The last American Doughboy, Corporal Frank Buckles, passed away on February 27, 2011. His passing signified the passing of the last of the World War I veterans.

So if the VA has been getting stuff wrong, ask Congress why they didn't fix it to make sure it worked for our veterans? 

VA Backlog, their fault
VA Appointment Delays, their fault
VA Drug Problems, their fault

VA is not the enemy but it may be the way Congress planned on it becoming so they could pulverize it and then be done with having to answer to us.

Oh, by the way, we still don't know why veteran suicides have gone up after they started to write bills to prevent them. Anyone ask them how that is working out too?

Marine dog handler wounded in Iraq

Marine dog handler wounded in Iraq
Marine Corps Times
By: Jeff Schogol and Andrew deGrandpre
January 2, 2017

A Marine was severely wounded in Iraq on Dec. 30, according to an online fundraising campaign for his family.

Staff Sgt. Patrick Maloney was on his fifth combat tour when he was “critically wounded,” according to a GoFundMe account that was established on Dec. 31.

The “Help wounded Marine and his family” account raised $11,201 out of a $15,000 goal by Monday afternoon. It did not contain any information about how Maloney was wounded.

“Please consider donating to help Patrick and his entire family during this very tragic time and the long road they have ahead of them,” the account said. “Donations will be used to offset any expenses accrued during Patrick's long road to recovery.”
read more here

VA Advisory Committee on Women Veterans

New Members Appointed to VA Advisory Committee on Women Veterans
01/03/2017

WASHINGTON – Four new members have been appointed to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Advisory Committee on Women Veterans, an expert panel that advises VA’s Secretary on issues and programs impacting women Veterans. Established in 1983, the committee makes recommendations to the Secretary for policy and legislative changes.

“VA values the transformational guidance the Committee has provided over the past 33 years, and relies on to the members to utilize their diverse perspectives in anticipating the emerging needs of women Veterans,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert A. McDonald. “The new appointees will provide unique insight, as VA strives to gauge the evolving needs of women Veterans.”
New Members VA Advisory Committee on Women Veterans

Lisa Kirk Brown, Bellingham, WA. A retired Maryland Air National Guard Lieutenant Colonel; currently serves as a member of the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs’ Women Veterans Advisory Committee, a member of the Whatcom County Veterans Advisory Board, and a Disabled American Veterans service officer.

Kate Germano, Upper Marlboro, MD. A retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel; currently serves as chief operating officer for Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), a non-profit organization solely focused on supporting the needs of service women and women Veterans.

Karen O’Brien, University Place, WA. A retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, with deployments in support of Operation Enduring Freedom; currently serves as a compensation and pension physician for the Veterans Benefits Administration in American Lake, WA.

Betty Yarbrough, Springfield, VA. A retired U. S. Army Colonel, with deployments in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom; immediate past military director of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, where she served as the primary advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness on all matters pertaining to women in the armed forces.

Committee members Octavia Harris (Retired Command Master Chief Petty Officer) San Antonio, and Shannon McLaughlin, Esq. (Major, Massachusetts National Guard) Sharon, Mass. have been reappointed for an additional term.
read more here

Fort Campbell Wife Celebrated Birth of Quads...Battling Cancer

AWESOME UPDATE
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – A GoFundMe campaign for a Fort Campbell soldier and wife with newborn quadruplets has now topped $1 million dollars.



Fort Campbell woman gives birth to quadruplets while battling cancer
WKRN News
Josh Breslow
Published: January 2, 2017

“We know that He’s gotta have a different plan up there for us, and surely everything’s gonna work out in the end,” said Kayla Gaytan.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – A Fort Campbell soldier and his wife have four tiny reasons to celebrate 2017.

Kayla and Sgt. Charles Gaytan are the proud parents of quadruplets born Friday afternoon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center without fertility treatment of any kind.

“It was exciting. It was nerve-wracking. But to see them when they all came out and to hear them crying, that was really exciting,” Kayla told News 2.

Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last January, Kayla had just finished five months of chemotherapy and was in remission when she learned she was pregnant.

Already a mother-of-two, the 29-year-old was excited to tell her husband Charles, a Fort Campbell soldier.

“She called me on the phone, and we’re in a Humvee and I kinda couldn’t really hear her,” recalled Charles. “It was truly some of the best news I’ve ever gotten in my life.”
read more here

Wave American Flag for Suicide Awareness or White Flag to Surrender More Lives?

While I do not question their motives or their intentions, they might as well replace the American flag they wave with a white one to surrender more lives to suicide. Raising awareness has failed. When well meaning folks like these quote the number of "22 a day" it means they are unaware of the truth behind the numbers. 

A decade of talking about the problem has actually produced worse results than when no one was doing public displays. The VA report had the number of "20 a day" in their report back in 1999 when we had over 5 million more veterans in the country. If that does not prove these stunts do not work, then please drop to ground and do some push-ups to make yourself feel better about the results we allowed to happen.

Waving flags to raise awareness
KSWO News
By Chelsea Floyd
Sunday, January 1st 2017

LAWTON, OK (KSWO)- If you were passing through Duncan on January 1st you may have seen people waving American flags on the side of highway 81.

Proposition USA, a focus group targeted to helping veterans, asked people to wave the flag to bring awareness to issues that face the men and women who have served our country.

Veteran Cori Gilbert says she's been raising awareness for veterans for years and was glad to take part in waving the flag for the group.

"This flag is the single most important symbol for our government, for our troops,” said Gilbert. They wave this flag when they go into battle and come out of battle. This is what they stand for and this is what I stand for."

Since the organization's start in 2007 volunteers like Gilbert and Vietnam veteran, David Cook will continue their support for many reasons.

"Twenty-two veterans a day commit suicide, 200,000 veterans are homeless at any given moment, three hundred and seven thousand veterans have died from the lack of care,” said Cook. “We are trying to bring awareness to it."

Cooks son spent a year in Afghanistan and now suffers from PTSD.
read more here

Vietnam Veteran Went From Hamburger Hill to Facing Homelessness

Veterans in need? They’ve got friends, indeed
East Bay Times
By SAM RICHARDS
PUBLISHED: January 1, 2017

Metsiou served in the Army’s 101st Airborne “for 366 days in 1968 and ’69,” he said. “I’m one of the lucky ones who made it back from Hamburger Hill,” referring to a battle against the North Vietnamese in May 1969 in which 400 Americans died and which drew criticism from some lawmakers for its questionable strategic value. His landlord consented to give him until New Year’s to find a new place to live.

Disabled American Veterans Chapter 154 vice commander Sean Poynter, of Pittsburg, unloads a child’s bicycle at the new home of Vietnam veteran Richard Metsiou, 68, in Antioch on Friday, Dec. 30. Richard Metsiou and his wife, Zitta, were facing eviction from their home in Pittsburg, but with the help of Shelter, Inc. and the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 154, the couple were able to move into a new home in Antioch. They are also raising three adopted grandchildren. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

ANTIOCH — Finding a place to live can be an expensive challenge in the Bay Area, and for Richard Metsiou, a Vietnam veteran battling cancer and a bad credit score, an almost impossible one.

So when his longtime landlord died and her family chose to sell the Pittsburg house where he and his family have been living, he had to act fast. Metsiou needed a little help from his friends, and he got it.

Some of them were friends he’d never met before.

“A friend of mine came to me and said Richard was in a bind,” said Sean Poynter, of Pittsburg, who knows Metsiou from the Mount Diablo Disabled American Veterans post in Pittsburg, where he is senior vice commander. “I put it out in an email, that a fellow (veteran) needed some help, and all these guys showed up.”

On Friday, eight members of veterans groups from East Contra Costa County, and from Shelter, Inc. of Contra Costa, a nonprofit whose main mission is fighting homelessness, were unloading trailers in front of a house on West 10th Street in Antioch, where Metsiou, his wife, Zitta, and their three adopted grandchildren will soon live.

But before that, Poynter called Shelter, Inc. for help, and it came though big time, he said. The agency helped find an affordable house with an owner who could deal with Metsiou’s credit issues.

“They’ve been absolutely great,” said 68-year-old Metsiou, who is physically weak and also battling post-traumatic stress disorder.
read more here

Veterans Combat PTSD Choosing to Dance

Veterans Dance to Combat PTSD 
VOA News 
December 31, 2016

Many veterans struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, after returning home from war fronts. Symptoms may include panic attacks, flashbacks of horrible memories or nightmares. 

A program in Louisville, Kentucky, is designed to help veterans overcome PTSD symptoms through dancing. Faiza Elmasry has the story, narrated by Faith Lapidus.

My wish for all veterans with PTSD is, "I Hope You Dance!" And promise to "give faith a fighting chance."

Will Ronald A. Gray Be Executed?

Murdered woman’s sister backs execution of former soldier
By Fox News
December 30, 2016

The sister of a woman murdered more than 30 years ago in North Carolina says she and her family fully support the military’s planned execution of the woman’s killer, a former soldier.

Ronald Gray leaves a courtroom at Fort Bragg in 1988. AP

The execution would be the first by the US military in more than a half-century. A Kansas federal judge earlier this month lifted the stay of execution for the former Fort Bragg soldier, Ronald A. Gray, who is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Gray was convicted in military and civilian courts of raping several women and killing four, including 18-year-old Tammy Cofer Wilson. He was sentenced to death in a Fort Bragg court-martial in 1988.
read more here

Neighbors Rush to Help Disabled Veteran Escape Fire

Bed-ridden with cancer, veteran crawls to safety with girlfriend from Springdale fire
WTAE News 4 Pittsburg
Sheldon Ingram
December 30, 2016

SPRINGDALE, Pa.
A fierce and rapid fire tore through a two-story Springdale house on Butler Street, chasing a disabled military veteran and his girlfriend into the street.

Mike Elliot, 65, crawled to safety, though disabled, on oxygen and battling cancer.

Neighbors who rushed to his aid say he was wearing boxer shorts, a T-shirt and no shoes while on his knees in the frigid night air.

"It just tore my heart apart to see this right after Christmas," said Joe Kuchek, a neighbor who gathered blankets to assist Elliot.

He shared the house with his girlfriend, Janis Schweitzer, 69. Both escaped without injury, but the house is destroyed.
read more here

Dean Yates Battle With PTSD After Reporting on War

The Road to Ward 17: My Battle With PTSD
Reuters
By Dean Yates
Filed Nov. 15, 2016

HOMELAND: In the study at my home in Evandale, Tasmania. In the island’s rainforest, touching the ancient trees and gazing at the misty mountains, I thought I’d found the peace I was looking for. REUTERS/Cameron Richardson

Post-traumatic stress disorder isn’t just for soldiers. After years of covering war and tragedy in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for Reuters, it happened to me.

EVANDALE, Australia – When the psychiatrist diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder at the end of our first session early this March, I finally had to accept I was unwell. The flashbacks, the anxiety, my emotional numbness and poor sleep had long worried my wife, Mary. I had played down the symptoms, denied I had a problem. Five months later I’d be in a psychiatric ward.

I covered some big stories as a Reuters journalist. The Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia’s Aceh province in 2004, three stints in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and then a posting to Baghdad as bureau chief from 2007 to 2008. From 2010 to 2012, based in Singapore, I oversaw coverage of the top stories across Asia each day.

Then, after 20 years working in Asia and the Middle East, it was time to settle down. I moved my family in early 2013 to the Tasmanian village of Evandale, population 1,000, to edit stories for Reuters from home.

Rather than relaxing in Tasmania, the beautiful Australian island where my wife was born, I unravelled.

In a letter that was painful for her to write, Mary, a former journalist, outlined her concerns to the psychiatrist ahead of that first session: “When we came home to Tasmania three years ago it was a real ‘tree change’ for Dean and he spent much more time with the family. Very soon I began to notice changes – a loud-noise sensitivity, a quick temper, irritability, impatience, and an atmosphere of what seemed like misery that sat like a pall over the household,” Mary wrote.
read more here
Linked from PBS

Army Medic-War Veteran Comes to Rescue At Walmart

Army vet helps gunshot victim following Friday night shooting
FOX 4 News
LynnAnne Nguyen
December 31, 2016

“Everybody started running towards us screaming they're shooting, they're shooting,” said Semmler.

Police are still looking for the people who shot a man at a Walmart in the Red Bird area of Dallas. The victim is stable, thanks to a Good Samaritan who used his military training to step in and help as they waited for medics to get there.

Rafael Semmler was at the Walmart on Wheatland with his family, Friday night, when they heard gunfire.

Semmler says he made sure his family got out safely, then his military instincts kicked in.

“You don't really think about it, it's just at that time it's kind of like instinct, it's what you've been trained to do,” he said, “and was my first instinct was to go toward it to see if there's anything I could do to help out.

Semmler went straight to the McDonald’s inside the store where most of the commotion was.

“Another gentleman was like, I've been shot, I'm dying. So I immediately went directly to him first.”

Semmler says the man had been shot in the arm and was losing a lot of blood. After eleven years in the military as an infantryman and a medic, Semmler says he’s used to training abroad in places like Kuwait, Iraq and Bosnia, but never thought he’d be using it here at home.
read more here

How Will This Year End for Veterans?

How Will 2017 End?

Combat PTSD Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

January 1, 2017

It may sound like a strange question on this first day of the New Year, but considering how last year ended, it is a reasonable question to ask. There are many uncertainties in life. Instead of recapping a year that has already happened, I am wondering what we will allow to happen this year.

Yesterday ended the year for me with going to my mailbox and finding gifts from my friend Vietnam veteran Gunny. He sent me a patch with my new road name for Semper Fidelis America, "Know Buddy" along with a memorial cross that says "I wear this cross for those who can't."

Then I filmed another friend, Jonnie, a Marine veteran, delivering an inspiring message about living with PTSD and healing so that this New Year could end differently than it ended for too many veterans.

This morning I went to Oviedo Presbyterian Church to listen to my friend, Rev. Karen Estes preach. As always, listening to her, witnessing her love of God and passion, I cried. She told the story of Artaban the 4th Magi arriving late in Bethlehem.

The story is an addition and expansion of the account of the Biblical Magi, recounted in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. It tells about a "fourth" wise man (accepting the tradition that the Magi numbered three), a priest of the Magi named Artaban, one of the Medes from Persia. Like the other Magi, he sees signs in the heavens proclaiming that a King had been born among the Jews. Like them, he sets out to see the newborn ruler, carrying treasures to give as gifts to the child - a sapphire, a ruby, and a "pearl of great price". However, he stops along the way to help a dying man, which makes him late to meet with the caravan of the other three wise men. Because he missed the caravan, and he can't cross the desert with only a horse, he is forced to sell one of his treasures in order to buy the camels and supplies necessary for the trip. He then commences his journey but arrives in Bethlehem too late to see the child, whose parents have fled to Egypt. He saves the life of a child at the price of another of his treasures.

And with the last jewel, he used it to help a woman being sold as a slave in order to pay the debt of her father. While some may look at the story and think about the horrors that happened that dark day when innocent babies were slaughtered, in the midst of all that evil, there were also witnesses to love when one of the many gave his gifts intended for God to help people in need.

As Christians, Rev. Estes reminded us, we are called, to not just witness love, but to respond with love and courage when we see evil, suffering and injustice around us. That is what Christ not only preached but by what He ended His life on earth with. He asked for His Father to forgive those who nailed Him to the Cross along with those who had abandoned Him.

Did you know that soldiers witnessed love in the midst of war? It happens all the time, no matter if they acknowledge it or not. The original idea to join the military came from a deep desire to serve even though they knew the hardships they would encounter. Even though they knew they would have to leave their families to risk their lives with strangers they would call "brother" bonded together by a love so deep they were willing to sacrifice themselves for. Even though they knew that should they come home wounded or scared by slashes to their soul, they were willing. They were willing, even though for decades, witnesses to their suffering without the care they were promised by the government deciding they needed to fight the battles failed to fulfill the promise to take care of them.

Yet they had reached out their hand to help, shed tears for those who had fallen and prayed for those wounded. No matter how much evil in battle they had to participate in, at the end of the day, had the enemy forces laid down their arms, they would have welcomed the end of battle. It was not motivated by evil they risked everything. It was motivated by a courageous love that had no limits.

We, as witnesses to that love, have not stood up against the injustice they face. 

We allow them to fight our nations battles and then fight the nation that sent them to war to have their wounds tended to. 

We allow folks to run around the country talking about how they die by their own hands yet never once utter the words of why they should live after surviving war.

We allow the Congress to avoid their responsibility in all of this when they do have jurisdiction over what the VA does or fails to do. If the VA fails to take care of veterans, the failure falls in the lap of members of Congress, yet it is us, allowing this to continue for decades, because we failed to hold the overseers accountable.

I have witnessed this all my life when my Dad had to fight for what he needed after his service and then, when my husband had to fight for what he needed. I have witnessed this with the over 27,000 posts on this site, countless emails and phone calls over the years, as more and more suffer from our silence.

I have witnessed miracles, great and small as much as I have witnessed innocent lives being destroyed by power-hungry, greedy men, not caring about who has to pay the price as long as they get what they want.

I have witnessed this in the veterans community as more and more wonder what good do push-ups do them as they are pushed away from families? What good does it do any of them for some to take walks when everyone they knew has walked away from them? What good does it do them to pray for hope when they are told that "God only gives us what we can handle" as if God did it to them?

No my friends, I am not the one they need. I've already proven that when after over 3 decades I am still screaming in this empty room with walls full of "accomplishments" yet the results are far worse than even I imaged they would ever become.

I have witnessed unlimited love when folks like Jonnie pushing past his own pain, his own reluctance to speak of this heartache he carries because others do not know the other cross he carries is that of hope and miracles of love that also showed up when he needed them the most.

I have witnessed veterans doing as Artaban did, giving all they had intended for God to be used in God's name because someone needed them. They are by "brothers" in Point Man International Ministries running around the country offering hope, showing veterans how to heal and then standing by their side when everyone else has walked away from them.

I have witnessed veterans on the brink of ending their battle, heal and then reach back to help other veterans out of their own darkness by shining their light.

Last year began with this,

PTSD New Year Take A Cup of Kindness Yet

So here's to a hopeful New Year when you understand PTSD does not mean you are weak but came from the strength of your core, just feeling things more than others. Know that you changed because of what you survived and as a survivor, you can change again to live a happier life.
May 2016 be the year when you remember the past without the bitterness and taste the kindness that is within your power.

Vietnam Veteran Laid To Rest With Honor in Texas

With no family present, Vietnam veteran laid to rest
Killeen Daily Herald
By Justin Mashburn
Herald correspondent
December 30, 2016

“I feel it is our duty to be here and pay our respects to them. There was no one else to ... so why not step up and be the family?” Simons said.

Eric J. Shelton | Herald

Jason Bretado pays his respects during an unaccompanied burial for U.S. Army veteran LeRoy Jacobson Friday at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen.

Vietnam veteran LeRoy Jacobson, 67, was laid to rest Friday with full military honors at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen.

Despite chilly, wet weather, about 75 veterans, civilians and organization members paid respects to a fallen veteran. Jacobson had no family members present, which cemetery officials refer to as an “unaccompanied veteran’s funeral.”

All stood in silence, heads bowed and tears shed, not in remorse, but in respect, as a fellow veteran conducted the funeral services. Jacobson was a former private in the Army, serving from July 1967 to April 1970. Not much else is known about him or his military service, or even how he died.

Taps softly reverberated through the cool, crisp air as all fellow veterans saluted at Jacobson’s casket, and all civilians in attendance placed their hands over their hearts.

No next of kin were named or discovered, other than a brother who lived out of state but could not attend. Though the veteran was not accompanied by blood relatives, there was no shortage of an extended military family.

The flag folded by the honor guard went to Doug Gault, chief on-site representative of the Veterans Land Board and a former command sergeant major.
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