After 45 Years "The army recognized what we did that day."

Glendale Vietnam veteran awarded Silver Star 45 years after rescue
The Republic
Perry Vandell
May 9, 2017

Smoke and fire enveloped the afternoon of April 18, 1972.

The town of An Lộc in South Vietnam was under siege by the Viet Cong, who had the area surrounded. Hercules C-130s tried dropping supplies to the defenders, but the Viet Cong’s anti-air weaponry often shot at them before they could make the drops.

Spc. 4 Leonard "Bruce" Shearer, who now lives in Glendale, was part of a four-man crew manning a Bell UH-1H Iroquois or "Huey" helicopter tasked with reporting enemy troop movement. The helicopter crew had to cut its reconnaissance mission short, however, when Shearer noticed a C-130 engulfed in flames as it streaked across the sky.

It never happened — until the Air Force got involved.

In 2005, the Air Force held a ceremony in Little Rock, Ark. where it awarded Silver Stars to the six U.S. C-130 crewman. It also recognized Shearer and his former crewman — who were in attendance — for their efforts, but was surprised to learn the Army hadn’t done the same for them. Air Force officials began asking questions the rescuers had kept to themselves for decades.
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Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial Vandalized

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Vandalized In Philadelphia
Philadelphia Patch
By Max Bennett (Patch Staff)
May 9, 2017

Police said the male spray painted a band's upcoming album release onto the sidewalk inside the Veterans Memorial then fled in an unknown direction.

PHILADELPHIA – Philadelphia Police are seeking two people who were seen on camera allegedly vandalizing a veterans memorial in the city recently. Police said anyone who can identify the two should contact police immediately.

According to police, the vandalism occurred on April 23 at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Front and Spruce streets.

In the footage released by police, the two suspects walk up to the memorial, the male places a stencil on the ground, and spray paints the ground while the female watches.
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Vietnam Veteran Got Emotional By Support Shown

Vietnam War veteran gets emotional homecoming decades after his service 
KETV 
Erin Hassanzadeh 
May 5, 2017

Elkhorn, NEB. — Tom Meradith said when he came back after two tours in Vietnam, his 1967 homecoming was anything but heartwarming. 

Meradith was one of the nearly 650 Vietnam veterans from Nebraska that took the honor flight in Washington DC on Monday. Meradith is the Chaplin for the Brookestone Meadows Care Center in Elkhorn. Staff, residents and patients there wanted to make sure he got a proper homecoming this time around. 

Around 75 people lined the halls of the center with yellow roses to surprise Meradith after the trip. The surprise brought him to tears. read more here

Blind, Double Amputee Marine College Graduate Had Re-enlisted!

Retired Marine Corporal defies odds, graduates from University of Kentucky

WDRB NewsPosted: May 07, 2017

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A retired Marine Corporal who lost both his legs and his sight received his diploma from the University of Kentucky on Friday. 

Matt Bradford was severely hurt back in 2007, when he lost both his legs and his vision. But in April of 2010 he defied the odds and became the first blind, double amputee to re-enlist in the Marines.
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WDRB 41 Louisville News

Motorcycle Crash Claimed Life of Navy Seabee

Navy Seabee Identified As Victim Of Fatal Motorcycle Crash
Associated Press
Published: May 8, 2017

BILOXI, Miss. (AP) – A Navy Seabee stationed in Gulfport has been identified as the man who crashed his motorcycle on a state highway and died.

The Sun Herald reports that Harrison County Chief Deputy Brian Switzer says 27-year-old Jimmy Truong, of San Diego, lost control of the bike and went over an embankment on Saturday.

Authorities say he was wearing a helmet and protective gear.
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"It was a Mcnamara that got me into war and a McNamara helped me get out"

Doctor helped save veterans’ lives once they came home
The Maui News
COLLEEN UECHI
Staff Writer
May 7, 2107

VA psychologist McNamara assisted servicemembers to face post-combat challenges.

Longtime Veterans Affairs psychologist Dr. Kathleen McNamara retired at the end of March after 27 years of helping local veterans and their families cope with post-combat challenges. -- The Maui News / COLLEEN UECHI photo

Vietnam veteran Bo Mahoe likes to say that “it was a McNamara that got me into war, and a McNamara helped me get out.”

Fifty years ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pushed for America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In its aftermath, Veterans Affairs psychologist Dr. Kathleen McNamara has helped Mahoe and countless other Maui County veterans face the post-combat challenges of coming home.

McNamara, 67, retired at the end of March after 27 years of service to Hawaii’s veterans.

“She’s one who’s given more than anybody I know to help our veterans, and yet she feels she’s the one who’s benefited,” said Dr. Richard MacDonald, rehab counselor with Veterans Affairs on Maui. “I think that’s part of why she’s so effective because she keeps that humility and just focuses in on what the veterans need in every way, shape or form.”

McNamara knew early on in her life the meaning of honoring veterans. Her father was an airplane mechanic in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and when he saw how Vietnam veterans were treated upon their return home, he got upset.

In Hawaii, she worked with many Vietnam veterans who were just starting to come to terms with post-traumatic stress disorder. Back when she was pursuing her doctorate at Ohio University in 1975, “PTSD didn’t exist as a specialty.” It left a lot of Vietnam veterans in limbo, as no one recognized the pain they brought home.
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Australia "Funding Blitz" to Help PTSD Veterans

Funding promised to improve treatment for defence force veterans’ mental health
Daily Telegraph Australia
Annika Smethurst, The Sunday Mail (Qld)
May 6, 2017

VETERANS battling mental health conditions will have free and immediate access to a greater range of services – including suicide prevention programs – under a multi- ­million-dollar funding blitz by the Federal Government.

The Government will spend $220 million on mental health, suicide, and programs to help personnel transition back to civilian life after serving.

The Sunday Mail can reveal that Tuesday’s Budget will include a $350 million boost to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, including the largest cash injection to mental health services in decades.

As part of the package, the Turnbull Government will provide more than $30 million for non-liability mental health services to ex-servicemen and women, who will no longer have to prove that their mental health condition is linked to their service before receiving treatment.

The Government currently provides former service members with free and immediate treatment for a handful of conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and alcohol and drug abuse.

The Government will also spend $10 million on suicide prevention programs, which will include a pilot program providing case management for veterans after they are discharged from hospital.

The landmark report found serving members were 50 per cent less likely to commit suicide than those of the same age who were not in the ADF.
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That is how Australia responded to veterans in crisis because "More than 40 military personnel and veterans were found to have taken their own life in the past year, the same figure as the number of Australians killed in Afghanistan during 13 years of war." 

Those are the same percentages we have here in the US but it is the flip side of that. US veterans are more likely to commit suicide than civilians. Top that off with younger veterans triple their peer rate.

Pretty much supports what has been reported for the last decade. It also shows how all of this "suicide awareness" has done nothing for the veterans needing help the most.

Belize Police Arrest Two Connected to DeVoursney-Matus Murder

MURDER IN BELIZE: Victim's mom says 2 detained
WSB News
by: Matt Johnson
Updated: May 4, 2017

BELIZE - Police in Belize have detained two people in connection with the murder of an Atlanta man and his Canadian girlfriend, the victim’s mother tells Channel 2's Matt Johnson.

Drew DeVoursney's mother says she received an email telling her about the new developments around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

His mother says the news is a positive step although it's unclear why her son was murdered.
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CRIME
American Killed in Belize with Girlfriend Left College to Enlist in Marines After 9/11: Mom
PEOPLE
BY ADAM CARLSON
POSTED ON MAY 4, 2017

In tears, Char told the Toronto Star on Tuesday that she had long feared the news that Drew was dead.

“But that was when he was in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said. “Now he’s coming home in a way I’ve always dreaded.”

Drew DeVoursney was in his last year at Montreat College in North Carolina, on an academic and soccer scholarship, when the twin towers fell in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Feeling compelled to serve, he dropped out of Montreat and enlisted in the Marines, ultimately serving two tours in Afghanistan before returning for two more years as a contractor, his mom, Char DeVoursney, told PEOPLE.

“That says something about him,” she said of her son, a 6-foot-6-inch 36-year-old she always called her “adventure boy.”

“He wasn’t going to stay still somewhere. … He just kept pursuing the next thing he wanted to do, and he was really good at it.”

Drew’s post-military life took him across the country and outside of it, Char said. He worked stints in Charleston, South Carolina, and on solar panel farms in California — with a period in between learning how to work on oil rigs in Texas — before heading to Belize in December. He had had purchased four acres of land in the Central American country about four years ago and he planned to teach diving.

He lived in Belize’s Corozal District, bordering the southeastern tip of Mexico, Char said.

And that’s where he vanished, until nearly a week later, on Monday afternoon, when his dead body was reportedly found in a local village along with the body of his 52-year-old girlfriend, Francesca Matus.

Police said they were both strangled, according to multiple news outlets.

“You can imagine me worrying about him doing the military thing,” Char told PEOPLE of her son’s disappearance and death. “This was much more worrisome, going through this process of not knowing.”
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WIckham Park Vietnam and All Veterans Reunion

I don't think we could have asked for a better day to be out at the Veterans Reunion in Melbourne.

Our dog Murray paid his respects to his heroes.

And we paid our respects to ours.

I found this of the Last Patrol....
It is from 2014

House GOP Didn't Care About 7 Million Veterans?

Trump promised to work for vets, but they could lose big under House health care bill
McClatchy News
BY VERA BERGENGRUEN
May 5, 2017

WASHINGTON
The health care bill that Republicans in the House of Representatives passed this week could strip 7 million veterans of tax credits and place many of them in high-risk pools by classifying post-traumatic stress disorder as a pre-existing condition.

Democrats seized on those possible effects to slam Republicans, saying they had voted for a bill that would, if it became law, end up punishing millions of veterans, a group that President Donald Trump fervently vowed to support during his campaign.

“This is not fear mongering, This is not hyperbole,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., who is a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “This bill jeopardizes health care for up to 7 million veterans, and everyone should oppose it.”

The House passed the American Health Care Act on Thursday by a narrow 217-213 vote and sent it to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. The complaints of veterans are unlikely to help its chances of ultimate approval.

The bill offers Americans tax credits that they can use to buy private insurance – as long as they are not eligible for other low-cost government health care options. That’s the catch for veterans, who are eligible for medical care offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That means that an estimated 7 million veterans who qualify for VA health care benefits but elect not to take them would be ineligible for the tax credits.
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WFT is wrong with these politicians? Kill off the Affordable Care Act and the VA by closing VA hospitals at the same time they pull this stunt?