Marine Sgt. Lance Davison OEF-OIF Veteran PTSD Fallen Warrior

TO VETERANS WITH COMBAT PTSD

If you think your life no longer matters, watch this video. If you think no one cares, watch this video. If you think there is nothing you can do anymore to contribute to society, watch this video. Look at all the people showing up for Lance Davison. Most of them probably didn't know him personally.

All they had to know was that he risked his life for others and paid the price. The battle he fought publicly was fought in Afghanistan and Iraq along side of his "brothers" but the battle he fought personally was fought alone.

The final battle after war does not have to be lost. Learn what it is, seek help, heal so you can fight to save the lives of others. Your job isn't done. Your "brothers" are still counting on you!

Your family is too but they may not understand what you are going through or how to help you. Talk to them. Tell them what you need and how they can support you. Don't push them away. Isn't it time families stopped filling graves after war because of it?

Flagstaff Veteran Becomes a Fallen Warrior
NAZToday
Published on Feb 24, 2014

February 24, 2014 - NAZ Today reporter Kimberly Craft discusses the battle veterans face after they return home. Service men and women returning home from combat too often face a world of isolation and difficulty managing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One Flagstaff veteran's world came apart with a disastrous ending due to PTSD. Hundreds of people came out on Saturday to lay Marine Sgt. Lance Davison to rest.

Davison received full military honors in a ceremony that included traditions from his Navajo past. The 34-year-old served in Afghanistan and Iraq and his experiences there led to a losing battle with PTSD and brain injuries sustained in combat.

Davison took his own life after fighting PTSD for more than a decade.

Davison's father, John Davison, hopes that this tragedy will not be seen as negative but as a message of hope and the need to address the severity of PTSD.

Twenty-two veterans commit suicide each year in the United States. Arizona Representative Ann Kirkpatrick comments on a recent visit to servicemen and women in Afghanistan and how she looked for answers to what could be done to help the transition from combat to home.

Members of congress forgot Veterans already paid the bill!

This is about treating all veterans and families the same, not just covering certain families of certain generations and certain wars! As for paying for it, some members of Congress must have forgotten that it was already paid for by the veterans when risked their lives!

Massive veterans bill heading toward Senate vote
USA TODAY
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
Gregg Zoroya
February 24, 2014

What has been characterized as the most sweeping veterans legislation in decades could reach the Senate floor for a vote as early as Tuesday.

The legislation authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who chairs the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, contains 143 provisions and would cost more than $30 billion.

With a long title — the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 — the bill, among other things, includes: restoring cost-of-living increases for military retiree pensions; expanding Department of Veterans Affairs health care, allowing the VA to acquire 27 new medical facilities and paying for reproductive services for 2,300 troops wounded in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It would expand compensation for family caregivers of disabled veterans — something now provided for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan — to families of veterans of all wars.

Nearly all veteran organizations support the bill.
read more here

Two Tour Iraq Veteran Murdered While Celebrating Birthday

Rodney Jermaine Nesbitt was shot and killed while out celebrating his 29th birthday
The Greenville News
Anna Lee
February 24, 2014

GREENVILLE, S.C. — A U.S. Army veteran who survived a tour of duty in Iraq was killed early Saturday morning in South Carolina while out celebrating his 29th birthday, his father said.

Rodney Jermaine Nesbitt and another person were found shot inside of a Chevrolet Tahoe in Greenville, S.C., early Saturday morning. They were shot after authorities received reports of an altercation at a business in the area.

"He had a big heart," said Kenneth Fields, Nesbitt's father. "Everyone that you talked to always said how nice he was."

Nesbitt was shot in the head and died at the scene, said Greenville County (S.C.) Coroner Parks Evans. The other person was wounded, but authorities have not released much information about that person.

The shooting is being investigated as a homicide.
read more here

Ret. Lt. General Boykin says Jesus will come back with AR-15

If he really thinks the Son of God would need a weapon, it shows how little Boykin knows about how much power He has. Plus considering Jesus didn't wipe out the Romans when He had the chance, not likely Boykin has any inside information on anything.

Former general: Forget the sword; Jesus will return with an AR-15
Stars and Stripes
By Patrick Dickson
Published: February 21, 2014

WASHINGTON — A former Army general believes that when Jesus returns, he’s gonna be packin’ heat.

Retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, now the Family Research Council’s executive vice president, says the Son of God will be armed with an AR-15 assault rifle when he returns, in a speech at the Pro-Family Legislators Conference in Dallas.

“[Jesus is] coming back as a warrior, carrying a sword,” Boykin said. “And I believe now, I’ve checked this out — I believe that sword he’ll be carryin’ when he comes back is an AR-15.”

Many in the audience laughed and some applauded, according to audio of the speech released Tuesday.

“Now I want you to think about this: Where did the 2nd Amendment come from? Where did the 2nd Amendment come from? I ask my students this; I ask men’s groups. I ask, ‘Where did the 21nd Amendment come from?’”

Boykin, in a somewhat comic voice, replied: “ ‘From the Founding Fathers! It’s in the Constitution!’

“Well, yeah, I know that. But where did the whole concept come from? It came from Jesus.”
read more here

Keep in mind this is coming from someone who used to be in charge. Enough said.

WWII Medal of Honor Hero Walter Ehlers Passed Away

Walter Ehlers dies at 92; got Medal of Honor for World War II heroism
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
By David Colker
Published: February 23, 2014

For extraordinary acts of courage during the D-Day invasion of World War II, Walter Ehlers received the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. It changed his life.

“I didn’t have a life before the medal,” Ehlers said in a 2004 Washington Post interview. A self-described “farmer boy” who not only took out enemy gun nests single-handedly during the D-Day operation, but also drew fire to himself so other soldiers could withdraw, Ehlers was invited to every presidential inauguration from Eisenhower’s on. He spoke all over the world to student, military and other groups. In Buena Park, Calif., where he lived after the war, a building was named after him and an action figure was made in his likeness.

But all the honors could not bring back his greatest loss during the war. His older brother, Roland, who was assigned to a different Army company, was killed on D-Day.

“He was the bravest man I ever knew,” Ehlers told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in 2003. “My hero. Not a day goes by I don’t think about him.”
read more here

New Defense Budget targets troops!

DoD budget seeks cuts in BAH, commissary, Tricare benefits
Army Times
By Andrew Tilghman
Staff writer
February 24, 2014

The Pentagon on Monday proposed the deepest and most far-reaching cuts to military compensation in the 40-year history of the all-volunteer force, explaining that such cuts are necessary in order to pay for more modern gear and high-tech weaponry.

Some highlights of the Defense Department’s budget proposal for fiscal 2015 include the first-ever rollback in Basic Allowance for Housing; a military pay raise that would match last year’s 1 percent hike, the lowest in the volunteer era; massive cuts to commissary subsidies; and potentially increased health care fees for both active-duty families and retirees.

Together, the proposals signal an end to a decade-plus wartime era of rising pay and benefits for troops. Even after the proposed cuts, military compensation would remain comparatively more generous than it was in the 1980s and ’90s. But the Pentagon has never before sought to pare back existing benefits in the all-volunteer era.

Moreover, personnel costs would be slashed further by significant reductions to the size of the force, including the smallest Army since the before the Second World War.
read more here

Amputee Iraq veteran snowboarding champion

Wounded veteran to snowboarding champion
WTOP.com
By Paula Wolfson
February 24, 2014

WASHINGTON -- He stands tall on his snowboard, maneuvering a championship course with speed and agility.

That snowboard has been his ticket to competitions around the world -- from Colorado to New Zealand. It has also been a driving force in his recovery from the wounds of war.

Capt. Wayne Waldon lost his right leg on the battlefield in Iraq on July 11, 2007. He was airlifted first to a military facility in Germany, and a few days later to what-was-then Walter Reed Army Hospital in D.C.

Once there, he was immediately inspired by the patients who moved around on prosthetics.

"You look at them and you look at you. You pretty quickly stop feeling sorry for yourself and have no excuse," Waldon says.

He was teamed up with Harvey Naranjo, who runs the Adaptive Sports Program at the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. It was Naranjo who urged this wounded warrior, once an avid skier, to return to the slopes.

But Waldon, now 30 and retired from the military, opted for the extreme sport of snowboarding, instead. Six months after his injury, fit with a new prosthesis, he headed to his first adaptive sports competition.
read more here

The “major” was charged with falsely claiming to be a veteran

Accused fake war veteran says he is at death’s door
HERALD SUN
PETER MICKELBUROUGH
FEBRUARY 24, 2014

Neville Donohue. Source: HeraldSun

A MEDAL-festooned accused fake Vietnam War veteran told a magistrate he is dying of cancer and so cannot appear in court to face federal charges for being a wannabe war hero.

However, checks by the Herald Sun have sparked a police investigation into “Major-General” Neville Donohue’s claim to be in The Alfred hospital dying of cancer.

The “major” was charged with falsely claiming to be a veteran, and wearing medals to which he was not entitled, after photos of him decked out like a North Korean general with four rows of military medals on his chest went viral on veterans’ forums and networks.

He was first photographed “reflecting on the Anzac and Australian spirit” in front of almost 200 people at the Mount Dandenong Anglican Parish Anzac Day service last year.
read more here

Australia searching for identity of heavy medal "veteran"

Firefighter died trying to save others in Missouri

Veteran Firefighter Dies In Walkway Collapse
KWTX.com

COLUMBIA, Mo. (February 23, 2014) Flags on all city buildings in Columbia, Mo., will be flown at half-staff for 30 days in honor of a veteran firefighter who was killed while helping evacuate students from a University of Missouri-run apartment complex after a second-story walkway collapsed.

Lt. Bruce Britt became trapped beneath rubble while responding to the collapse early Saturday at University Village Apartments, Columbia Fire Chief Chuck Witt said.
read more here

Military using unproven programs to take on mental illness

The reports on CSF failures have been all over the internet lately. The problem is, much of what is being report has been wrong. I left this comment on PBS.

It was called "Battlemind" and the drop in suicides had more to do with the reduction of forces than anything else. The Army discharge 11,000 for "misconduct" in 2013 plus had discharged many more as a way of reducing the size of the Army. All branches did the same thing so as we look at the number of suicides, we must factor in everything. CSF actually prevents them from seeking help because they blame themselves of not training right and, as they see it, being mentally weak. I warned about this in 2009 but couldn't get anyone in power to listen.

Read THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR by Kathie Costos and know what was known all along. Everything in this book on military suicides came from government and news reports. It was all available to the public, but no one told them they had the power to change what was happening.

Military using unproven programs to take on mental illness
PBS News Hour
February 23, 2014

TRANSCRIPT
HARI SREENIVASAN: It’s estimated that nearly a thousand additional Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder every week. A report out Thursday by the Institute of Medicine said that despite dozens of programs by the military to help treat the mental illnesses that veterans suffer, few of them are proving effective. For more we’re joined by Gregg Zoroya of USA Today who has been covering this story. So the Department of Defense asked for this review, what did it find?

GREGG ZOROYA: Well it really was a review that was, the request was really built on something that happened last year. The Institute of Medicine had completed a four-year review of just how prevalent the problem was and they found that the numbers of folks that were ill were really kind of getting so large that both the Pentagon and the V.A. were having trouble staying ahead of it. So the Pentagon asked for this report. They wanted to know — we’ve got prevention programs out there, why aren’t they working? And essentially what this panel, from the Institute of Medicine, found was that while some of these ideas in theory made sense when they were introduced earlier in the war, that there really hadn’t been a strong enough effort by the Pentagon and by some of the branches to try to understand whether through some real strong scientific research whether the programs worked. And they found that in fact, they hadn’t.
read more here