Female Veterans Get Rejuvenated in Nebraska

Female vets in Nebraska paint to relieve stress
ABC News Nebraska
by Rasheeda Kabba
March 24th 2017

Female military veterans in Grand Island have started a fun stress relief group called, Rejuvenate.

The group started back in January and meets every other week for stress relief activities. On Thursday, they met to do some finger painting, and they were painting more than just red, white and blue.

They say activities like this allow for some much needed "me time."

The group Rejuvenate has participated in activities like getting facials, yoga, and acupuncture therapy.

Though the events usually revolve around stress relief, Jennifer Kerkland, a Navy vet, says the group has allowed her to connect with other female vets who have served. She says it’s given her some time to herself.
read more here

Air Force Staff Sgt. Died in Jordan Loading Bomb

UPDATE

Airmen mourn 'mom of the flight line' killed in noncombat incident in Jordan

Air Force announces non-combat death of staff sergeant in Jordan
UPI
By Ed Adamczyk
March 24, 2017

March 24 (UPI) -- The Department of Defense announced the death of Air Force Staff Sgt. Alexandria Mae Gleason Morrow, who died in a non-combat role earlier this week.

Gleason-Morrow, 25, died Wednesday while performing maintenance duties in Jordan in support of combat operations, a Defense Department statement said. The incident is under investigation.

She was a resident of Dansville, N.Y., serving in the Middle East with the 366th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron of Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho. Her mother told WHEC-TV, Rochester, that she died while loading a bomb onto an airplane.
read more here

PTSD Veteran's Suicide Shows Love is Just Not Enough

Love is Just Not Enough
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 25, 2017

There is not much doubt that Benjamin Kelley loved fellow veterans. He dedicated his life toward helping them with everything he had and that is part of the problem. Wanting to help out of love is just the beginning. Knowing how to do it and being prepared for what it can do to you is vital. Not knowing can turn deadly for you and for those you seek to help.

Local benefit for veterans with PTSD goes on, despite organizer taking own life
FOX 4 News
BY DAVE D'MARKO
MARCH 24, 2017

“We may not be able help everybody but the ones we help that's 100 percent for me, I’m just sad I couldn’t help my best friend," Gunn said.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A benefit Friday night to help veterans in their fight against PTSD and depression was missing its organizer. Benjamin Kelley, 40, died by suicide March 1.

“This boot here belongs to my best friend Benjamin Kelly,” Damien Gunn said on stage at a packed No. 9 Saloon.

For the past two years Ben Kelley has taken the boot he wore while serving in the U.S. Navy and passed it around to collect money for AmVets and the Foundation for Exceptional Warriors. F.E.W. is an organization helping veterans deal with post traumatic stress disorder and depression.

“We believe the most dangerous place for a warrior right now isn’t down range in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else they might be fighting in the world. It’s at home sitting on their sofa," F.E.W. Board Member Chris Wolfenbarger said.
read more here

I wish I could say that this story is not being repeated all over the country, but wishing does not make it true. After almost 35 years, I can tell you first hand that this work comes with a price to be paid and if you are not prepared for it, it can, and all too often does, shatter your own life.

I did not get into this work for noble reasons. I did so selfishly. When I met my husband, I heard the term "shell shock" from my Dad (a Korean War Veteran) and needed to know what I was getting into before the depth of love I felt grew beyond the walking away point. I already adored him when I went to the library, pulled clinical books and a dictionary to understand the words I was reading.

That was when I learned it was called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It turned out that researchers had been studying Vietnam veterans for about a decade. My lack of knowledge on that point did not make the research less real just because I didn't know it was occurring.

After about two years of first hand experience, my own research grabbing everything I could get my hands on, I knew enough to write about it and marry it. I knew enough about PTSD and my veteran to know he was worth doing whatever I could to make his life better. I didn't think it could happen, but the more I learned about PTSD, the deeper in love I felt.

There was a time in the beginning when I thought that love would be enough to help him see what I saw in him. That reality hit me in the head like a sledgehammer. Love can make their lives less lonely but it does not help them heal. 

What is behind you is not as strong as who is beside you!

With all that comes with PTSD, you cannot fight it with just love. You have to do it with open eyes to know what you are getting into and above all else, you have to do with with the knowledge gained by dedicating your life to it with everything you've got. Working with veterans and PTSD must not be limited by what you feel like learning but must be about learning all you can.

When I read about the number being quoted by folks trying to help, I cringe. I know I slam them way too often but there are reasons for that. What you read or watch on a Facebook post may make you aware that veterans are killing themselves, but you do not know the reasons. You certainly don't learn what to do with change the outcome by accepting a headline of a report that had 59 pages of facts, figures, charts and information on it including the fact that the number of "22" came from reports from just 21 states. 

While there is little doubt that folks trying to help do it out of love, there is also little doubt if they quote that number, they do it without knowledge. They settled on what they learned from others basing their own efforts on a headline instead of becoming educated on how to change someone's life at the same time being prepared to help themselves be able to do it when their own heart is being ripped out on a daily basis.

When you are the one others turn to, you pay a price. You have to swallow your own ego and be willing to lead by example. Ask for help when you need it and know who to go to in order to fight for others. How can you expect someone to believe you when you say they should ask for help when you won't?

I used to think that God had an endless supply of matches because whenever I got burnt out, He'd ignite the fire in my soul all over again. It has happened so many times that I am sure he switched to a Bic Lighter and is flicking it all day long. 

This is vital work but it is also heartbreaking, especially reading stories like this one. It didn't have to turn out this way but if you are doing this work, you have to do it with the right training and arm yourself with everything you can learn. 

It is not glamorous. It has to be anonymous. It is driven by ego and you can't talk about what you do or who you do it with in pubic. It has to be up to them to talk about it, share it and pass it on or keep their experience private. You have to know who to send them to as much as you need to know why they need to go. 

You have to know what else to suggest when you can't talk them into going to the VA to take some of the stress out of their lives and at least help them to rediscover something to hope for so they can discover they are able to fight to help. In other words, you have to have many backup plans.

I am begging you! If you want to really help then you have to know that love is just not enough to change the story of their lives. It is not enough to stand by their side if you don't know how to help them out of the darkness or both of you will become lost instead of finding your way toward healing and defeating PTSD.

Alternative Facts Leave Veterans Killing Themselves Without Counting

It is bad enough veterans can't count on being helped to heal but when they don't matter enough to actually read the reports about them, we have reduced "Grateful Nation" down to a slogan we don't live up to.

This is what it was from 2013 to 2015

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

In the second quarter of 2016, the military services reported the following:
 57 deaths by suicide in the Active Component
 23 deaths by suicide in the Reserves
 23 deaths by suicide in the National Guard

In the third quarter of 2016, the military services reported the following:
• 82 deaths by suicide in the Active Component
• 18 deaths by suicide in the Reserves
• 27 deaths by suicide in the National Guard

Take a look at what it was in 2012 compared to 2016 

Then try to figure out when someone on Facebook raising awareness mentioned one word about this? They do a lot of posting about how they are raising awareness but the truth is far from what they say it is.

Those numbers were members of the Armed Forces and did not make it into the Veteran status. You know, the group everyone is talking about. The one where they leave out the facts. Leave out that majority of the veterans committing suicide are over the age of 50. Leave out the fact that it is the same number of released data as it was back in 1999.

My question is, if you support these groups dropping down to do some pushups, what do you think veterans getting out of it?

Answer, they are still getting out of their lives and ending up in a casket.

If you still spread the rumors, then does that make you a liar or you are just using alternative facts?

If the facts are not important enough to learn then how can you expect anyone to think that any of this really matters to you at all?

Veteran Finds Healing PTSD or “moral injuries”, injuries to one’s conscience

Veterans find solace in Israel experience through Heroes to Heroes Foundation 
The Daily Wildcat Arizona 
Rocky Baier 
March 24, 2017

In an effort to spread the word and help other veterans, two soldiers spoke to students at the Hillel Center and the Jewish Medical Student Association about their experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder, a spiritual visit to Israel and the Heroes to Heroes Foundation on March 21.

Heroes to Heroes is a non-profit organization that strives to provide support for veterans suffering from PTSD or “moral injuries”, injuries to one’s conscience. In order to do this, they send veterans of any religion to Israel to visit holy sites for spiritual therapy, and to meet both American and Israeli veterans from the Israeli Defense Force.

Sergio Lopez, one of the veterans who spoke, served as a U.S. Army staff sergeant with the 104 Airborne division from 2003-2010 in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was injured by an improvised explosive device that exploded underneath the vehicle in which he was riding. From his traumatic experiences during deployment and his injury, he developed PTSD.

According to evidence collected by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, traumatic experiences can lead to diminished faith in religious individuals.

read more here

If Veterans Committing Suicide Really Matter, Then Why Don't the Facts?

What good does it do to act as if something matters, then prove it doesn't matter enough to learn about it before opening your mouth? It is one thing to make a mistake. It is another to portray yourself as being on a mission to create some kind of change, when you didn't even show you care enough to read the rest of the report you are quoting.

An Op Ed on Miami Herald had my head exploding this morning. "Respect America’s volunteer military" by Delbert Spurlock is actually part of the problem.

"No Americans have sacrificed more on the altar of our current undeclared wars than veterans and their families. Their suicide rate is now 20 a day, haunting testimony to their betrayal by our Congress and citizens who send them to war without a declaration that joins all Americans in the commitment to sacrifice for its success." Delbert Spurlock

He should know better and that is the other part of the problem.

GENERAL COUNSEL OF THE U.S. ARMY, FROM 1981-82; ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY, MANPOWER AND RESERVE AFFAIRS FROM 1983-88; AND U.S. DEPUTY SECRETARY OF LABOR FROM 1991-93.

Given the fact that he has the credentials to be trusted, how many trust what he said about OEF and OIF veterans? How many trusted his numbers? Probably almost everyone who read it. Then even more receiving the information passed on via Social Media. So, how many do you think believe that is all there is to know?

Nothing really knew when folks seem fine with pushups, taking walks and pulling other stunts to raise awareness about what really didn't matter to them after all.

Here is the truth that he should have passed on.

Department Veterans Affairs Suicide Report 2012, the one with the quoted "22 a day"

To date, data from twenty-one (21) states have been cleaned and entered into a single integrated file...on page 12

Further, this report contains information from the first 21 states to contribute data for this project and does not include some states, such as California and Texas, with larger Veteran populations. Information from these states has been received and will be included in future reports... on page 15

By page 18 you find this,

The numbers have not changed after over a decade of "awareness" being pushed. Are you waking up yet? Are you angry yet? Good because your friends passing on all the bullshit are part of the problem as well.

These charts are from page 20.

And on page 22, there is this

Specifically, more than 69% of all Veteran suicides were among those aged 50 years and older...

Most states have veterans committing suicide double the civilian rate. Here in Florida, it is triple. California does not track them. Illinois does not track them. So where did these numbers really come from and oh, by the way, it looks like Spurlock forgot about current military at an average of one per day. Their numbers went up too.

By 2016, this story did not change

THE REPORT CONCLUDES: Approximately 65 percent of all Veterans who died from suicide in 2014 were 50 years of age or older. Veterans accounted for 18 percent of all deaths from suicide among U.S. adults. This is a decrease from 22 percent in 2010. Since 2001, U.S. adult civilian suicides increased 23 percent, while Veteran suicides increased 32 percent in the same time period. After controlling for age and gender, this makes the risk of suicide 21 percent greater for Veterans. Since 2001, the rate of suicide among U.S. Veterans who use VA services increased by 8.8 percent, while the rate of suicide among Veterans who do not use VA services increased by 38.6 percent. In the same time period, the rate of suicide among male Veterans who use VA services increased 11 percent, while the rate of suicide increased 35 percent among male Veterans who do not use VA services. In the same time period, the rate of suicide among female Veterans who use VA services increased 4.6 percent while the rate of suicide increased 98 percent among female Veterans who do not use VA services.

Are you disgusted yet? Then get busy and start telling the truth. Lord knows nothing will change until we actually prove that the topic of veterans surviving combat but unable to survive in their "golden years" matters enough TO ACTUALLY READ THE REPORT!!!!

Arkansas Suicide Prevention Hotline Passes House

Bill Instating Arkansas Suicide Prevention Hotline Passes House
Arkansas Matters
By: Jessi Turnure
Posted: Mar 21, 2017

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Right now... if you call the National Suicide Prevention hotline, you have no chance of speaking with someone in Arkansas.

We're one of two states without an in-state call center. A bill to change that passed in the House Tuesday afternoon.

The legislation calls on the Health Department to run a 24-hour call center that answers Arkansans' calls to the national hotline.

The Veteran's Coalition and Veteran's Mental Health Council brought the bill to Representative Bob Johnson, (D)-Jacksonville.

He says he's worked out the funding issues opponents have had concerns about.

The call center would cost nearly 700,000 dollars a year to run and evaluate.

Rep. Johnson says the Health Department has money to start program, and once it's up and running, it'll qualify for federal dollars.
read more here

Being Married to PTSD Came with Package Deal--Deal With It and Learn

This was a letter to 

Ms. Vicki: Is PTSD a Forgotten Problem?

"I am married to an Air Force officer who has been active for 15 years. He was diagnosed with PTSD after his last deployment in 2010. I am very disappointed because people don't talk about PTSD anymore. I feel that it's a forgotten illness because there is a draw down of forces and the wars are over....I don't think any of the professionals understand that I am suffering, too. What about the wives or other spouses? What can I do to try and make my marriage last and stand the test of time?"

Honestly, all I can think about is that with all the instant access to what this generation has, how can they know so little? After all, we learned, found support and when we couldn't we created the support for others. We did it without the internet. Shocking for the younger generation, I know, but life did happen before we even had cellphones.

I am sure you remember those days. Having to find a payphone when you were going to be late or needed directions. When you took long rides and actually listened to the radio or a cassette tape, instead of hearing the chimes of a new update about what someone posted on Facebook or Tweet from a friend...or the President. The times when we actually sat and talked over coffee instead of taking selfies.

Sometimes I wonder if the younger spouses think we were always this old! I met my husband when I was just 23! Good Lord! I am old! But it has been one hell of an experience being married this long. Some of it sucked. Most of it, after we left the doorway of hell, has left me wanting to see others make it this long. It was so worth the effort!

Maybe they are used to it...everything coming easy. After all, if they don't find the answers they need in their circle of linkers to their accounts, it must not exist! God forbid they do something like a Google search when we actually had to get into our cars and drive to the library. I don't know about you, but being an Army brat, I had to know what I was getting into. I read clinical books with a dictionary to understand what Vietnam did to my then boyfriend. All they have to do is sit with their laptops in their p-js and get all the answers they need.

So why don't they? Why haven't they discovered that none of this is easy and that is why their lives are a lot harder than they need to be?

Because it is hard work and far from something that can be reduced down to 140 characters. If they really want to save their marriages, or save the lives of their husbands, they need to actually be willing to fight for them.

One of the groups I belong to started just as long ago working on PTSD and offering support in tiny groups for veterans and families. Check out Point Man International Ministries and see what I mean. If you want an eyeopener on what was going on back before the flood (Yes, Noah) then discover what we knew back in the 80's when the best researchers started out and we found our own way our of the abyss.

84 Year old Veteran Evicted--Community Stepped Up!

Groups step in to help 84-year-old Rock Hill veteran who faced evictions
Herald
Andrews Dys
March 20, 2017

The veteran told police money was missing from his bank accounts, a bank card had been stolen, and money from benefits that he had for rent and utilities was missing.
“The police helped him and he may have been swindled out of his money,” Guest said. “There were some choice words used for someone ... who would take an elderly veteran’s money. You can’t print those words in the newspaper.”

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andrew-dys/article139668028.html#storylink=cpy

ROCK HILL
Veterans services and veterans advocacy groups worked Monday to get help for an 84-year-old veteran who had faced eviction and homelessness.

The Rock Hill chapter of Rolling Thunder, a veterans advocacy group, had $500 in gift cards and cash for the veteran, and was organizing more to help the man long-term.

The veteran faced homelessness last week in sub freezing temperatures, had it not been for some fast-acting law enforcement officers.

And as people mobilized to help him, some of the veteran’s belongings were thrown in a trash container and hauled away Monday from the house where he lived on Eden Terrace, across the street from Winthrop Coliseum. Court records show the eviction was legal, even if one of the people affected was “too frail to be put out into the cold,” as police put it.

“I drove by the house last week and saw all the stuff thrown in a heap outside and like anybody else, I didn’t know what happened until I read it in The Herald,” said Al Guest, president of Rock Hill’s Rolling Thunder chapter and a Vietnam War combat veteran. “Then when I read that he was a veteran and evicted, and could have frozen outside, I was upset.”

The story published in The Herald spread through social media and has been shared and commented on hundreds of times.
read more here

US Soldier Killed in Germany Car Crash

Soldier killed in car accident when driver raced MP
STARS AND STRIPES
By MARTIN EGNASH
Published: March 20, 2017

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — Spc. Tyler Vaughan, a 22-year-old soldier stationed in Vilseck, Germany, was killed Saturday in a car accident near the Grafenwoehr Training Area, the military said.

A 22-year-old soldier stationed in Vilseck, Germany, was killed Saturday, March 18, 2017, in a car accident near the Grafenwoehr Training Area. Two other soldiers were seriously injured and the driver of the car, who tested positive for alcohol, suffered minor injuries. COURTESY OF THE FREIHUNG FIRE DEPARTMENT

Vaughan, who served with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment as a fire team leader, was a passenger in a vehicle that veered off the road and rolled into a tree near the Grafenwoehr main gate, German media reported. Two other soldiers, 26 and 27 years old, were seriously injured.
read more here

Vietnam Veteran's Widow Lost Husband to Suicide and May Lose Home

Boulder Creek widow of U.S. veteran suicide struggles to carry on
Santa Cruz Sentinel
By Ryan Masters,
POSTED: 03/17/17

Hutchinson detailed the horrors of the experience in a written account submitted to the VA before his death. He described the sights and sounds, the constant fear — how it felt to carry armloads of body parts; to x-ray badly-wounded men; to treat crippled and maimed Vietnamese children; to helplessly sit through mortar attacks; to watch men die.

Bernetta Hutchinson lost her U.S. veteran husband when he killed himself in 2014. Now she may also lose their Boulder Creek-area home. (Dan Coyro -- Santa Cruz Sentinel) Bernetta Hutchinson lost her U.S. veteran husband when he killed himself in 2014. Now she may also lose their Boulder Creek-area home. (Dan Coyro -- Santa Cruz Sentinel) 

BOULDER CREEK  On the morning of Oct. 24, 2014, Bernetta Hutchinson woke up in the Forest Springs neighborhood home she shared with her husband Terry. Wandering sleepily out to the living room, she found a note on the table. It began, “Bernetta, I am sorry. Call the VA.”

As she finished the short note, she went to their grown daughter’s bedroom, fell to her knees and prayed she was misinterpreting the suicide note; that somehow her husband was still alive.

And then, Hutchinson said, God guided her out the door and 50 yards into the redwood forest behind their home where she found her husband of 29 years, 7 months seated against a tree with his head bowed.

The 67-year-old Vietnam Veteran had shot and killed himself with a Glock handgun, becoming another casualty of the United States’ ongoing inability to heal its warriors after they return from the battlefield.

Kathie Dicesare, who runs the Wounded Times web blog and has been working on PTSD since 1982, said the VA reported 20 veteran suicides a day in 1999 — the exact same number of veteran suicides a day in 2016.

“In the 2000 Census, there were 26.4 million veterans; in 2014, there were 21,369,602. That’s the same number of reported suicides despite 5 million less veterans,” said Dicesare.
read more here

(Yes, that is me quoted.)

"On the Outside I was Perfectly Fine" Veteran Battles PTSD

Former Army captain Lisa Keevash on mental struggle: On the outside I was perfectly fine
The Express UK
By DANNY BUCKLAND
PUBLISHED: Sun, Mar 19, 2017

“I didn’t know who I was. I started to get dark moods and would become really anxious and jealous. I didn’t want to go out and was inflexible. I became argumentative and snappy and people were treading on eggshells around me. My boyfriend at the time bore the brunt of it."

EX-Army captain Lisa Keevash opens up about her mental battle scars.

After a decorated military career, former Army captain Lisa Keevash slipped easily into corporate life with a high-powered job and enviable lifestyle. She was successful and she was fit, but deep inside she was in dark turmoil.

The suppressed feelings from dealing with battlefield casualties and seeing a close officer friend die after an improvised explosive device (IED) blast were twisting her soul and threatening to wreck her life.

If we can make it normal to talk about our struggles then we can stop a lot of these problems getting to a point where they do real damage Lisa Keevash

"On the outside, I was perfectly fine. I had a great job, a new relationship. I was fit, healthy and everyone thought I had made it,” says Lisa, 34, from Edinburgh. “But I was existing in a haze – there in body but not mind."

"I was not enjoying anything, I lost confidence and had anxiety about everything in my life. I was really lost."

“I became snappy, argumentative and generally not a nice person to be around at times. It got very dark.”
read more here

Do you really want your life defined by suicide?

Would You Save the Life of Someone Like You?
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 19, 2017

Do you really want your life defined by suicide? The lives you saved, the risks you took for the lives of others will become secondary to the fact you gave up on your own life.

You've thought of the reasons you have to end it all. You thought about how you'd do it. There is a question you seem to have forgotten to get the answer to. Would you save the life of someone like you? Isn't that the next question you should ask? 

How much do you value life? After all, you dedicated your life to putting others first. You wouldn't be suffering right now if you did not do your job in combat, as a police officer, as a firefighter or other first responder profession. Saving lives was your job. Saving your own life is your job too. Dragging around the tombstone, waiting to fill in the dash between the date you were born and the date you chose death is deciding life really doesn't matter that much after all.

If no one told you that you choosing to leave behind people who care about you instead of fighting to heal is a bad idea, here are two stories that should get you to think twice about how you want your life defined.


Increasing suicide rates among first responders spark concern
TribLive
WES VENTEICHER
Sunday, March 19, 2017

"My son is a classic case of 'I'm never going to tell anybody; if I tell them, they'll think I'm weak.' "

Paramedic George Redner III started to grow angry and distant after he failed to revive a 2-year-old who had drowned.

But not even his parents saw how deeply his work affected him until he took his life seven years later.

"My son was a classic case of 'I'm never going to tell anybody; if I tell them, they'll think I'm weak,'" said Redner's mother, Jacqui Redner, 48, of Levittown, outside Philadelphia.

Like many first responders dedicated to saving lives, Redner, who was 27, never talked about his struggles, she said.

Her son, who went by "Georgie," threw himself in front of an Amtrak Acela train the morning of Aug. 1, 2015, at a station near the family's home.

Suicides among first responders, often driven by emotional strain in a culture that long has discouraged showing weakness, are too common, according to organizations that track the deaths.

First-responder suicides are sometimes compared to those among military veterans, many of whom have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Military veterans deployed from 2001 to 2007 had a 41 percent higher suicide risk than the general population, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
read more here

Donald Wendt came home as a double duty hero. He was a two tour combat veteran and he was a firefighter. It seems he was born to save lives, that is, other than his own because he was brainwashed into thinking asking for help meant he was weak.

Think about that for a second. Weak if he needed help? How could anyone get that notion into their heads after all the times he faced dying because someone else needed his help?


Bradenton firefighter shot and killed by police, was also a veteran

Wendt joined the Bradenton Fire Department in December 2003 after volunteering with Cedar Hammock-Southern Manatee while working at Ten-8 Fire Equipment.

A year later, he spent 13 months in Iraq with the United States Army Reserve. Wendt received a Bronze Star Medal for his efforts.

On May 13, 2005, as a recovery section sergeant with HHC Platoon, 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor and Task Force Liberty, Wendt “went to the aid of a fellow soldier who was injured and trapped under a burning vehicle during a Vehicle Born Improvised Explosives Device attack,” according to the U.S. War Office. He used tow chains to move the burning vehicle away from the injured soldier.

“It seems like every day you read about this, but when it hits home, it's different,” Gallo said.

I am posting this with an extremely heavy heart. This morning I woke up to news of this from his Mom. My prayers for my friend and his entire family as well as the firefighters and police officers involved with this tragedy.

He was a firefighter and volunteered to serve this country in combat.

When will we ever get to the point where being back home is less dangerous than combat for those we send?

His life was remembered in 2014. 

The military makes it harder for them to seek help especially when a General came out and said, Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations.

And then went on to say it had to do with not having a supportive family. I saw his supportive family yesterday and they included about 100 firefighters. I heard how much intestinal fortitude he had and he showed it in Bradenton as well as Iraq.

PTSD comes from the life you live and the risks you took to save others.

How about you choose to live long enough to prove all the idiots wrong about PTSD and why you have it? How about you face the fact that tomorrow is defined by you and you can fight for others to extend the dash on their own tombstones? Put down the tombstone. You got healing to do.

Australian Veteran's Life Saved After 5th Suicide Attempt by Daughter

'They train you to go to war, not come home'
Daily Mail
By Anneta Konstantinides For Daily Mail Australia
PUBLISHED:18 March 2017

Doctors missed mother-of-four army veteran's post traumatic stress for a decade despite FIVE suicide attempts... and how her daughter saved her life

Andrea Josephs, 43, enlisted in 1991 and served during East Timorese Crisis
Was medically discharged in 2004 following a sexual assault and court hearing
Took doctors 10 years to diagnose PTSD; mistook for postnatal depression
Andrea's final suicide attempt came in 2015 as she struggled with symptoms
Her daughter then made a tribute video to show she was proud of mum's service
Inspired idea behind Matilda Poppy, which will raise awareness for veterans

Andrea (pictured centre with her four daughters) said some of her PTSD symptoms were derived from the fear that she could not protect her girls

It was after her fifth suicide attempt that Andrea Josephs decided to choose life.

The Australian Army veteran had been battling PTSD, a diagnosis doctors failed to make for 10 years, when a film made by her daughter proved to be a turning point.

It was a tribute video that honoured not only the mother-of-four, but the soldiers, sailors and airmen and women who had put their life on the line for Australia.

The gesture was pivotal for Andrea, who had felt like she lost her identity ever since she was medically discharged from service in 2004.
read more here

Vietnam Veteran Faces End of Lifeline With Meals on Wheels Cut

Veteran Fears for Future of 'Meals on Wheels' Program
NBC 4 News
By Angie Crouch and Kate Guarino
March 16, 2017

For now, Nakashima said he’ll enjoy what he can. On the menu for his latest meal: pork, peas, sweet potato and good conversation with Clark, a fellow veteran.

Bruce Nakashima looks forward to visits from Chris Clark. Clark brings a hot meal and the paper. The gentlemen chat about sports.

"That’s my only contact with people outside of TV or newspaper or seeing the landlord," Nakashima said.

The 73-year-old Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient lives alone with his cat in Santa Monica and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He is one of 400 West Los Angeles residents who rely on Meals on Wheels as their main source of food. But the future of the program is uncertain.

President Donald Trump's proposed budget, released Wednesday, eliminates all federal funds — about three billion dollars — for the Community Development Block Grant Program. Government officials say the program has not demonstrated results. The elimination of the program is part of a 13 percent decrease in funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
read more here

Homeless Veteran Rescued Swimmer in Arizona

Homeless veteran rescues distressed swimmer from Phoenix canal
The Republic
April Morganroth
March 17, 2017

A man who identified himself as a homeless veteran jumped into a canal to rescue a swimmer in distress Friday morning in Phoenix.

(Photo: April Morganroth/The Republic)

"I don't think any of us really thought about the dangers of helping him," said Richard McNeil, 41. "Where I came from, you just helped people — doesn't make a difference if I'm homeless or not, I still help people when I can."

McNeil said as he waited for a bus on 16th Street near Indian School Road at about 8 a.m. he heard splashing and a man crying for help.
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Marine vet barred from restaurant because of neck tattoo?

Marine vet barred from restaurant because of neck tattoo
East Valley Tribune
By Jim Walsh, Tribune Staff Writer
21 hrs ago

Andrus served two tours of duty, a total of 14 months, in Iraq during 2004 and 2005. He said he has a 30 percent disability from the Veteran’s Administration for post-traumatic stress syndrome.

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq said he was humiliated Wednesday night when he was denied admittance into Gilbert’s new Dierks Bentley Whiskey Row restaurant because of his neck tattoo.

Brandon Andrus, the Iraq veteran, said he was not allowed to have a drink with family members because he has the number “22” tattooed on his neck as a suicide awareness statement. Military organizations say an average of 22 veterans commit suicide each day across the nation.

“I have been to a lot of different places and never once had an issue with anyone,” Andrus said. “They wouldn’t speak man to man. It was, ‘Sorry, sir, it’s a policy.’ They just thought I was going to cause trouble.”
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Vietnam Blue Water Veterans Fight for Justice

Target 8: Navy Vietnam veterans in Port Richey fight for benefits taken away
WFLA 8 News
Steve Andrews
March 17, 2017

“These veterans were promised that they would be cared for.” Susie Belanger

PORT RICHEY, Fla. (WFLA) – More than 231 members of Congress are backing efforts to reinstate benefits that the V.A. stripped from sailors who served in the waters off Vietnam.

With the stroke of a V.A. pen, Agent Orange presumptive disease benefits that Congress and President George W. Bush granted to those veterans vanished.

Susie Belanger, Special Projects Director for the Blue Water Navy Association, isn’t having that.

“Why are you discriminating against this whole class of veterans?” she asks.

From a motor coach in Port Richey, she is working Congress.

Those 231 members of the House of Representatives are now co-sponsoring a bill, HR-299, to restore the benefits.

According to Belanger, Vietnam veterans are running out of time. They’re not in their 20s and 30s anymore. She thinks it’s time America honors its commitment to them.
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Vietnam Veteran Sidney Randall Skeeter Laid to Rest With Honor

Vietnam veteran with no immediate family honored by fellow servicemen 
WJLA ABC 7 News 
by Elizabeth Tyree and Chris Hoffman 
Friday, March 17th 2017

Skeeter was born in 1949 in Nelson County and served in the Vietnam War where he received several awards including a Purple Heart.

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) -- A Vietnam veteran was honored one last time in Lynchburg on Friday. When Tharp Funeral Home learned he had no immediate family, they worked with extended family and fellow veterans to help pay tribute to him. Sidney Randall Skeeter died Saturday.

"That means he was a real honorable patriot, and he deserves all the honor that we can give him," said Gary Witt, a local veteran. "We need to respect him and we need to give him the honor that he deserves, I feel proud that we are able to be here just to show respect to him [Friday]." read more here

OMG! Maj. General Pittard Credited for Suicide Prevention!

I do believe I have gone crazy or I am sleep reading. This cannot be true! A fabulous article on a General actually trying to do something about suicidal soldiers. All hopes dashed when I discovered the article was about Maj. General Dana Pittard! 

The General Who Went to War On Suicide
A commander with a history of depression created a unique way to keep his soldiers from killing themselves. The Army had other ideas.
POLITICO
By BEN HATTEM
March 17, 2017

On the evening of July 19, 2010, Major General Dana Pittard, the new commander of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, got a call from the base’s 24-hour duty officer. A SWAT team had been sent to the house of a young sergeant named Robert Nichols. Nichols was inside with a gun, threatening to kill himself.

Pittard arrived at the soldier’s home just in time to see the soldier step out of the house, put the gun to his chest and fire. Neighbors and police crowded the street, but Pittard was the only officer from the Army base at the scene. He went home, where his boxes were still packed from his move 10 days before, feeling disturbed and helpless.

Nichols was the first of Pittard’s soldiers who died under his command at Fort Bliss. Others followed. A soldier from Fort Bliss’ 11th Air Defense Artillery brigade, which had recently returned from a tour in the Middle East, committed suicide. Another from the same brigade soon overdosed on prescription drugs.

The rash of deaths caught Pittard off guard. He knew that suicide was a growing concern for the military, which had spent millions of dollars to tackle the crisis and had issued dozens of reports—including a 350-page study that called suicides and deaths linked to high-risk behavior an “Army-wide problem.” But going in Pittard hadn’t planned to focus on the issue. That changed quickly. With suicides mounting at his base—a sprawling complex of 30,000 personnel, larger than Rhode Island—he realized he wanted to make stopping what he saw as preventable deaths a top priority.

Yep that guy!
Two years after that "first" suicide he was caught writing this while working out in the gym.

A General's Blog Post Undermines Army Suicide-Prevention Efforts

The Atlantic 

YOCHI J. DREAZEN

MAY 22, 2012

Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard commands Fort Bliss, one the nation's largest Army bases, so his blunt comments about suicide has raised eyebrows throughout the military.

"I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act," he wrote on his official blog recently. "I am personally fed up with soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess. Be an adult, act like an adult, and deal with your real-life problems like the rest of us."

The posting was subsequently scrubbed from the Fort Bliss website, but the comments are adding new fuel to a contentious debate about whether the record numbers of troops who are taking their own lives are acting out of weakness and selfishness or because of legitimate cases of depression and other psychological traumas.

"Soldiers who are thinking about suicide can't do what the general says: They can't suck it up, they can't let it go, they can't just move on," said Barbara Van Dahlen, the founder of Give an Hour, an organization that matches troops with civilian mental-health providers. "They're not acting out of selfishness; they're acting because they believe they've become a burden to their loved ones and can only relieve that burden by taking their own lives."

read more here

I guess Politico didn't bother doing much of a Google search on him because this was on the second page of the search. 

Then again they could have searched Combat PTSD Wounded Times for even more reports like these.

New Records Show Injured Soldiers Describe Mistreatment Nationwide From Commanders at Army Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) North Carolina’s Fort Bragg records the most complaints, Texas not far behindNBCBy Scott FriedmanApr 7, 2015
New Army records uncovered by NBC 5 Investigates show injured soldiers have filed more than 1,100 complaints about mistreatment, abuse and lack of care from their commanders at more than two dozen Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) nationwide, many of those in Texas.
Those are just complaints made over five years to the U.S. Army ombudsman program, one of many places soldiers can complain.
Last fall, NBC 5 Investigates and The Dallas Morning News first revealed hundreds of complaints from ill and injured active duty soldiers in Texas.
Those Texas soldiers said WTU commanders harassed, belittled them and ordered them to do things that made their conditions worse at three Army posts in Texas: Fort Hood, Fort Bliss and Fort Sam Houston.

Major General Dana Pittard leaving after 3 officers committed suicide

Darren Hunt of KCIA News reported on Monday, All three suicides at Fort Bliss this year were officers

"The Pentagon says nearly 350 U.S. Military service members committed suicide last year.

Among those were five Army soldiers at Fort Bliss.

This year, three more suicides, all with something in common -- they were non-commissioned officers.

Sunday night on ABC-7 Xtra, Fort Bliss' outgoing commanding general confirmed the latest suicide happened just last week.

Anthony Fusco last Monday at his Northeast El Paso home -- a day after buying a gun at the PX -- has Pittard talking about refocusing the program.

But if the reporter cannot pay attention all along, the least effort that can be made is to actually get informed about what has been going on. After the fantastic reporting done by the Dallas Morning News series "Injured Soldiers Broken Promises" of the real facts of what our soldiers were going through after asking for help, it should have been important enough to pay attention to.