What is a Veteran?

You’ve seen the bumper stickers and worn the T-shirts. “I’m a Proud Veteran”. But you’ve also seen the cardboard signs held in the hands of a vagrant, “Homeless Vet, Please Help.” Some camps argue that “true” veterans are only those servicemen who fought in “real wars”, or “real wars and declared conflicts”, or are anyone who has served in the military.

So, what is a veteran?

Quite simply, veteran comes from the Latin word vetus which means old. O L D

I’m sure something was lost in translation, because the word veteran lends itself to venerable, too. Wise, specialized, tested and proved ready.

In the military world, veteran refers to someone who is or has served in the armed forces of any country.

Veterans are usually respected. Most countries have a day set aside to honor veterans (except Germany – Nazi veterans have no special Veterans Day). For decades after WWII, a wounded French veteran would be given a seat on the public transportation.

Veterans are also people who have had to put up with discrimination, abuse, and ridicule for their beliefs.

Did you know that Veterans helped shape the United States current history?

After WWI, unemployed vets became very important in the protest movement during the Great Depression. They belonged to a brotherhood which was nationwide and overlapped all political, economic and social boundaries. Veterans marched on Washington DC to get the bonus Congress had promised them. This “march” was the first of many to follow.

After WWII, veteran groups (specifically the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars ) pressed Congress and got the GI Bill enacted. This GI Bill, which made provisions for free or subsidized education and health care for veterans, was the lead cause of economic change and the birth of the middle class in the US. Newly educated soldiers were better equipped to find higher salaried jobs and therefore buy houses and spend money to a higher degree than seen before.

Veterans have also been instrumental in improving the rights of under-represented populations. The military was desegregated by President Harry S. Truman. Black veterans who balked under the inequalities they were expected to bear as they returned to civilian life became strong leaders and activists in the Civil Rights Movement of the ensuing decades. Women also tasted the sweetness of equality in the military and added their voices to the throng.

Who are the Veterans of the US? Movers, shakers, presidents, teachers, writers, dreamers, all ethnicities and any gender. They are also the homeless, the ill, the disposed, and the unemployed. No matter what their age, they are the old. They have seen things which aged them spiritually. Some veterans turned this experience into wisdom, and some into despair.

But the bottom line is that a veteran is the reason our country is the one people flock to, the one people escape to, the one people plead for sanctuary and asylum in.

We would not be America without them.

Medal of Honor

The Medal of Honor is awarded for Conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against any enemy of the United States; while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

Most often, a service member is nominated through his or her chain of command. However, he or she may also be nominated by a member of Congress and approved by a special act of Congress. Either way a service member is nominated, the Medal of Honor is presented by the President on behalf of the Congress.


History

July 12, 1862
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to cause two thousand "medals of honor" to be prepared with suitable emblematic devices, and to direct that the same be presented, in the name of the Congress, to such non--commissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other soldier-like qualities, during the present insurrection (For those of you that didn’t catch the date above, this was during the Civil War).


To date:
Total Recipients: 3,448
Living Recipients: 87
Double Recipients: 19

By branch of service
Army 2401
Navy 747
Marines 297
Air Force 18
Coast Guard 1

Because it is given specifically for Conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life, the Medal of Honor is often awarded after death. More than half of those awarded since 1941, and all but one out of ten of them awarded since the end of Viet Nam (a total of 624 in all) have been awarded posthumously. Staff Sgt. Salvatore “Sal” Guinta will receive the Medal of Honor for his actions during a firefight Oct. 25, 2007 in Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. (This was announced by the White House on September 10, 2010, but his presentation ceremony has not yet been set.)

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (see the article below on the Mary E. Walker House for homeless veteran women) was awarded the Medal of Honor for her work as a surgeon during the Civil War. However, because hers (along with others) were not considered combat related, the medal was rescinded in 1917. Thanks to one of our most incredible presidents – Jimmy Carter, her award was restored in 1977. She remains the only woman to have received the Medal of Honor to date.

One must serve in the US armed forces to be awarded the Medal of Honor, but one does not have to be an American citizen. Sixty-one Canadians (only one – Peter C. Lemon – during the Vietnam War, and only four since 1900) have been awarded the medal. The British Unknown Warrior was awarded the Medal of Honor on October 17, 1921 by General Pershing, and then the Victoria Cross (highest British award equivalent to the American Medal of Honor) was awarded to the US Unknown Soldier on Nov. 11, 1921

Sometimes is takes years for the award to be presented. Master Sergeant Woodrow W. Keeble (who died in 1982) was presented with the medal posthumously in March 3, 2008 by President Bush. Keeble was the first member of the Sioux tribe to be awarded the medal.


The Medal of Honor has gone through several physical metamorphoses. Initially, the Medal of Honor for the Navy was an inverted five-point star. Each point has a cluster of laurel leaves (representing victory) and oaks (representing strength) Thirty four stars circled this insignia (the number of stars on the US flag at that time – 1862 – including the 11 Confederate states). On the right, side was Minerva, the Roman Goddess of War and Wisdom. The owl on her helmet represented wisdom and the bundle of rods and the axe in her left hand represented authority. The shield in her right hand stood for the Union. Opposite Minerva is Discord – represented by a man holding snakes in his hands.

The neck ribbon (one of the only neck ribbons awarded in the US) was originally blue on top with thirteen red and white vertical stripes. The color white represents purity and innocence; red represents hardiness, valor and blood; blue signifies vigilance, perseverance and justice. The stripes also represent the rays of the sun. The 13 represents the original 13 colonies.

The Army version added an Eagle (representing the US) perched on cannon, grasping swords in its talons.

The Gillespie version of 1904 replaced Minerva with a simpler Goddess of War and replaced the ribbon with a light blue background with 13 white stars. This remains the contemporary ribbon’s design used today.

The Tiffany version of 1919 proved unpopular and did not last beyond 1942. It replaced the inverted star with an eight-pointed cross (representing the eight virtues of knighthood).

In 1965, Minerva was ousted in place of the head of the Statue of Liberty, with a crown of stars instead of the helmet.

America takes her heroes seriously. Any misuse, unauthorized manufacturing or wearing of the Medal of Honor is against the law. Breaking this law is punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and up to one year of imprisonment. It is illegal to produce, wear, or distribute the Medal of Honor without proper authority of the Department of Defense.

Problems

From WWII until 1993, no Black soldiers had received a Medal of Honor. The Army investigated the possibility of overlooking potential candidates for possible racially-discriminatory reasons and rectified this error by awarding seven African American WWII vets with the Medal of Honor in place of their Distinguished Service Cross awards. A similar study was conducted for Asian Americans and twenty-one Medals of Honor were awarded in 2000 (twenty of them to members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team).(See the article below about this incredible 442nd Battalion -- Go For Broke)

Special Privileges for Medal of Honor Recipients include a special pension of $1027 per month above and beyond any military pensions or other benefits he/she might receive plus a 10% raise in retirement pay. The recipient’s name is entered on the Medal of Honor Roll. The recipient is entitled to a supplemental uniform allowance. Under provisions of DoD Regulation 4515.13-R, recipients are entitled to special air transportation privileges. They can be buried or inurned at Arlington National Cemetery. Special ID cards, commissary and exchange privileges are provided for the recipient and their eligible dependents. The dependents may be admitted to US Military Academies without having to be nominated.

How to contact/honor recipients

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society has several ideas on their website of ways to educate our younger generations about these heroes. They also encourage citizens to contact them and through them, contact the Medal of Honor recipients who are still alive or honor the graves of those passed. There is also a scholarship available to which students may apply and citizens may contribute funds.

Congressional Medal of Honor Society
40 Patriots Point Rd.
Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
Phone: 843.884.8862
Fax: 843.884.1471
Or Victoria Kueck at MEDALHQ @ EARTHLINK (DOT) NET

As Veterans Day has just passed (or, depending on when you read this article – Memorial Day), you might consider sending a card of thanks to those Medal of Honor recipients still living and placing flowers on the graves of those who have gravesites near you.

Review - Charlie Company

Overview copied directly from the book’s flap:
There were no homecoming parades for the million men and women who served in combat at the longest war America has ever fought, the only war it has ever lost. There were no brass bands or crowd cheering at the dock or celebratory speeches floating across the village greens. The veterans of the failed United States mission in Vietnam returned instead to a kind of embarrassed silence, as if, one of them thought, everybody was ashamed of us. They were obliged to bear an inordinate share of the blame for having fought at all and for not having won. Some paid a terrible further cost in stunted careers, shattered marriages and disfigured lives. Most have endured with the same stubborn will to survive they brought to the least popular war in our history – a war that has never really ended for them or for their countrymen.
This is a book about sixty-five of those nearly forgotten men who soldiered in the late 1960s in a gook-hunting, dirt-eating, dog-soldiering combat infantry unit called Charlie Company. They were boys then, nineteen or twenty years old on the average. The army had snatched them up out of towns named Ottumwa and Puxico and San Prairie, suited them up as soldiers and sent them off to a place they could not locate on a globe to fight a war they could not understand. They served a year apiece there, those who survived, and then came back to fight a second war, this one waged at home and in the mind. They waged it alone for the most part, their stories and their scar tissue unknown even to their wives and parents. It was, one of them thought, as if they were the bearers of some unspeakable disease. Until a team of Newsweek correspondents sought them out between the late summer of 1981 and the spring of 1982, some of them had never been asked what they had experienced in the war, or back home in what the grunts in the bunkers of ‘Nam thought of wistfully as The World.

Their story is not military history in any formal sense; it is not the record of great battles won or lost. Vietnam was not that sort of war, and Charlie Company’s piece of it was fought over bloodied patches of ground that nobody really wanted anyway. Neither is this book a moral commentary on the war, or an analysis of its geopolitical origins and consequences, or an account of the travail of the Vietnamese people, or an attempt to assess the relative virtue and valor of those Americans who served as against those who chose not to. It is instead the chess game viewed – or, more accurately, remembered – by the pawns. It is a collective memoir of the war and the homecoming, filtered through layers of time and pain, anger and guilt, bitterness and forgetfulness.

Praise
Like the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project, Charlie Company is a blend of voices and experiences about the war which shaped, or mutated, my generation. As the child of a man who served two terms in Vietnam, I still remember the phone calls claiming that my dad was a baby killer. I still remember the police who came to help when we were threatened by local teenagers who protested the war and we were the closest link to the war they could find. I will always bless the postal worker who discovered a letter from my dad after he'd been MIA for months and brought it to my mother as soon as he found it. I still remember seeing my father dressed in civies step off a plane; he had been warned to change out of his military uniform before he landed in Florida. It was OK for him to wear an officer’s uniform in a war zone, but too dangerous for him to wear it in the country that he served.
Charlie Company – What Vietnam Did to Us tells this story well. If you never read the words, you can see this story in the pictures; the faces of the kids that were sent to win the war, and how they changed over the years. Haunting. Devastating. So real.

Purchasing Information
I received a copy of this book from my friend Mike McDonald who himself was a member of Charlie Company. It is out of print now, but new or used copies can be purchased through a major on-line bookseller with prices ranging between two dollars and forty-six dollars, average about twenty dollars. This surprised me in that not too many years ago, this book was on the required reading list for my county’s high schools.
Charlie Company – What Vietnam Did to Us by Peter Goldman and Tony Fuller is a Newsweek Book published by William Morrow and Company, Inc. 105 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

Conclusion
Read this book. Vietnam touched us all in ways that changed the world forever. Whether Vietnam fell in your generation, your parents’ generation, or your children’s generation, it changed us all. History books track this change. Political science books analyze this change. Charlie Company lived this change.

The Few, The Brave, The Homeless

“There but by the grace of God, go I.” I’m sure you’ve heard that admonition before. You may have even said it a time or two. If you tend towards the dramatic, you may have emphasized the ‘there!’ and then punctuated the alliterated g’s of Grace, God, and Go. This statement is often times accompanied by such phrases as “wretched thing” “poor creature” and “bless her heart”. The more tender-hearted (or menopausal) of us sometimes wonder who they might once have belonged to, or if they have a mother who prays for them every night. The more practical ones of us question aloud if those being observed might not be able to get a job – any job – rather than pan-handling. Despite scriptural requirements (any religion’s scriptures) to give them money when asked, we refrain, for fear that the money will be used for booze rather than food.

We speak, of course, of the homeless. “The Homeless.” Like the Irish-Americans, the Disabled, or the Aristocracy, ‘the Homeless’ has become a title, not defining, but definitely labeling one section of society.

Once labeled, we can put thoughts of them aside, for we have dealt with them in a logical sense. They are not someone else’s son or daughter, they are not fellow soldiers tortured beyond sanity by the things they have experienced, they are not actually “us”, they are “them” – the homeless.

I live in a small southern town in the US. It has been quietly affluent, nurtured by phosphate mines, cattle ranching, and citrus. Last week, there were 169 homes that were going through foreclosure. These are tough economic times: 169 soon-to-be homeless families.

During the Great Depression, men would wander from town to town, seeking food, jobs if they could find them, and a sense of who they used to be, before the Crash. They were homeless. My mom told me that her mother would hand out food to anyone who came to the door, but her dad used to invite them in and sit them with the family at the dinner table. My grandfather was a banker before the Crash, and learned how to cobble shoes after it.

According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, 26 out of every 100 homeless men and women are veterans. Thirty three out of every 100 homeless men are veterans. 89 percent of them received honorable discharges. Almost half of them are aged 45 or older.

What happened to them? How did they get to be in this condition? There are four generally accepted risk factors of homeless veterans. The first is combat-related stress. The second is the same for men and women – 75% of all homeless veterans at one time suffered from sexual trauma (23% of which occurred while they were in the military). Half of them suffer from substance and/or alcohol dependency. One third of them suffer from mental illness.

Women veterans become homeless four times as often as non-veteran women. Four times.

Well, what can be done for these? There are many services available to help our homeless veterans – 500 Veterans Affairs-run homeless shelters, 300 of which accept women veterans. There are 15 VA-run homeless shelters which accept only women or have facilities for women separate from men (an important environmental situation for those suffering from sexual trauma). There are no homeless shelters available for women veterans with children. The House of Representatives has just passed the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program Act of 2009 (HR 1171) which, for about $10 million dollars annually over the next five years, will help provide job training, counseling and shelters. You can donate money, food, clothing, time, and compassion to any of the shelters and organizations which have been established for our homeless veterans. Do a Google search and pick one a month. Support the troops while they are still in the service, especially those stationed in combat zones. When they return to the states, visit with them, help them, listen to them; don’t let them slip into that realm of “the homeless.” They fought for you; it’s time for you to fight for them. Because, quite honestly, there but by the grace of God. . .

Why I Write for Veterans

When I was six years old, my father sat me on his lap and told me he was going back to Viet Nam. He said if he didn’t go back, little children just like me would be made into slaves or killed. He said he hated to leave us again, but he had to help save these children.

I have lived all over the world as an officer’s brat and witnessed the traumatic adjustments of veterans returning from battle and the sometimes devastating transition to civilian life. I watch in amazement as my mother deals with the many facets of being a veteran’s widow. I personally support two veteran charities – one of which received the first 2009 CNN Hero award – Stand Down House. The other charity is the Prayer Shawls for Fallen Soldiers’ Families organization.

I am experienced in veteran issues as a daughter, sister, neighbor, teacher, co-worker, supporter, and patriot. As the editor of BellaOnline’s Veterans site for three years, I was proud to serve as an advocate for women whose lives are tapped by the daily interests, issues and challenges of veterans.


One of my favorite sayings is from Beowulf, “Each of us must look to death and he who can should do mighty deeds before it comes.”

Just like everybody else in this world, I’ve tasted death and despair and betrayal and injustice and heart-ache and unanswerable questions. And still I find grace in the eternity of nature, joy in the love of friends, and hope in each word I type, because each word leads to another and together they create a life that can be shared with many and will live on beyond my physical mortality.

Review – Facing the Wall

Overview
In the book Facing the Wall An Infantryman’s Post-Vietnam Memoir
Phil Ferrazano speaks from the heart about the honor and terror and hope and tragedy he experienced as a wounded soldier during his tour as an infantryman and – more harrowing somehow – his next thirty years battling the VA as a disabled Vietnam Veteran and his own post-traumatic stress disorder.

Praise
Facing the Wall was so well-written that I found myself thinking of the author as a friend, one whom I’ve known for forever. His words ring with honesty and emotional truth. I found myself sobbing by the fourth page, and cheering for all veterans as I read the speech the author delivered at his high school reunion. Facing the Wall takes the reader along the path from despair to hope and rebirth; the turning point was the fact that the author (and vicariously, the reader) must face "the wall" (Death of his friends, fellow soldiers, and his own youth as personified by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial).

Phil Ferrazano used what he had learned and wrote songs about these experiences. The songs are available in a CD on the author’s website.

I have a hard time dealing with someone who wallows in their own despair. Phil Ferrazano never wallowed. He shared all the myriad ranges of emotions, from anger and frustration and betrayal through love and hope and forgiveness. Forgiveness was big in this book. He paints survivor’s guilt and suicide and conscientious objectors and crumpled careers and divorces with the flowing stroke of a brush filled with understanding and compassion. He takes what he learned and passes it on to others around him, through his music and his words. I can’t help but be reminded of the last stanza of the poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) In Flanders’ Field:
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

In his own way, Phil Ferrazano took up the quarrel which Vietnam Veterans in particular have to face every day. By writing this book, by creating his website, by performing his songs, and by speaking out for himself and for others, he is holding high this torch. When he faced the wall, he realized he could not and would not break faith with the people whose names are on that wall.

Concerns
Take this book slowly. Get a bookmark and use it. Stop reading and put the book down and walk away for a while when the story becomes too intense. The author masterfully surges from past to present and back again, just enough to allow your emotions to crest before sliding back into safer waters. But, take this book slowly. It took me over a month to finish it. It was well-worth the time.

I wish my father had read this book. I had so many unanswered questions about my dad, until I read this book.

Conclusion
On the back of my business card is a quote from Beowulf, Each of us must look to death, and he who can should do mighty deeds before it comes. In writing this book Facing the Wall An Infantryman’s Post-Vietnam Memoir , Phil Ferrazano has done just that. Well done, and thank you.

From the Battlefield to the Homefront

The battle is over. Your hero has come home from the war. But now you can’t get him out of bed. How do you help your beloved veteran cope with the transition from the battlefield to the homefront?

Psychiatrist William Glasser, MD states there is a hierarchy of needs: survival, belonging, power, freedom, and fun. Your veteran’s needs for survival are being met: he eats, sleeps and procreates. You are providing all the necessary elements to fill this need for him, as if he were an infant to be cared for rather than the man, husband, and father he used to be. You need to find a way to help him move beyond this level. Don’t expect this to happen overnight! Be patient, but be expectant and move forward.

The level beyond survival is belonging. Ask yourself: does he belong to this family, and if so, as what –a dependent or a facilitator? What else does he belong to – a church, fraternity, support group, bowling league? Look for veterans groups near your area. Don’t let him escape to chat-rooms; help him form face-to-face relationships. An online search for “veterans support groups” brought up hundreds of possible sites. Three you might find interesting are
1. Veterans Organizations and Support Groups
2. PTSDA Anonymous – Veterans Talking to Veterans
3. Veterans Helping Veterans

Newspapers, veterans magazines, web sites, churches, hobby-enthusiasts – all of these are opportunities to help him meet his need to belong.

Power. What does your veteran have control over? Think about setting expectations which he can and should rise to meet – control of his medications, of his meals, laundry and house-keeping chores, etc. Include him in the grocery shopping. Give him power over taking out the garbage and getting the mail. Eventually, he needs to take power over his finances, his career and education. If he’s not ready to become employed, encourage him to volunteer somewhere. He needs to have a say in his children’s lives. Which means, quite honestly, you are going to have to relinquish some of the power you, as a soldier’s spouse, have always had to wield.

Freedom. How ironic that fear and free share so many letters. To begin the path toward freedom, he must face the fears which imprison him. Unemployment? Survivor guilt? Autonomy after years of service? He can’t do anything about meeting his need for freedom (to become the man he wants to be) until he has begun to address the previously discussed needs. But begin talking about it. Begin listening to him as he states his desires for freedom. Help him find ways to escape from the fears which keep him sleeping his life away.

Fun. Help your veteran remember, realize, and experience the joy of life again. Incorporate a time for laughter, a joke, or a humorous moment each and every day. Survivor Guilt is one of the toughest PTSD issues for vets to overcome. Three sites you might read:
1. Treating PTSD #6 Survivor Guilt and Self-Destructive Behaviors
2. Survivor Guilt: How to Recognize it and Move Beyond it
3. Why Not Me? Dealing With Survivor Guilt in the Aftermath of a Disaster

You cannot convince your veteran that he has the right to have fun. But you can show him how to find it for himself.

You have placed yourself in this man’s life as his help-mate. As you help him rise up through his hierarchy of needs from survival to belonging to power to freedom and eventually to fun, make sure you, also, are progressing up these steps. You have needs which deserve to be met, too.

It took a lot of courage for you to marry a man who was willing to lay down his life for his country. March forward with that same courage and help your hero get out of bed and have a happy life.