Archive

A note from the website’s founder

Published
by
admin1
on January 29, 2009
in Holiday and Why it matters
. 0 Comments

Why archive here? What’s it good for?

In a word: immortality. A chance to create something that might outlive you; to be your own hero.
Also a chance to immortalize people you’ve loved. Give them that gift in this season of giving. Leave this legacy for your children.

I think we’d all agree that we were put on this earth to love, not to kill. But – crazy thing – in the midst of fear and stress, dread and dying, we sometimes learn to love better, to love with special intensity.
We discover things in ourselves and in our comrades, collaborators, partners, buddies, mentors, apprentices, that make us marvel at what the human race can achieve -  at our own courage, humor, determination, resourcefulness, and, yes, our honor, our nobility.

That’s the kind of testimony we’re harvesting here: what’s good about one generation that can be cherished, protected and passed on to the next. And the next.
Not that we anticipate all good news.
We welcome cautionary tales as well. “This is how we screwed up; this is how low one person or one group sank. Don’t go there. You can do better.”
That, too, is a valuable message to put in our time capsule.
We can have the stomach to immortalize the warts along with the glory, the bad hair days along with the movie star moments.
Those count, too, and make the rest of us cherish our flaws, our dark nights of doubt and fear, our humanity.
Medal of Honor nominee David Bellavia describes the moment when he’d escaped a hornets’ nest of a house in Fallujah, riddled with lethal, drugged-up  insurgents.
He felt relief, then shame. His job felt unfinished. So he turned around, plunged back in and found the inner resources to prevail.
Traversing the Valley of the Shadow of Death, David lived both  - the glory moments alongside the  passages of weakness and self-doubt. We treasure both sides of the struggle, and aim to record them here.
They bring us closer.
And this website is all about strengthening connections, making us more close-knit Americans, prouder Americans -   more active, empowered, consecrated to lifelong service.
In our America, no one sits it out, calls it in,  takes a pass, settles for  a rain check, promises to get it done tomorrow.
No way.
Whatever breakthroughs or sacrifices, learning leaps or career milestones you racked up in the service,  there’s more you can do for your country, and we hereby challenge you: find a way, YOUR way, and do it!

A Christmas message from the website’s founder:

Published
by
admin1
on December 25, 2008
in Family, Holiday, Homecoming and Politics
. 0 Comments

Christmas is a time when we think of all those families that military service keeps apart, or of those families lucky enough to be together today, but in an atmosphere heavy with anxiety, because one key member will soon be once again in harm’s way.
It’s also a time to talk about faith. I know religious education turns off a lot of people to religion. I was raised without it, so I’m lucky in a way. I’m hungry for spirituality, if not organized religion, and I say prayers every day watching the sun rise, thankful for another day on earth.
I see Jesus as a fighter and an organizer, a man who embodied thoughtfulness and sacrifice. I know that a similar spirit motivates a lot of people who join the service, along with a desire to challenge themselves, test their limits.
All good.
I’d like to make sure those urges, those gifts keep paying off for humanity.
Today’s military faces enemies who aren’t just ready to die; they want to die. They hijack planes not for ransom, but as kamikaze weapons. They take hostages, as they just did in Mumbai, not as bargaining chips but as PR tools to be slaughtered.
So how do we respond?
To my mind, this is a time when words are as important as weapons, when we have to reach out to remove the conditions that drive young people into the arms of killer fanatics, whether their potential recruits are miserable and starving or they’re just empathizing with those who hunger.
Some leaders argue that certain folks are just evil, beyond redemption. I think Jesus would disagree.
That doesn’t mean we allow anyone to hurt others, or to attack us.
It does mean that, without dropping our guard, we use our economic might and genius to lessen suffering everywhere; that we try to see whether many, if not all, potential enemies will respond when we present to them vibrant alternatives to violence.
It means that we honor, salute and celebrate our awesome fighting forces in peacetime as well as in conflict. We look for ways to use the leadership and teamwork skills, the technical expertise and fierce determination that veterans have developed in the Service, encouraging them to spearhead peacetime initiatives at home and abroad that will make us all safer.
What was it they said about General Washington? First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen. Not a bad ambition….
And to honor Jesus on his birthday, we might remember that he revered lines from the Old Testament: love thy neighbor as thyself. And I try to always remember this, again from the Old Testament (Micah): Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God…

The Service, Marriage, Stress and Murder

Published
by
mmwebster4
on December 10, 2008
in Family and Homecoming
. 2 Comments

Marriage is hard enough when you are there with your spouse everyday. Now imagine a marriage when you are gone for a year at a time and home only 6 months before your next deployment. I know a bunch of guys who got married right before we deployed, they wanted that fat check you get for being married; they wanted something to look froward to when they got back; and - most importantly - they didn’t want to lose the person they “loved”. Loved is the right word, because most of those guys don’t love that person any more. I remember hearing seargents and joes crying to me and anyone who would listen about how their wives were out f*cking “Jody”. These guys would run up to our first seargent and beg - literally - to be sent home because of issues with their wives. “Haha”, was the typical response. The chain of command didn’t give them one second of thought, and that’s mainly because our chain of command was having the exact same problems. Our chain of command wanted to go home too, and “Haha” was the same response our chain of command’s chaing of command gave them when they went and begged to be sent home.

I remember when one guy was telling me about how his wife was clearing out his bank account every two weeks, and when he called to talk to her she was a total b*tch to him. There was nothing that guy could do. I also remember a group of guys who’s wives were all hanging out together and going out to clubs together, one wife would tell on another wife and another wife would do the same. It’s bad enough to have to worry about stepping on a land mine or being sniped, but when you have guys with their families on their minds 24-7 and you need that guy to cover your back it makes them less effective in the field. Another buddy who recently completed tour number five, is getting ready for tour six, and just re-up’ed for 6 more years (crazy!!) was welcomed home with “You go on another tour and I won’t be here when you get back.”.

The articles below are really connected. Marriage and stress go hand-in-hand, and when you add a combat zone with a year long deployment, stress is not the word. It’s really insanity. Most marriages I saw in the army were horrible. Either the guy was a total ass and the wife was nice, or the wife was a total b*tch and the guy was alright. I would have to assume that most marriages are this way regardless of being in the service or not, but without a doubt year long deployments and extended campaigns overseas is the number one reason why these marriages are failing at a greater rate and more soliders are having stress related issues.

Before I even left for my tour in Afghanistan in December, 2002, a group of special force and delta operators had come back from Afghanistan (the Iraq war didn’t start until Feburary or March of 2003) and murdered their wives. You would think these wives would know better than to screw around when their husband is one of the best trained killers in the army. A lot of these guys killed their wives and then themselves.

If you want to help these soliders, then help end these wars. Hopefully this will reduce their stress levels and stop their wives from cheating on them. Then again, maybe not.

Divorce rate increases in Marine Corps, Army

Bases brace for surge in stress-related disorders

Special Forces soldier charged in wife’s slaying hangs himself

This post was submitted by mmwebster4.

Follow-up: Election Day and Iraq War

Published
by
mmwebster4
on November 12, 2008
in Iraq War, OIF and Politics
. 0 Comments
follow-up-election-day-and-iraq-war

Has violence actually picked up since the end of the election? Or is this just now the “hot” news item which was so carelessly swept under the rug by the media’s infatuation with the Presidential election? For the last couple of days there has been REPORTED an increase in violence in Baghdad (see article below). There are many reasons which could explain the violence, none of which have to do with the Presidential election results: an increse in Shiite-Sunni tensions, upcoming Iraq elections, or the new Security Pact which would keep US troops in Iraq until the end of 2011. However, one has to wonder why now? Why not a month earlier or a month later? “… in the first nine days of November, there were at least 19 bombings in Baghdad, compared with 28 for all of October and 22 in September, according to an Associated Press tally.” Has America’s decision to elect Obama as President been seen on the international stage as a sign of weakness? Are insurgent forces in Iraq increasing tensions to ensure that Obama follows through with his pledge to reduce US forces in Iraq? Will an increase in violence do the exact opposite and force Obama to keep troops in Iraq longer and at higher levels than he had committed to during the election? Maybe we will all forget about this in a couple of days when Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton does their next amazing act of stupidity.

Deadly bombings hit Baghdad for third straight day

This post was submitted by mmwebster4.

Dryhootch – helping the veteran who survived the war, survive the peace

Published
by
Bob Curry
on November 11, 2008
in Related Sites and Veterans Day
. 0 Comments

: US Army

For myself and my Vietnam brothers and sisters, we came home to a country that blamed us for all that went wrong. I quickly learned to put my war in the closet and get on with life.  But one learns that the life you left behind is forever different and it’s not just the passage of time. Your attitude, your value system has been completely turned upside down. Little noises in the night find you getting up and walking around the house checking the windows and door locks. You may feel naked, as you no longer sleep with your weapon. Smells or sounds trigger responses in you so fast, even you are shocked. Those around you wonder what’s wrong, why are you different. And how in the hell do you explain to them what you don’t even understand yourself. Wander down this path awhile and you will never see the end coming.            

For PTSD is like a leech, it sucks such a little peace out of your life each day you never notice it until suddenly its dark. You’ll slowly withdraw from those close around you, get angry for people stressing at things that don’t really matter; not in your world of life and death, sanity and insanity. Perhaps medication will help, a drink, a pill today, a little more tomorrow, until there is never enough to kill your pain.

9/11 and the Wars of Terrorisms raised those ghosts in me, and like many veterans, I turned to alcohol to cope, to make it through another day. My life literally crashed in 2002 and it was a band of Vietnam & Gulf War brothers who stood with me, got me the treatment that I needed, and saved my life.

Now we face more wars, and our troops are sent back again and again and again. And soon they will realize the war they thought they left behind, in fact came home with them. Dryhootch.org is a veteran’s nonprofit offering a veterans peer to peer counseling center centered on the social space of a coffee house. VA mental health professionals have embraced this model as a way to reach out, to connect with our new generation of warriors before they follow our path to addiction, divorce, jail, or suicide.

It is before the leech burrows in, that treatment will do the most good.  This is when one needs to find the camaraderie of those who were baptized by fire to once again sit with you. Those who were with you in the darkest of times, who feel your pain, your fears, your heartaches. You don’t have to finish a sentence if you can’t find the words, or you can’t put your heart back in your chest. They can finish it for you, because they’ve been there. And there will be those who came before you, who have walked your path and found a way out. And you will listen to him or her, for “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he (she) to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” They, like you have been shot between the eyes. Only they can see that wound, that invisible scar of this shit storm no one else can see, and only they can show you the path back.

This post was submitted by Bob Curry.