BattlelandVeterans
By Terri Pous
When soldiers are injured in combat, the healing doesn’t stop in the hospital. After they return home, the reality sets in. Whether they suffer physical injuries or the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their caretakers and loved ones share their struggle.
BattlelandPentagon
Words matter when you are in charge of the world’s biggest military. So I listened closely in the Pentagon briefing room Thursday as Leon Panetta warned of looming disaster if the congressional super-committee fails to strike a grand bargain and the dreaded “sequestration” ax falls. That could double Pentagon cuts over the …
BattlelandVeterans
I arrived in Afghanistan about nine years ago, in the first week of November 2002. It took a couple days to get there. We left Fort Benning and drove to Atlanta. From there we flew commercial to Baltimore and had a seven-hour layover. My wife drove up to the airport and we spent the day together before she dropped me off to catch a …
BattlelandVeterans
Happy Veterans Day!
Where the heck do those 22 million U.S. military veterans come from? Well, Ray Moran has done more than his share to bring them in. The retired Army sergeant major has spent decades recruiting soldiers. Having just turned 82, he has earned his nickname Old Soldier en route to getting more than 1,000 young men …
BattlelandVeterans
By Joseph Bobrow
Founder and President, the Coming Home Project
Let me tell you a story from the book, Outliers: In the 1950’s a physician discovered a small town in eastern Pennsylvania where there was no heart disease under age 65, no suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, peptic ulcers, and very little crime. People died …
BattlelandVeterans
They say war and football are alike in a lot of ways, but deep down we know that’s not true. Perhaps it’s those fundamental differences that explain why two scandals that came to light this week have been handled so differently by their respective overseers.
About 140 miles north of the Pentagon, in the pleasant little college …
BattlelandVeterans
In honor of Veterans Day, we will be holding a special Twitter discussion about the disconnect between the U.S. military, veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of American society under the hashtag #TIMEVets.
BattlelandVeterans
By Alex Horton, Official VA Blogger
Rain had transformed Baghdad’s many unpaved roads into one giant muddy sinkhole, and the engine of a Stryker vehicle moaned in a failed effort to escape. The vehicle sunk under the weight of its armor and required a tow. The driver and vehicle commander leapt to the ground to attach towing …
BattlelandTroops
We noted Monday that alcoholism has become an increasing problem for the U.S. military. Want proof (no pun intended): check out this story from California’s North County Times, which does a good job covering what’s happening at the Marine Corps’ nearby Camp Pendleton:
A Marine found dead in his barracks room at Camp Pendleton
…
BattlelandVeterans
The U.S. military and American society are drifting apart. It’s tough inside the civilian world to discern the drift. But troops in all the military services sense it, smell it — and talk about it. So do their superiors. We have a professional military of volunteers that has been stoically at war for more than a decade. But as the …
BattlelandVeterans
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzceLmVnj6A]
The rates of suicide in the United States Army began to rise in 2004, and continued climbing until 2010. Then the suicide rate in the active duty finally started to level off, but continues to rise in National Guard soldiers. It remains twice as high as it was prior to the wars in …
BattlelandTroops
This isn’t the way a Navy aviator is supposed to leave his vessel, especially when it’s a behemoth like the 100,000-ton USS Harry S Truman. But on Tuesday morning, about 10 a.m., Captain Tushar Tembe collapsed as he was leaving the ship he had commanded for the past three months as it was undergoing maintenance in Norfolk. He died …
BattlelandVeterans
Two Air Force researchers are suggesting it’s not the soldiers who kill themselves who should shoulder all the blame for their deaths. We – all of us, society writ large – may also be responsible.
“There appear to be systemic factors that play an important role in the rise in military suicides,” says George Mastroianni, …
