If I have a personal hero, it's my dad's brother. My uncle was a helicopter medic who served in Vietnam, and the war took his already fragile emotional 18 year old mind and broke it. For battlefield heroism, he was awarded two bronze stars, along with several other distinctions. He came back, addicted to drugs and a serious alcoholic. He spent more than 15 years trying to erase the memories of the battlefield, and by doing so, he lost his first wife, son, and numerous jobs/businesses. Finally, his second wife gave him an ultimatum: clean up or die without me around to take care of you.
He gave in and went to rehab, and to our family's surprise, he finished and stayed sober. He finally dealt with his experiences in Vietnam, and he decided to rededicate his life to healthcare by becoming a nurse. Because of his PTSD, he never had the chance to use his GI Bill benefits within the allotted time, so he requested a health-related waiver. It took three years worth of denials and appeals to find a sympathetic ear within the VA. Thanks to this decision, he was able to afford a career change, and he is now an RN at a psychiatric hospital; he is in charge of drug and alcohol counseling. As great a story as Uncle Doug's is, there are far more stories of men who didn't get that second chance after Vietnam. This is the tragedy of this, and almost every other war, and Iraq's legacy will be no different if we don't do something. We send boys off to fight battles they have no ability to understand, and if they're lucky, they come back to a world that appreciates their sacrifice. Unfortunately, they're rarely lucky.
This isn't Audie Murphy/John Wayne stuff; these are human beings who very often see things that once seen can never be unseen. Ask yourself: How often does the carnage from 9/11 flash into your head? Now imaging years of this carnage, watching friends, enemeies and civillians brutalized by the vicious cruelty of war. We literally break a generation of men (and now women) when we send them off to war, and the least we can do for them is to honor their sacrifice by giving them every chance to heal their wounds, both mental and physical, and to give them the 'Support' I so often see mentioned in fading bumper stickers. When we have long tried to forget this disastrous war, their will be soldiers who fought it in need of their country's assistance. The track record of this country when it comes to living up to the promises it makes to its soldiers as they're signing up to be meat for the grinder is pathetic: think of the Continental Army veterans who had to beg for their past wages in the early days of this Republic; think of the many soldiers who died during the Spanish-American War from Hormel's substandard tinned beef that bought and paid for military inspectors approved for consumption; think of the WWI bonus babies in the 1930s who were attacked by the soldiers of the following generation for trying to get what was owed them; think of the Mad Men generation of Korean War soldiers who drank themselves into oblivion in the shadow of the 'Forgotten War'; think of the Vietnam Veterans who committed suicide when told that Agent Orange had no long-term effects and they were just whining; and think of the Gulf War veterans who spent well over a decade trying to convince our government that Gulf War Syndrome was all too real. These are just the wartime veterans. My friends who were with me at Ramstein in 1988, trying to save lives in the Flugtag carnage, have been told their PTSD is imaginary and that regardless, it happened in peacetime so the VA has nothing to with it.
So now, with a new government in place, we have a chance to do our best to ensure that these kids, the ones who served their country a generation after me, do not become another cautionary tale to tell an idealistic youth as he's considering that trip down to the recruiter. We do not have to see another generation of broken children; it is not too late to give these men and women everything they deserve - and more. How much did you tip your waitress last time you ate at a restaurant? 15-20%? That was just for making sure you got your meal quickly and your drinks refilled more than once. Soldiers are as poorly paid as those servers, and it's only fair that for once, we give them a little more than they expected to get. Demanding that your Congressmen & Senators & President do everything to ensure they do so is just a start, but it's a good start.