Exorcising a Ghost of War

World War II veteran Tom Blakey found that volunteering at the National World War II Museum helped him escape from a memory which haunted him since D-Day:





On this Memorial Day, we need to remember those who gave their lives in service to our country, but we also must remember all those who served and survived, and must help them as much as we can in dealing with the scars of that service, both physical and mental.  We have not been doing a good job with that, especially with the veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.  We sent them to do work we couldn't bother ourselves to mess with, now it is time to help with the high costs that work incurred.

Update:  more on the struggles to provide care to veterans at the VA:

The quality of care varies from one V.A. facility to the next. In 2004, the V.A. Inspector General called the Dallas facility the worst in the nation; last year, a Dallas TV station interviewed veterans who alleged that the facility was so poor that it put “lives at risk.” The V.A. tends to be slow, taking an average of nine months to determine if it will cover a veteran’s health claim. And getting a claim approved can be even more difficult if symptoms are not observed at a veteran’s exit physical. Yet P.T.S.D.’s symptoms may not emerge for a while, and they are often accompanied by a cascade of other health problems. Chiarelli, the former vice-chief of the Army, told me that doctors should be “given more latitude” in assessing combat veterans, adding, “But there’s where you get into cost issues.” The V.A. is a sclerotic and overwhelmed bureaucracy; it barely has the resources to maintain its current level of health coverage, let alone expand it. (A spokesman acknowledged that veterans wait “too long for earned benefits,” and said, “We have an aggressive plan in place to end the backlog in 2015.”)

The story deals with Chris Kyle, and the veteran who killed him and another man.  The shooter's mother speaks about mental health treatment for veterans:

Jodi looked out and said, “All I can think about in my mind is that, if they would have left him in the hospital, then those two men wouldn’t be dead today. And, you know, it’s not like I want to beat on the V.A., that’s not at all what my intention is. My intention is that they step up and give these men—”
“The help they need,” Raymond interrupted.
“The treatment they deserve,” Jodi continued. She said that a forensic psychologist had recently assessed Routh’s capacity to stand trial, though he had not received mental-health assistance from the V.A. since January. She said of veterans, “It’s not just that they deserve it. They’ve already earned it. They’ve already served their time. They’ve already done what they were asked to do.” Jodi wiped her tears. The Marines had trained her son for war, she said, but they never “untrained” him for normal life.

She is right about what those veterans deserve.  The VA is unprepared for the task of serving the veterans of the wars of the last decade.  It is criminal that we as a society have forsaken them.