Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
I’ve been asked to speak at our university’s annual Veteran’s Day Commemoration next Friday. General theme will be the Cold War (I suggested it after struggling to come up with something I could talk about), but if you can think of anything you’d want to hear someone say on Veteran’s Day, I’d be interested to hear about it.
Comment away!
The expression “combat shopping” is a wry inside joke in the military family, because there are certain assignments that are well known to be— because of the variety, quality and exoticism of the merchandise, and the comparatively well-paid nature of American military service when compared to local conditions— absolutely a dedicated shopper’s paradise on earth. Even locations where the local exchange rate didn’t particularly favor the American service personnel (most of Western Europe and Japan, in my service lifetime, f’rinstance) there were nice bargains to be had. Size up the local terrain, see the bargain, scoop up the bargain in the neatest and most efficient manner possible; the essence of combat shopping.
At an assignment in Germany, or Italy, or Spain, one was always able to buy locally some attractive and comparatively inexpensive something or other that would cost four or five times as much, back in the good old US of A. (Taking the Williams-Sonoma catalogue as my guide, I could buy an astonishing number of items from it at the Al Campo supermarket, Spain’s answer to Walmart, for about a fifth of the price.) One wouldn’t even have to take a trip to load up on the souvenirs, either: the AAFES Catalogue featured a large assortment of tat.
For exuberantly bad taste, though, the AAFES catalogue paled next to an emporium like Harrys’ of K’Town (Kaiserslautern, to the uninitiated.) Harrys’ stocked elaborate, ornately decorated beer steins as tall as I am, and candles not much shorter, and cuckoo-clocks the like of which had to be seen to be disbelieved. The cuckoo-clock industry in Southern Germany apparently depended almost entirely on sales to tourists: locals had too much good taste to buy such monstrosities. (Although not to much good taste to avoid marzipan pigs crapping gold coins. The good taste thing is probably relative, I think.) Harrys’ memorably featured a cuckoo clock as large as a garden shed, with life-size deer and clusters of dead, turkey-sized doves. You’d need a living room as big as a football stadium to carry it off, and the cuckoo calling the hours was probably audible in the next county. I gave pass to cuckoo clocks, by the way. I bought Steiffel stuffed animals for my daughter, instead.
The base tourism office in Spain were always scheduling day tours to places like Muel— for the pottery, and to the Lladro factory, down near Barcelona, or more extensive excursions to Turkey… Turkey, like Korea in the Far East being The One Place to indulge in serious and prolonged retail therapy. People came back from Turkey with carpets, and brass-work, and gold: from Korea with bespoke clothes, antique furniture and jewelry. Our houses are marked and furnished with unusual items gleaned from tours and TDYs to distant and exotic foreign places. One can almost tell were we have been by looking carefully at the décor… or what we have given to our family as Christmas presents over the years.
And sometimes the phrase “combat shopping” is not entirely a joke: while traveling in a convoy from Kuwait up into Iraq shortly after the liberation, my daughter swapped some MREs for a couple of small rugs from an Iraqi vendor setting up shop along the roadside. Cpl. Blondie was teased by her friends for weeks, for being able to find something to buy, in the middle of a war zone.
DaGoddess has got the story on Project Valour-IT and how and why you can help disabled vets get Voice Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops. It’s just one of the things that Soldiers’ Angels have been up to.
With your help, voice-to-text computers and software can be made available to those wounded warriors in need of some assistance.
Can you imagine how you were get by without the use of your hands? Picking up a phone would be impossible. Typing out an email would be impossible. Blowing your nose, wiping away tears of pain or joy, and even something as simple as being able to go to the bathroom by yourself would require assistance. We may not be able to wipe away the tears or anything else for our wounded, but we can give them some independence with these computers.
Greyhawk is involved too.
This last week ended on an upbeat note— long sessions at two different agencies on Monday and Tuesday, filing out forms and testing on general knowledge and the more common computer programs. I should like to point out for the record that to the best of my memory, this is the first time since the 5th grade that I have been asked to subtract 5/21ths from 6/7ths. That was followed on Wednesday and Thursday with interviews— potential employers or their underlings. By now, I think I have visited practically every grand high-rise office building with a marble-paneled lobby on the North Side.
One firm is long-established, and only about a block away from the previous employer; I would be one of a number of mid-ranked support staff— no word about exactly what I would be paid, and I am not so crass or stupid to bring that up during an initial interview. (The temp firm that sent me knows very well what I am asking for, though.) Likely, I’d be called back for a second interview— the temp agent was positive I would make the cut.
The second interview was for an executive admin position with a start-up firm, and I met with the man who is starting up the company. He seemed quite frazzled, but enthusiastic, and went into a lot of detail about his plans, and asked very specific things about my experience, to the point where I was a little unsure about which position he was interviewing me for, exactly.
We drove over to look at the building where the office will be— another splendid pile of glass and marble. (Why do I like these palatial office piles so much? It’s probably the result of all those years laboring away in what the military provided: aging temporary buildings, Quonset huts and sagging frame structures held up with forty years of accumulated paint, conblock walls painted pale green, worn industrial linoleum on the floor, and ancient latrines that could be smelt halfway down the hall on a hot day, no matter what sort of cleaner/deodorant was poured into them.)
So, I got the good news on Friday afternoon from the temp counselor who had scheduled the second interview— the letter offering terms of employment will be written up this week. I am about 90% sure I will accept them— the salary is about what I wanted, the location is perfect— about fifteen minutes commute, and I would so much rather be on the ground floor of a startup, reporting to one person and having a say in sorting things out to my own preference… as opposed to having to fit in to a well-established routine and having to juggle the admin needs of a team of people. The first place may yet offer a lot more money… but the start-up draws me, like a moth to a flame. Even if it only lasts a couple of years, or four of five, it will still be an impressive notch on the ol’ resume. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll go back to the temp services, those who have the main line to providing high-end staff, and roll the employment dice again.
This from Christopher J. Gearon at U.S. News and World Report:
The impact of such changes is real, says Harvard School of Public Health professor and renowned patient-safety advocate Lucian Leape. “Recent evidence shows [that care at the VA system] is at least as good as, if not better,” he says, than care delivered elsewhere. In the 1990s, for example, the VA began using a new way–since adopted by the American College of Surgeons–to evaluate surgical quality. It enabled VA surgeons to reduce postoperative deaths by 27 percent and post-surgical complications by 45 percent. Recently published studies have found that the VA rates much better than Medicare fee-for-service providers in 11 basic measures of quality, such as regular mammograms and counseling for smokers. Late last year, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study showing that the VA had “substantially better quality of care” than other providers in many of nearly 350 indicators of quality, such as screening and treating depression, diabetes, and hypertension.
While I have noticed marked improvements at the VAMC, Long Beach over the past few years, during my recent hospital stay, everything from soiled sheets in the emergency room to them losing my ID card was most unimpressive.
Another member of a newsgroup for broadcasters and others associated with the Far East Network has forwarded a plea for assistance in locating a certain Marine. In association with a visit by the Emperor and Empress to Saipan this month, a local Japanese television station is working on a human interest story, about a local man who was injured and orphaned during the fighting over that island.
Shinso “Shori” Miyagi was only nine years old in 1945, was born on Saipan, and was being treated for injuries that included the loss of his right hand. A Marine who worked in the hospital befriended the little boy, taught him how to play ball, took him out to the movies, to the beach and to Sunday Mass, let him run errands at the hospital, and saw that he had a safe place to stay for several months. Mr. Miyagi knew the Marine as “Nicholas” or “Necos”. He was in the 2nd or 4th Marine Division, the first to land in Saipan. Nicholas or Necos was Caucasian, perhaps Hispanic, tall, sturdy, and 24 years old in 1945. He was in charge of the hospital pharmacy, and the storage room was his workspace and quarters.
After 60 years, Mr. Miyagi would very much like to find the Marine who befriended a little boy who had lost his right hand during the invasion. Any useful information, leads or suggestions can be forwarded to my contact, vfwmichael@gmail.com.
I just got back yesterday evening from a five day stint at the VAMC, Long Beach. I was driven there by pneumonia, a bilateral ear infection, with the right draining yellow pus, and a nasty insect bite.
Happily, I’m doing much better now, but full recovery won’t be for some time. Hopefully, my ears will be healed about the time as the bruises from injections in my forearms. I could go further, and likely will later. But the FUBAR nature of this place is all typified by the fact that they even managed to lose my V.A. ID card! Sheeeze.
Blackfive’s on top of it.
BACKGROUND:
On Thursday April 21st the United States Senate passed legislation yesterday creating Traumatic Injury Insurance that will issue active duty service members a payment ranging from $25, 000 to $100,000, should they incur a life altering injury while serving their nation. This legislation, known as the Wounded Warrior Bill, was introduced as an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Funding Bill by Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, at the urgent request of three injured soldiers from the Wounded Warrior Project. The Traumatic Injury Insurance will make an immediate payment to the service member and their family within days of sustaining their injury to support them during their hospitalization. Additionally, the legislation passed will make Craig’s measure retroactive to the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, which began in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.
Go read the rest of it and do that hoodoo that you do…
This appeared in the comments of an earlier post. I thought I’d move it up here, so people would see it:
Please,
Someone advise me how to contact DFAS-Cleveland, ref: retired pay.I am behind on my taxes (don’t owe any) and need W-2 forms. Have not
received any from Cleveland in about three years.Please contact me by Email or write to me at:
3-3-7 Wakasa
Naha City
Okinawa, JapanThanks,
E.F. Chamniss
Found this story today.
I’m thinking there’s a lot of missing elements from this one.
Since when does wanting to talk directly to your immediate care provider warrants a visit from the police?
Well, it happened today, at the VA Medical Center, Long Beach. Yes, after a good, but not quite satisfactory workout in the PT gym, I had asked for my trainer’s email addy; this was a major to-do! Who woulda’ thunk it? I was finally given her addy by somebody in the local central office. And then, as I walked out to my car, I was surrounded by VAMCLB cops! Do I sense some intimidation here?
Blackfive has got good info on this story. Seems that some of our folks in Congress think that Survivor Benefits could be better if we die in the line of duty. Go check it out.
U.S. News and World Report’s Mort Zuckerman comments on a serious deficiency in our efforts to retain personnel:
America’s commitment to the survivors of the tsunami is a mark of our generosity. The commitment we make to those who voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way to fight our wars is a mark of our character. It is reflected in two ways. The first is the effort to save the wounded. The success is unparalleled. Some 98 percent of the wounded now survive, a mortality rate half of previous wars and down 22 percent even when compared with the first Gulf War, thanks to rapid evacuation, body armor capable of stopping high-velocity rifle rounds, fast-clot bandages, better tourniquets to preserve blood, and access to fresh whole blood that saves many soldiers from bleeding to death. Beyond that, there is a greater understanding than there was just a few years ago of the mental stress of combat, much aggravated in Iraq, where our soldiers face an enemy who masquerades in civilian clothes and bogus uniforms and blows himself up in order to kill and maim. Post-traumatic stress disorder has a debilitating effect on the brain’s chemistry that sometimes lasts the rest of a person’s life, long after the war is over. It can lead to flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic attacks, survivor’s guilt, depression, and emotional numbness.
For all the great advances in battlefield medicine, however, America comes up short when it comes to follow-on assistance to our men and women who bear arms. If an American in military uniform is killed, his or her family receives a one-time tax-exempt death gratuity of $12,000 and rent-free government housing for 180 days, or its equivalent. There is a special group life insurance program that could provide as much as an additional $250,000 if the serviceman or his family subscribes to the program. Compare this with the millions of dollars the families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks received. Then there is the Survivor Benefit Plan, which pays the spouse of a military person killed in action 55 percent of his or her retirement pay–an amount already so low that it qualifies many military families for food stamps. Just recently, the law was revamped to allow spouses to remarry after age 57 and keep receiving this minimal compensation. But those who remarry before 57 still lose their survivor benefits.
Read the whole thing. We will pay a king’s ransom in reenlistment bonuses to those with highly needed specialties. But yet, when a servicemember is lost, or no longer useful, they or their survivors are given short shrift. This is both unconscionable and short-sighted.
Update: A movement is afoot in congress to increase the death benefit to $100,000, and the life insurance to $400,000, at the same premium.
The Wounded Warrior Project was founded on the principle that veterans are our nation’s greatest citizens. The Project seeks to assist those men and women of our armed forces who have been severely injured during the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hot spots around the world. Many of the injuries are traumatic amputations, gunshot wounds, burns and blast injuries that will retire these brave warriors from military service. These wounded soldiers will return to civilian life minus one or more limbs, or with serious wounds or disfiguring scars, and will face greater challenges today obtaining assistance and finding opportunities that would enable them to provide for themselves and their families.
Am I the only one who never heard of this?
Via O’Reilly. Which tells me that I am.
The Military Times has a pretty good story on what anyone with a brain has known for years.
“A federal panel that has spent two years reviewing studies of Gulf War illnesses recommends focusing future research on the effects of the toxic substances that veterans encountered during the 1991 conflict.
That conclusion differs from the findings of a Clinton administration panel that determined that stress was the cause of the mysterious ailments afflicting thousands of Gulf War veterans.”
If you want to read the entire report you can get it here.
So…why would this administration push to research and fund something that a previous administration had already closed the book on?
I have my own thoughts on that and I’m going to keep them to myself tonight. I spent most of the day watching Beautiful Wife fight with TRICARE and the medical professionals at our local “care center” and I’m feeling more than a bit cynical.
But weigh in, I’m curious.