There’s not a era or an hour that goes bythat you don’t think or have a small glimpse of what had happened, or …[ blowup] everythingthat you’ve seen, you can’t get rid of it, it’s not going to go away. We were about midway through a three mileconvoy and we were coming up to an intersection, and just before we get over this, this littlehill to affect this intersection, we detonated an IAD[ blowup ]. Smoke, dust, and clay is everywhere. You do a service, you go fight for your country, do what the fuck is ask you to do, you know, 24/7, that’s what you do. You come back, you make one small mistake. They may view you to that minuscule mistake.[ Music] We’re seeing that there is an absolute epidemicof veterans being discharged with bad paper. They don’t have an honorable or general discharge.Because if “youve had” less than an honorabledischarge, you’re no longer eligible for benefits, you can’t attend school, you can’t go to theVA medical center for medical care, so it’s a big deal. The overwhelm majority of them are combatveterans and then upon return , no diagnosis , no care, perhaps some self-medication, and then because of that being knocked out, many ex-servicemen who have psychiatric disabilitiesor medical conditions where the manifestations of the condition may be mistaken for some typeof malpractice or acting out, those veterans are the very veterans who need those VA benefitsthe most.They succession me retained in bunked for six weeksto let them, to let everything heal. The tendernes was just, I want, it was intense. I ended my freedom ankle and my knees were shotand my lower back is shot from the explosion. I remember crawling out of the truck and acore husband coming up to me and saying, you were dead really a few minutes ago, I checked yourpulse, we moved onto another person.They gave me a Order of the purple heart. You don’t see too many people that using them, it was clearly a proud moment. Something I could pass down through their own families. So when it was time to rotate to, back tothe Regime, they basically magnetism you to sign a piece of paper saying that you’re mentallystable, you’re fine, everything is okay. If you don’t signed the paper, they’re goingto hold you on an eval there to see if you can even come home.Nobody put down any mental illness, anythingthat’s bothering them, any bad dreams or anything like that, everybody has been said, we’re fine. So when you get back home, there’s no help. It took a few months for it to really sinkin. Your mind starts to get a little twisted anda little messed up so you do feel depressed and you do have bad dreams and maybe a terribleattitude over everything there is, but there’s no one there to fix it. When he came back, they never counseled us, they never expected us anything. I think he was just trying to find an outletto obliterate some of the pictures and the foresees in his head and it’s so hard, people don’tunderstand, they, even it’s hard for me to understand sometimes how break-dance he is frombeing in the Marine Corp and from being at war .[ Music] I exactly didn’t want to lose my[ singer cracking ], I didn’t want to lose my husband.[ Music] Shortly after I had returned, my brother-in-lawcame down to visit us. We were sucking and everything, and he handedme a seam, so I figured, you know what, I’m going to just is an attempt really escape everythingI’m thinking about. I took two attracts off of this joint and thatwas it, I couldn’t hold no more. A week last-minute, I had a random piss test atmy shop at my work. My company officer announced me into his officeand had explained to me that I had failed the piss test.He “ve been given” an ultimatum. He said, you can either fight this and, asa, as a consequence if you lose, you get a shameful removal and you get kickedout immediately, out of the Marine Corp. Or you can plead guilty to, to doing it andwe’re going to give you an other than honorable discharge. It started me out real shitty, you know, forI guess life. I didn’t have a job because of the discharge. I couldn’t collect unemployment. I was stressing out. We have adolescents, we don’t have enough money, it was a lot to take. My pain continued from then on, but therewas no benefits to be had.Your Purple Heart didn’t mean shit. I tried to seek out someone for some help, an organization of some sort, for two years before I noted Swords to Plowshares. So I called and was just talking to Theresa[ assumedspelling ], and she told me that they didn’t have a real reason to kick you out. Josh Crisman’s[ phonetic] case is the perfectexample of what can happen to combat veterans when they don’t receive the proper medicalcare needed. The unjust exhaust that they can receive, and then the incredible amount of work it is to undo the mess. So let me actually get Josh’s file. You need two entrusts to pluck this out.[ Drawer closing] What I have in here is acollection of all of Josh’s armed medical records and a good deal of match back andforth between Swords to Plowshares and the VA. They knew, okay, Josh does have PTSD. Josh also has tinnitus. He has a traumatic brain hurt. We basically illustrated the circumstances tothe VA, and the VA can make a determination that this veteran performed honorably, and thereforeis entitled to all VA benefits.Theresa gave me up all my compensation andpension exams. She’s done all of this, you are familiar with, for me. I was super stoked because I knew I had benefitsnow. It’s changed “peoples lives”. Without them, I don’t think we would be wherewe are today. I know that if I didn’t have any legal learn, and I needed to review all of this, there’s no way I would be able to go through hundredsand several hundreds of pages.[ Music] This is still a problem, a great problem ofveterans not being unjustly separated from the military. You know, the military forces, it’s not just goingto a job, it’s, you are familiar with, you’re set yourself at grave risk and your health at tomb risk.The unfairness of that, of being injured whenyou really surrender your young men and, and you realize that various kinds of a relinquish. This seems so unjust, so unfair, so un-American. Congress needs to do a much better job ofproviding omission to these armed accomplish asses committees and corrections timbers. It’s ridiculous when you have to wait so longfor something that you deserve and that, that’s yours. In order to change it, well I approximate we alljust need to stand up together, you know, and fight for this. Let’s just get it done.[ Music ].
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