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VETERANS OF OUR ARMED SERVICES SHOULD RECEIVE BETTER TREATMENT
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Not long ago, the House Subcommittee exposed extreme deficiencies in the treatment of our seriously injured soldiers returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The committee concluded, among other things, that continual, aggressive oversight must be implemented to research issues such as facilities’ conditions, staffing at hospitals, disability evaluations and ongoing physical and mental healthcare. But there is still a lot of work to be done.
I was thinking about “To Hell and Back”, the story of World War II hero Audie Murphy. My friend Bill Norton, who wrote and directed “Tour of Duty” wants to remake the movie, but from a different perspective.
I knew Murphy came back to the states a hero, and turned that into a successful movie career. But Bill told me that Murphy came home suffering from shell shock and survivor’s guilt, and that Murphy had to relive his heroic exploits, with the explosions and all of it, for the movies. I didn’t know that part of the story, and how it drove him nuts.
Today I mentioned it to someone, and they informed that a similar thing had happened to Sergeant Alvin York, the World War I hero.
Tonight, my 12 year old boy John asked me if I knew who the biggest hero of World War II was. I told him that the most famous ones I knew about were Audie Murphy and Commando Kelly. Kelly was the first enlisted man to be decorated with the Medal of Honor for action on the European continent. My son looked up Kelly on the internet, and we discovered that Kelly had suffered a similar fate as Murphy and York.
Kelly came home to America and made enough money from Hollywood to open a gas station, but his wife was diagnosed with cancer, and the medical bills resulted in Kelly losing his home in foreclosure. He had a tough life, eventually dying of liver failure due to alcoholism.
America needs to safeguard home ownership for veterans, as well as improve the benefits and the physical and mental health care provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. It also sorely needs a healthcare insurance program to safeguard Americans from going bankrupt due to catastrophic illness.
Now, people are wondering what to do with the glut in housing, the millions of empty homes in America, vacated by families, including the families of veterans, who were gobbled up by our banks. I’m stunned that there has been nothing tangible done to make those families whole, other than funding for counseling.
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California homes being demolished by lender that received taxpayer's bailout funds
I think as a temporary measure, to reduce the glut in housing, that the G.I. Bill should be augmented to increase the government’s down payment for veterans purchasing homes, to fifty percent of the purchase price, and the same goes for the purchase of all those new 2008 and 2009 cars that never sold.
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