Vol. 71, no. 18
The fighting hamster
Wounded veterans deserve aid
“Sgt. John Daniel Shannon told of being released from Walter Reed less than a week after he was shot in the head, causing traumatic brain injury and the loss of an eye. He said hospital staffers gave him a map of the sprawling complex and told him to find the building where he was assigned to live while receiving outpatient treatment. ‘I was extremely disoriented and wandered around while looking for someone to direct me’ to the residence, Sergeant Shannon said.”
- Testimony before Congress about the conditions at Walter Reed (as printed in the New York Times)
I was walking downtown the other day and passed by a homeless person begging for spare change. I stopped to talk to him, and noticed he was wearing a US Marines baseball cap. Like 1 out of 3 homeless Americans, he was a veteran. I bought him a slice of pizza, and he told me about his experiences serving in Vietnam. Before I left to get on the Raz, he said, “Semper Fidelis.”
While America often seems overly eager to engage in wars, it is hesitant to help the soldiers after they return. While 250,000 veterans are chronically homeless, only 6,000 receive housing from the Veterans Administration. Another 150,000 will be homeless at some point during the average year. Nearly half of homeless vets suffer from mental illness.
But as the Veterans Affairs confronts the retirement of baby-boomers who served in Vietnam, there are another one million people coming into the system who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 22,000 wounded. Which makes the tragedy of Walter Reed only more disparaging.
With the hell that soldiers are experiencing abroad in Iraq, we owe them much more than hospital rooms with rats, cockroaches, and mold. Our elected leaders must fully fund veterans programs for soldiers past and present.
Semper Fidelis, always faithful.