AOTC #31, GoodBye HM2(FMF) Carbullido

Attack of Da-Chief, recorded 13 August 2008.

Hosts: Da-Chief, 8404, DeeDee

Show Notes: atoc_31_goodbye_13_aug_2008
NETCAST: aotc #31 Goodbye HM2(FMF) Carbullido

Enjoy! Hope to hear from you next week, Wednesday 2000 CST.

HM2(FMF) Anthony Carbullido KIA **08 August 2008, Naval Hospital Corps School Loses a Doc in Afghanistan.

Naval Hospital Corps School has lost HM2(FMF) Anthony Carbullido who is from the island of Guam, was IA (Individual Augmantee) over in Afghanistan on 08 August 2008(**Corrected from 07 August to 08 August Per DOD Notification).  I know the family has been notified as well as NHCS.

You can leave a condolence message @ CONDOLENCE

This hits home for me as this Doc was stationed there when I was at NHCS.  He was killed by an IED.

I will post more info when it is released to me.

Once again, the family notification has been made, as well as command notification.

God Bless his family and shipmates and friends.  NHCS, of course you know you’re in Da-Chief’s family’s hearts and prayers.

D/C

(**Corrected from 07 August to 08 August Per DOD Notification)

Pte. Colin Wilmot Medic (CANADA) KIA 06 Jul 2008 in Afghanistan

Corpsman.com’s  hearts and prayers go out to the Wilmot family, friends and fellow Soldiers who are grieving for his Loss.  We will be hosting a Condolence page for Colin in the Corpsman.com Forums.

(Here)

Please Drop in and leave a line or 2.  Maybe some of his loved ones will see that we “AMERICANS” repsect our Canadian Brothers and Sisters who are standing with us.  –D/C

Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan remembered as dedicated medic

EDMONTON — The death of young army medic, Pte. Colin Wilmot, in a bomb explosion in Afghanistan reverberated across Canada Monday as family, friends and military comrades tried to cope with his loss.

The 24-year-old came from a family with a long history of military service. Wilmot’s stepfather, Eric Craig, a warrant officer with 2 Royal Canadian Horse Artillery at CFB Petawawa in Ontario, was given the news as he prepared for his own deployment to Kandahar.

The young man’s paternal grandfather, William Wilmot, said he’ll best remember his grandson as a little boy who used to tear around the yard in Haneytown, N.B.

“He was a real chum, a nice boy,” said Wilmot, who spent 25 years in the military himself. “Always easy to get along with.”

Soldiers at the Edmonton Garrison, Colin Wilmot’s home base, took the news hard, setting up a picture of their friend inside the entrance of the 1 Field Ambulance headquarters and lowering the unit’s colours to half mast.

“The hole it leaves is huge. We are a family. It is like losing a family member,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Linford, commanding officer of the unit, who said he has spoken with Laura, the soldier’s fiancee.

“She is clearly in shock and terribly upset at the loss of her fiancee Colin. I can’t help but feel for her. She is definitely suffering.”

Wilmot, who once joked that he decided to become a medic because of the television show MASH, died Saturday night while on a patrol with infantry troops in the volatile Panjwaii district. He was the 87th soldier to die as part of the Afghan mission, which started in 2002.

Medics share the same risks as their combat arms troops, ready to immediately rush in to help soldiers who are wounded in combat or badger them to drink enough water to avoid collapsing from the brutal heat.

“We are not sitting in tents well behind the front lines. They are fully loaded up, armed, including all of their medical gear. All medics who do this job are extremely aware of the dangers that they face,” Linford said.

“I’m impressed by their level of courage and commitment.”

In Kandahar City, at the reconstruction camp where Wilmot was posted, colleagues recalled how he was not originally scheduled to join the current rotation, but demanded to be sent after winning the top award at the Canadian Force’s medic course. He was to return home in September.

“He quickly marched in to see his regiment sergeant-major to indicate he was eager to serve,” said Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, Canada’s top soldier in Afghanistan.

“Colin wanted it known that, should a spot become available on the mission, he wanted in.”

As his coffin was loaded on a transport plane for the long journey to an air base in Trenton, Ont., rows of soldiers stood in silent tribute beneath a Canadian flag lowered at half-mast while the mournful skirl of bagpipes filled the evening air.

Cpl. Genevieve Dureau broke into sobs while eulogizing Wilmot at a memorial service at the military camp. She served in Wilmot’s unit.

“He was always there for you no matter what, always helped you, no questions asked - even if it wasn’t in his best interest,” she said.

“He’d walk around with this really goofy smile on his face all the time. I don’t know why. He just did. He was always happy, no matter what the situation was. Colin, you were the nicest guy I’ve ever met and you will be greatly missed.”

In Fredericton, high school friend Andrew Foreman said that Wilmot usually had a smile on his face and something positive to say.

Foreman said he wasn’t surprised by Wilmot’s decision to join the military after they graduated in 2002.

“He was eager, he was driven, he was outgoing - he was a great guy,” Foreman said.

“He was the kind of person who would want to go and help people. That’s probably why he became a medic, that’s just the way he was.”

Melissa Laagland-Winder of Oromocto, N.B., said the soldier, who grew up in the Fredericton area, always seemed to be in good spirits.

“He was just a really down-to-earth guy,” she said. “We always joked back and forth that he was going into the medical field to be something like a MASH doctor, and that was our little joke every time we spoke.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed condolences on behalf of the federal government.

“Private Wilmot was strongly committed to treating members of both the Canadian Forces and Afghan National Security Forces injured in combat,” Harper said.

“He participated in numerous security patrols with his fellow soldiers to ensure that immediate medical assistance was available if someone got hurt. Tragically, he was critically wounded on such a patrol in the Panjwaii district when an explosive device detonated.”

The troops of 1 Field Ambulance are to provide an honour guard at Wilmot’s funeral later this month. Details and location were pending.

“Colin will be brought back to Canada on Wednesday. We will do what we can to support his family,” said Linford, who said a new group of medics is training to deploy to Afghanistan next year.

“We will come back to this base and we will carry on with our mission.”

- With files from Jennifer MacMillan in Halifax and Kevin Bissett in Fredericton

Ryan James Connolly, Medic, United States Army, KIA in Afghanistan

It has just been a horrible month for the Doc community. I will post more later when it becomes availible.
D/C

We lost another medic today…
Ryan James Connolly, a 24-year-old Army medic who grew up in Santa Rosa, was killed by a plastic land mine in a remote area of Afghanistan, family members said Wednesday.

Connolly, who was promoted recently to the rank of sergeant, served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade based outside the town of Khogyani in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border.

He was riding in a vehicle with four other troops when the mine exploded Tuesday afternoon (Afghanistan time). One other soldier was killed and three were wounded, said his stepfather, Robert Nelson of Vacaville.

The combat medic had just two weeks left on his one-year deployment to Afghanistan, with orders to report to the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey.

Improvised explosive devices, including plastic mines that are virtually undetectable, have become a constant source of bloodshed in Afghanistan.

According to the Associated Press, nearly 2,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year in Afghanistan - many of them killed by mines and bombs detonated next to convoys.

“He was a really strong young man - strong physically, mentally and morally, heart and soul - and a loving father,” Nelson said.

He said Connolly’s wife, Stephi, lives in Bamberg, Germany, with their 1-year-daughter, Kayla.

Connolly graduated from Piner High School in Santa Rosa, and joined the Army in 2005.

He had survived multiple firefights in Afghanistan. Just a few days ago, he phoned his father, mortgage broker Jim Connolly of Santa Rosa, and described being ambushed. His unit was pinned down in a firefight for hours after they walked into a village.

Connolly had taken a leave in April, bringing his family to Santa Rosa. During that trip, he bought a 1970 Chevy Nova and began to restore it. He had a passion for baseball, classic muscle cars, NASCAR racing and all things mechanical.

“He was in good spirits then,” Nelson said, “and looking forward to finishing the last three months and coming back home.”

Soon after Connolly returned to Afghanistan, Nelson said, a 10-year-old boy with a bomb blew himself up in a crowded square. Connolly was among the first medics on the scene - rescuing about 20 Afghans.

Nelson said his stepson had grown weary of the abject poverty and violence in Afghanistan, which Connolly described as “11th century with cars and cell phones. He hated the way women and children were treated there as chattel. He was a good man.”

The medic apparently never tired of practicing his trade.

“He loved helping out in Afghanistan, sewing up the kids,” Nelson said. “It broke his heart when he didn’t have enough medicine for a whole village.”

Connolly’s mother, Robin Nelson, lives in Vacaville. His brother, Mike Connolly, lives in Santa Rosa, and his sister, Kelly Connolly, lives in San Francisco.

“He was the best brother anyone could have,” Kelly Connolly said. “Very protective, always looking out for my best interest. He was a great husband and father. He loved his daughter.”

Updated 1217 06/20/08: We have Lost 2 Sailors today in Afghanistan.

We lost 2 fellow Sailors in Afghanistan today.

The Place that “DID” attack us on 9/11.  Two heroes will be missed by their loved ones, shipmates, Marines, friends, and Corpsman.com.

We at Corpsman.com grieve for their loss.  It really really hurts when we report these stories.

From DOD: UPDATE: (We have clarified that the PO1 was a Construction Man 1st Class , we grieve for him regardless of rating.  We wanted to be sure the  information was accurate as all rates should be proud of their rating on their sleeve.)

DoD Identifies Navy Casualties

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two sailors who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Hospitalman Marc A. Retmier, 19, of Hemet, Calif., and Petty Officer First Class Ross L. Toles III, 37, of Davison, Mich., died June 18 as a result of wounds suffered from an enemy rocket attack in northern Paktika province, Afghanistan. They were assigned to Provincial Reconstruction Team Sharana in Afghanistan.

A Navy hospitalman from Hemet, Ca. died in an rocket attack in Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Marc A. Retmier, 19, was assigned to the Provincial Reconstruction Team Sharana in Afghanistan, according to a Department of Defense news release.

He and Petty Officer First Class Ross L. Toles III, 37, of Michigan, died from wounds suffered in an enemy rocket attack in northern Paktika province in Afghanistan, the release stated.

He graduated from West Valley High School, where he played football and lettered in swimming, said his uncle Jeff Retmier, a captain with the Hemet Fire Department.

He was stationed at Camp Lejuene in North Carolina and trained at Bethesda Hospital. He went to Afghanistan in December 2007, Jeff Retmier said.

Jeff Retmier said his nephew wanted to work in medicine and knew being a medic would prepare him for that.

The family plans to bury Retmier at Pacific View Cemetery in Corona del Mar.

MSNBC UPDATE AFHGANISTAN 24th MEU

Ring Ring…. Ring Ring….VA to call Iraq, Afghanistan veterans

WASHINGTON — Iraq and Afghanistan veterans: Get ready for a phone call.

The Department of Veterans Affairs said Thursday that on May 1, it will start calling 570,000 recent combat veterans to make sure they know what services are available to them.

The first calls will go to about 17,000 veterans who were sick or injured while serving in the wars. If they don’t have a care manager, the VA says they will be given one.

The next round of calls will target 555,000 veterans from the wars who have been discharged from active duty, but have not reached out to the VA for services. For five years after their discharge from the military, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have access to health care at the VA.

The effort will cost about $2.7 million and will be handled by a government contractor.

The agency has faced complaints that a backlog in claims and bureaucratic hurdles have prevented some recent veterans from getting proper mental and physical care. Earlier this week, two Democratic senators accused the VA’s top mental health official of trying to cover up the number of veteran suicides and said he should resign.

To Important not to post … PTSD Story from Stars and Stripes

A Soldier’s Struggle With PTSD

March 29, 2008

Stars and Stripes|by Tracy Burton

Army Spc. Brandon Garrison looks fine. He pulls his wife, Lily, close. He gives her a quick kiss on the cheek and wraps his hand over her stomach, carrying their first child.

Inside, Garrison fights a rage that consumes most of his days since returning from 17 months of combat in Afghanistan. It’s a demon that shows no mercy and interrupts even simple routines like eating and sleeping. At any moment, halfway through a football game or in the middle of the night, he can lose himself to this evil.

This is his war now. A war that started on a battlefield a half a world away and has now embedded itself in his mind. Through nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety and fear, he battles this beast each day.

Garrison is among thousands of troops experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as they return from Afghanistan or Iraq. The 21-year-old from northeastern Kansas is also part of a growing number of servicemembers whose well-being has been compromised in a system that’s supposed to take care of them.

The most troubling challenges facing these troops include:

Psychological trauma and mental health care not always receiving the same priority as physical injuries.

Army claims of pre-existing personality disorders, which in many cases slash disability benefits and long-term mental health care for otherwise eligible combat veterans.

The enemy Garrison encountered daily in combat still haunts him. He sees the faces of his fallen brothers. He smells the dirty air, amid the blood. Screams of panic broken with hums of moaning pain lingers and the dust ensues yet another storm inside him.

That is until he finds his way back to Lily, and back to the life he knew before war.

“Without her, I seriously wouldn’t be alive right now,” Garrison said.

Garrison’s platoon from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division based in Fort Drum, N.Y., specializes in fighting in harsh conditions. In northeast Afghanistan they were stationed in Pech Valley Korengal Outpost, one the country’s deadliest valleys.

Now that Garrison is home, he belongs to one of the Army’s Warrior Transition Units, which provides command and control, primary care and case management for servicemembers receiving treatment for wounds suffered while fighting in the war on terror. The unit works to “promote their timely return to the force or transition to civilian life.”

Here is his story.

Shortly after Garrison returned from Afghanistan last June, he headed home on a 30-day leave to Leavenworth, Kansas.

“That’s when my nightmares began,” he said. “I remember waking up in the middle of the night. I’d sit straight up in bed and it was just hard to breathe and I was panicking and I remember my wife Lily asking me if I was OK and I remember crying in her arms several times because of horrific visions that I had, and the memories and the mass casualties that we suffered.”

Nothing in particular triggered the attacks. He would hear a song or a report about the war and before he knew it, he was reliving it.

Garrison started drinking almost daily. It was the only way he knew to escape.

In August, he left to regroup with his unit in Fort Drum. Lily stayed with his folks because Garrison was going to be reassigned to a new base, so it didn’t make sense for her to go right then.

Garrison was OK when he was working. But the second he was alone, the flashbacks returned. It was terrifying and always zoomed back to one event. On this day in Afghanistan, Garrison was watching soldiers patrol a valley below him. It was almost time for them to return when the enemy launched rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire into their path.

Garrison and other soldiers helped the injured until medics arrived.

Blood was everywhere.

Garrison went to his friend, 24-year-old Spc. Christopher Wilson, and held a pressure dressing tightly against his stomach, but his young life was slipping away.

Wilson, whose greatest fear in this war was not coming home to his little girl, died a short while later.

“He was a very good soldier … a good friend,” Garrison said. “He was very brave through it all.”

Garrison needed help. He and Lily fought to where they didn’t know how much their marriage could take.

He was never much of a drinker before war. Lily wanted to understand, but she couldn’t.

“To know I had pushed a woman so close to me that far away just because of the trauma I was experiencing … that really just made it worse,” Garrison explained.

He started to hate himself.

“At the time I had been denying God and spirituality was always a big part of my life and I was actually cursing God himself and that’s when I knew that my life was taking a big downfall,” he said.

In September, Garrison went to the behavioral health clinic on base and met with a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He agreed to meet with Garrison every week or two and prescribed Trazodone and Ambien to help him sleep.

“I was calling out for help … but I was afraid to say ’suicide,’” Garrison recalled. “I was afraid to tell them what I was truly feeling because that puts a label on you and they patronize you.”

He kept it far from his command.

But by mid-September, Garrison couldn’t take it. He returned to doctors on base and told them he was feeling suicidal. They told him he had to see a regular doctor because they were booked.

The next day he found a doctor off base who prescribed Valium, which helped desensitize his reality. He heard a couple guys who committed suicide from their unit overdosed on Valium.

He was afraid to take it, but he was desperate.

It was football season. Garrison thought it would be good to get out, so he started going to the local bar to watch the games.

For weeks he did this. He was now mixing prescription drugs and alcohol. It seemed to help.

But on September 29 it all caught up.

That morning, he woke with the horrors of Afghanistan. He swallowed four Valium.

Later on he went to the bar. He took two more Valium and started drinking beer.

As he watched the game, he started getting excited. His adrenaline was pumping. Then he saw blood. Dirty air seeped in his senses and screams of horror quickly replaced the cheers.

It felt like iron weight settled in his chest. It was hard to breathe. His hands and feet throbbed. His heart was beating faster and faster and faster, like a hamster spinning a wheel.

Garrison rushed outside to his truck and blasted the air conditioning.

He could barely hold his cell phone as he struggled to dial 911. He blanked out off and on as the operator on the other end told him to keep breathing.

Within minutes ambulances and military police arrived. Paramedics strapped a plastic oxygen mask over his face and rushed him to the closest hospital in Watertown, N.Y.

He woke up several hours later with a man from the hospital’s intensive mental health unit next to him. He asked Garrison if he was suicidal.

“I broke down and cried right there,” Garrison said. “I told him I didn’t want to live anymore.”

The man said he served in Vietnam, and there was no shame in crying.

“I have a wife and a child on the way,” Garrison said through sobs. “I love them very much. I don’t want to be like this anymore, but I don’t want to live when I have these attacks, when I blank out, when I have these flashbacks.”

“I’m trying to be a good soldier. Please don’t tell my chain of command,” he pleaded.

Garrison was admitted into the psychiatric ward.

“That was the most traumatic part, but at the same time it was a relief because here I was in a place now where it was nothing but civilians,” Garrison explained. “I was away from the uniforms.”

After intense medical evaluations, Garrison was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression, according to his medical records.

For about a month, he attended group therapy and met with doctors daily.

These doctors were different. They didn’t judge him, or compare their story to his. No one said, “Suck it up, soldier.”

They listened to his every word. They sympathized with him.

He let everything out.

In late October, the military transferred Garrison to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. There he was spun through another cycle of psychiatric tests. Military doctors at Walter Reed diagnosed Garrison with PTSD and a borderline personality disorder.

Over the last six years, Defense Department records show that more than 22,500 personality disorder discharges have been processed.

A number of reports from servicemembers, veterans’ service organizations, and the media claiming ‘personality disorder’ discharges have been implemented inappropriately has spurred mental health professionals and political leaders into action.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif. “If they have a personality disorder, why didn’t the military know about it before? Why did the soldier get into the service to begin with?”

Filner, who chairs the Veterans Affairs Committee and has met with soldiers overseas, said he’s talked with military doctors who told him that they were directed to misdiagnose.

“I think it’s a purposeful diagnosis to save money,” he said.

An amendment in the FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act limits the Pentagon’s use of personality disorders. The act, signed into law Jan. 28, also calls for a full accounting by April 1 for the thousands of servicemembers discharged on the basis of personality disorder.

Dr. Charles Goodstein, a psychiatrist at the New York University Medical Center and former military psychiatrist, said that in the Vietnam era, “personality disorder” diagnoses were the rationale for separation from the service.

He explained that an individual’s underlying personality disorder could have easily eluded detection at the time of entry into the military, but in time would become very evident and therefore incompatible with further service. Goodstein, who has been in the mental health field for 44 years, also volunteers his time counseling troops.

“Psychological services have taken a back seat to the more obvious medical services for these men and women coming home from war,” he said. “It’s amazing that anyone could return without experiencing, to some degree the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

At Walter Reed, Garrison feels like he’s not entitled to be an injured soldier.

“Once you get down here and you get around the uniforms again is when the stress starts again … like a slap in the face - wake up, you’re still in the Army,” he said. “You’re treated like a soldier here and you have the expectations of a soldier and the stress of a soldier.”

And you must act like a soldier.

“I’ve had my commander and my first sergeant here look me in the face and tell me ‘You look fine to me,’” Garrison said. “They told me: You look like a squared-away soldier. You don’t look like there’s anything wrong.”

For three weeks at $71 a night, Garrison and Lily stayed at the Mologne House, a 280-room hotel located on Walter Reed’s campus. If Garrison were alone, he would’ve stayed in an old dorm-style building with other troops with mental or psychiatric trauma.

These troops must pay out of their own pocket if they want family members by their side while they recover at facilities such as Walter Reed.

Servicemembers with physical injuries are more likely to receive “Invitation Traveling Orders,” which provides family members rooms at the Mologne House. Or if the hotel is full, which it typically is, they can stay at area hotels including the Marriott or the Hilton, which cost a paying guest $119 to $289 a night.

The Army also pays an average of $64 a day for food and travel.

Garrison was told Lily could stay under an “ITO.”

“Then they told me no because I’m not handicapped and that it’s only psychiatric and that I don’t need somebody there,” Garrison said. “But any psychiatrist will argue that someone who’s going through this treatment and working through the medications and the stress … they will tell you we do need someone there.”

The night before Thanksgiving, Lily found Garrison in the bathroom.

“He was banging his head on the wall … over and over,” she said through tears. “I can’t leave him like this.”

The horror held on for several more minutes until Garrison came to with Lily at his side.

Lily is his saving grace.

“This is what connects someone back into life,” said Dr. Judith Broder, founder of The Soldiers Project, a nonprofit organization that offers free mental health counseling to veterans and their families.

“There is hope for these men and women,” Broder said. “The human being has a lot of resiliency, but it’s very important to be connected with family … girlfriends, wives, parents, grandparents, anybody close to that soldier can be a bridge that gradually brings them back to themselves.”

In late November, Garrison planned to start an intense therapy program at Walter Reed, but the day it was supposed to begin his command gave him new orders: He was to return to Fort Drum later that week to prepare for medical discharge.

“I’m scared as hell to go back there,” Garrison said before he left Walter Reed in early December. “I feel like I’ve been pushed aside … like I’m on my own to get better.”

Garrison was told he would return to Walter Reed sometime in February to continue treatment.

It never happened.

Garrison worries about his future. He’s accepted that he can’t be a soldier in war ever again.

“That terrifies me and it hurts me at the same time because here I was a soldier that volunteered for deployment,” he said. “I loved putting that uniform on every day and now when I put it on all I feel is the ulcerations in my stomach and the sickness and the anxiety and the worries, because it’s constant memories of what happened and what I’ve been through after wearing it.”

For now, his cell phone ring tone plays “Home” by Daughtry:

“Oh, well I’m going home,

Back to the place where I belong,

And where your love has always been enough for me.

I’m not running from.

No, I think you got me all wrong.

I don’t regret this life I chose for me.

But these places and these faces are getting old.

I said these places and these faces are getting old.

So I’m going home.

I’m going home.”

To Garrison, the lyrics could be summarized in one word.

Lily.

Today, she remains at his side, now joined by their new son, named in honor of a warrior who has gone home.

Christopher.

Garrison and Lily currently live in an apartment in Watertown, N.Y. Garrison is waiting to present his case before the Army’s medical review board. Lily gave birth to the couple’s first child Wednesday.

Original Article From Stars and Stripes but hosted @ military.com  http://www.military.com/news/article/a-soldiers-struggle-with-ptsd.html?ESRC=eb.nl#