The
Top Ten Reasons to be a Homeless Veteran in America Today!
Remarks
delivered on Veterans Day 2015 -- John M. Del Vecchio
Farmington VFW Post 10361 and Farmington Exchange
Club: fund raiser for Veteran’s Matter
I
would like
to thank Al, Justin, the Farmington VFW and The Farmington Exchange Club for
inviting me here today.
On this day, of all days of the year,
it is an honor to be amongst so many who have worn the uniform of our country; and
who have accepted the challenge and responsibility of protecting life and
liberty for those within our boarders, and for many in foreign lands about the
globe.
As you well know, tonight is a fund
raiser for Veterans Matter—an organization dedicated to the mission of
alleviating homelessness amongst our brothers and sisters. So tonight, let’s
talk a bit about veterans who have been left behind…
Let’s
give some thought to why it happens, and how it happens; and to the contributing
factors.
But
let’s start out on a light note—we’ll get more serious in a moment.
With a tip of the hat to David
Letterman… and with a bit of tongue in cheek for the beginning of the list… I’d
like to present THE TOP TEN REASONS TO BE A HOMELESS VETERAN IN AMERICA TODAY.
Reason # 10: Chicks dig
it. Hey, some chicks like to take care of guys… well… you get the idea.
Reason #9: I’ve slept in
a lot worse places than this.
Sleeping on a subway grate in NYC may
be far more comfortable than sleeping on the side of a jungled mountain in I Corps,
Vietnam, or in a shallow sand-trench in the Iraqi desert.
I
remember one night… this was perhaps the worst sleeping position ever… we were
on a steep jungled hillside about 20 clicks below the DMZ and 10 clicks from
the Laotian border, and the only way to maintain our position was to straddle
tree trunks. All night gravity pressed our weight, and the weight of our rucks,
down against the tree trunks we straddled… well… again, you get the idea. A
subway grate would have been most welcomed.
Reason # 8: The
rent fits my budget.
In 1970-1971, I spent a number of nights
in the boonies with the Recon Platoon of Echo Company, 2d of the 502d Infantry.
The company commander at the time was Captain Charles Ciccolella—Chick, as we
came to call him. Chick retired as a colonel, went on to become Under Secretary
of Labor for Veteran Affairs, and is now Chairman of the board of directors of
the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
His group reports that homelessness is
highest amongst our youngest veterans; that is those vets under 30. The
percentage falls slowly as we look at older groups. NCHV also report that on
any given night over 100,000 vets take advantage of rent-free of benches,
boxes, doorways, or of the back seat of a car. Another 300,000 struggle to meet
their rent and are considered at risk.
Chick
tells me the economy is only one factor, but it is a significant factor.
Despite official figures pegging the unemployment rate at 5%, the American work
force is at its lowest participation rate in four decades.
Reason # 7: My wife
thought it was a good idea.
My apologies. It is not easy to keep this light.
When a veteran returns from a war zone, his or her spouse—no matter how
supportive—bears a re-adjustment burden few non-military spouses will ever experience.
Reason # 6: My job is
being done for half the wage by a guy from Guatemala whose family is on
assistance.
What I’m actually asking you to do
here is to study, to analyze, to cogitate upon all the factors—and the
interplay of the factors—which lead to social withdrawal, self-medication with
street drugs or alcohol, unemployment and homelessness.
There are elements in these equations
which each and every one of us has some control over or some influence upon.
Reducing homelessness to the economy,
or to a guy from Guatemala, or to PTSD, or drug use and abuse may be helpful,
but it will not solve the magnitude of this very complicated problem. We need
to go further; we need deeper understanding.
Reason # 5: The guy in
Human Resources said I didn’t have the proper certification to qualify for the
job.
This past weekend I was at my 50th
high school reunion. Terrific time. Great to catch up with people… many of whom
I hadn’t seen in half a century. It was also interesting to find out how many
were veterans of the war in Southeast Asia. One of my classmates—essentially
right out of high school—entered the Air Force. At 19 he became a flight
mechanic on B-52s flying Operation Rolling Thunder over North Vietnam. In
today’s terms, he was responsible for a $70-million dollar aircraft.
Veterans tend to be the strongest,
most-selfless, and most determined people in our society. They tend to be
exceptionally competent. Most have lead others to one extent or another; and
all have been responsible for thousands to millions of dollars of equipment—not
to mention protecting the lives of vast civilian populations.
Yet, over and over again we read, or
hear, or see reports saying military service doesn’t translate into civilian
jobs. Perhaps we need better translators; or perhaps the perception of what
military service entails needs changing. That guy trudging through the arid
mountains of Afghanistan carrying his weapon and about a hundred pounds of gear
in not JUST a guy who can pull a trigger. As retired Marine Corps General James
Mattis said:
You’ve
been told that you’re broken, that you’re damaged goods and should be labeled
victims. I don’t buy it. The truth, instead, is that you are the only folks
with the skills, determination and values to ensure American dominance in this
chaotic world.
Those skills, determination and
values, and the inherent leadership and responsibility need to be recognized
and incorporated in our cultural perception of veterans.
Allow
me to group a few reasons together.
Reason #4: If I
self-medicate with drugs or booze, bein’ on the street “don’t mean nothing.’”
Reason #3: Bein’ on the
street puts me with a band of brothers that understand me and that I trust.
Reason #2: If your brain
had been rattled the way my brain’s been rattled, you’d be out here, too.
If I have not yet said this, let me
say it here: Homelessness is not the problem; homelessness is the result of a
complex constellation of problems. The above three reasons relate to Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, and with Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI. We could
talk about PTSD and TBI for months and just scratch the surface. For those of
you who are interested in the topic, I would suggest looking into the work being
done through the Fisher Foundation and the Intrepid Centers.
One resultant: TBI, once thought of as
permanent brain damage because the brain was considered static, is now
recognized as curable as it has become know that the brain is capable of not
just plastic recovery (where one area takes over for a damaged area), but of actually
repairing injured tissues and of growing new neurons.
Before we get
to
the #1 reason to be a homeless vet in America, I’d like you to do a little mental exercise with me. I would like you to
imagine this scenario. Place yourself into this picture.
You are a concrete worker, a member of
a team responsible for creating and installing a beautiful sidewalk and plaza
before the state capitol building. You work very hard on this project both in
preparation before the actual project begins, and during the construction phase.
The construction takes months. When the final pour is finished, the level
concrete gleams in the sun; and when you leave the site you are proud of a job
well-done; a job that has created something beautiful, something that literally
millions of people over the years will enjoy.
But
the night of the final pour dozens of vandals descend upon the site. They run
across the still wet concrete leaving it marred and ugly. Weeks later you find
out that there has been an official decision made to ignore the damage. Months
later people complain about the lousy job done by the contractor. Over the
years the plaza picks up the nickname… insert your name here …Del Vecchio’s
Folly.
Please
keep this image in mind as we get to… Ta Dah…!
Reason # 1 to be a
homeless veteran in America! I feel betrayed by my country, by the media, by
the general story being told, and by the gigantic gaps and omissions in the
story of who I am, who I was, what I did, and why I did it.
Have you ever hear or read of a vet
saying--or perhaps said yourself, “When I left, we were winning.”?
This past August and September, Journalism
Professor Mark Masse from Ball State University, interviewed me for a book he
is writing on combat correspondents. The interviews were in-depth. He
continuously probed for an explanation as to how I coped with my own experiences.
I explained how PTSD and PCSD [Post
Combat Stress Disorder] are composite syndromes with varied facets that combine
in many different ways. He didn’t like the explanation. I explained the concept
of Post-Traumatic Growth… essentially that which doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger. He still wasn’t satisfied.
What
I’m about to read is my final email answer to him on this topic.
Mark, yes, one
could say my coping behaviors were generally positive—writing, construction,
real estate, and you could add friends/family, and physical fitness--I went
from running to biking to playing soccer, the latter both coaching the kids but
also playing in an over-40 league until I was 56. The thing is… were these coping
behaviors to help deal with the trauma of combat? Or would I have done most of
these things anyway? Likely I would have, with the exception of writing—and the trauma there has been more from
the absurdities of many of the story told by American academia or by the
American main-stream media; along with the betrayal by American politicians of
not just our allies in Southeast Asia, but of the American military and every
single individual who fought (or served) honorably.
As
you know, I was highly motivated, even prior to being drafted, to find out the
truth of what was happening in Southeast Asia. After Vietnam, after a tour in
Germany, after being discharged into the Connecticut National Guard, I moved to
California and began a career in real estate, and put Southeast Asia behind me.
Real Estate was pretty much all consuming of my mental focus for 18 months… …until,
in December of 1974 I learned of the massive movements of communist troops and
materiel down through western I Corps, into the Central Highlands.
Historians
now tell us this movement consisted of 400,000 troops moved by 18,000 military
trucks, 500 Soviet T-54 tanks, 400 long-range 130 mm howitzers. All supported
by a 12” gas and a 4” oil pipeline running down across the DMZ, through western
I Corps, through the A Shau Valley, down past Kham Duc and Dak To, all the way
down to the outskirts of Song Be City. That’s what we had stopped when I was
there; it is what American troops had interrupted going back to the first
advisors under Eisenhower; it was the essence of reason behind the battles at Khe
Sanh, Lang Vei, A Shau, Ta Bat, Ripcord and in The 13th Valley.
Control of the corridor was the strategic linchpin of the communist war effort
from ’59 to ’75.
Those
late 1974 meetings of vets in California I wrote about in (my third novel) Carry Me Home—where the vets are talking
about going back to VN to stop the communist invasion—those meetings took place
at the times and places described… and I was a part of it. At that time, we all
knew what was happening, and we could barely believe our country was letting it
happen.
That
was every bit as traumatic as having a 122mm rocket explode 75 feet to my
right, or having an AK round go between the sole of my boot and the earth.
Actually watching that collapse over a period of 4 ½ months, that was more
traumatic than the 122 or the AK round or any of the mortars. It was more
traumatic because I always felt I had some control in Vietnam—I could respond
by firing back or by dropping into the nearest hole in the ground while others
around me responded by firing back or calling in arty or air support.
But
watching South Vietnam and Cambodia collapse (even if most of America didn’t
begin to pay attention until sometime in March of ’75), realizing that we, now
being civilians without the necessary transportation or logistical support,
realizing there really was no way to go back; that we, Soldiers, Marines,
Sailors, Airmen, we the proud, the hard, the strong, we were essentially
impotent. That’s where the motivation came from in ’75 to make the switch from
real estate to writing—even if at that time I thought I was only correcting the
record for the 101st Airborne.
It’s actually hard for me to write this right now without cussing. The anger
from that betrayal at times slips beneath the surface but it has never abated.
So… what would I have done had I not written about the war, had I not continued
to read and study about it for decades… perhaps I would have coped via alcohol
or drugs or petty crime and homelessness -- read that as my condemnation of
those witless, gutless politicians who allowed the fall to happen; my
denunciation of those evil activists (think John Kerry, et. al.) who skewed the
story from reality (read that as lied their asses off for their own glorification);
and my continued disrespect for all the well-meaning useful idiots that
accepted the propaganda until its bulk virtually snuffed out fact and reason.
For
the past several years I’ve been signing off on my emails We’re Americans.
We’re Better Than This. And I believe that. But when story—conventional
wisdom, the boilerplate of the news, the core curriculum, the politically
correct explanation—is distorted for a long enough period, then perhaps we
become a people who are not better than this!
That’s
a sad statement, isn’t it?
If I feel this way after
having 40 years to get used to the idea; how do you think our younger vets feel
about Ramadi, Fallujah or Mosul?
If I’m still angry that not one
in 100 Americans knows that the North Vietnamese communist terror campaign
waged in South Vietnam in 1960, ‘61 and ‘62 (18 months before the Gulf of
Tonkin incidents)… that in just those first three years of that campaign
against a small nation communist terrorists murdered what would be the
equivalent in 2015 of terrorists murdering half a million Americans; how do you
think our younger vets feel that not one in 100 Americans know that the 2007
surge in Iraq uncovered 17,000 liters of sarin nerve gas and 550 metric tons of
yellow cake uranium?
And if I still
anguish
over the genocide—not just in Cambodia, but in South Vietnam and Laos… if I
still feel tormented by the ethnic-cleansing of the indigenous peoples of the
highlands; how do you think our younger vets feel about the massacre of the
Yazidi and the annihilation of Christians?
The veteran
has
built something that is meaningful to him or to her. It is meaningful to the
people who use the plaza; and it is meaningful to those who will never set foot
in the plaza—whether they understand this or not.
When what has been built is ignored;
when what he or she labored and sacrificed to construct is distorted or denied,
it impacts that meaningfulness—and it is in fact demeaning to the veteran. That
societal impact may become the final straw which erupts into anger, or implodes
into PTSD, unemployment and homelessness.
A
veteran may not know the details of the history of his or her war, but he or
she knows that when they left the plaza the concrete was level and gleaming.
Correcting the story will go a long
way to correcting the problems that some veterans are experiencing.
Thank you. And God bless America.
