PTSD Women and the VA

No one wants to confront the VA because of the elected officials' political desire to use Veterans issues as an election ploy.

Pfc Danielle Young New Hampshire

(LEE, N.H.) - I read an article today - Back from combat, women struggle for acceptance. Can the descriptions of what these U.S. Military Veterans are going through be the same as when we returned from the Vietnam Conflict?

It is a lonely transition as they struggle to find their place, and they can describe what the American citizens who fought for this nation’s freedom have gone through after each conflict or after we came back from war.

The acceptance that the average citizen cannot understand what it is like to live and die each day or kill others indiscriminately and feel proud of your actions is reasonable.

Reasonable does not make it right to send children off to fight when so many back here, for whatever reason, will not serve.

It can never be accepted that the Veterans Administration, which was created to aid and help returning veterans, uses every legal loophole to deflect and degrade through a long process to cause or eliminate the veteran from getting help.

The article talks about Aimee Sherrod, 29, an Air Force Veteran with PTSD. Aimee finds trouble talking about what she did and went through, even though she is proud of her actions.

Women veterans are treated as second-class citizens because it is not accepted that they served on the front lines. The VA treats Aimee's disabilities as token and trivial because she got pregnant after discharge.

Genevieve Chase, 32 of Alexandria, Va. made the classic statement “We just want to know that when we come home, America has our back”.

Here is a woman that fought on the front lines for this nation and the people back here make her feel as a second-class citizen for what she did.

New Hampshire native Danielle Young, serving as a Marine Pfc in Iraq last summer, is living proof that women today are having the same experience in war as men, at least in some cases. Pfc Young did not talk about being a PTSD sufferer, but her time in the combat theater like many women, is very real. Video by Tim King Salem-News.com

This is why the code of silence is learned after we come home by the U.S. Military. Rachel McNeill was a gunner during hostile convoys in Iraq. After a strange level of non-acceptance from U.S. Citizens upon her return home, as a veteran, she now questions herself.

She seemingly even got the same response from the VA, with all the misinterpretation of her paperwork because she was a woman.

Many women have the same experience with the VA.

Men have been complaining for years about the poor or hostile actions of the Veterans Administration with the same response. (The VA leadership has said it recognizes it needs to do more to improve care for these veterans)

U.S. Military Veterans have been mistreated, and the only time action is taken to correct the wrongs is when the news stories highlight the wrongs. One or two articles, and then the mainstream news forgets. The VA resumes the wrongs as if it is the norm.

I am lucky, as my four service connected disabilities were recognized, after going through the same ordeal as stated by others above.

But now, because U.S. Rep Shea-Porter from NH did not like my opinion article, she used her federal powers to stop my medical care.

The VA in NH has worked with Shea-Porter to see that as long as I write - no medical care will be issued.

I do get token visits for things that I do not complain about as a way for the VA to buff my medical records for public display.

This is the way that the United States treats U.S. Military veterans. I write this letter because I believe what these women are being put through is wrong, just as I believe what all U.S. Military veterans have been given for what we did is wrong.

No one wants to confront the VA because of the elected officials' political desire to use Veterans issues as an election ploy.

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Peter Macdonald was a Sergeant of Marines during the Vietnam War