The forgotten. Homeless Children Dependents of Vietnam Combat Vets, when their parent succombed to untreated Combat Related Illnesses.

PO3 Aaron Hassay — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 02:55:31 -0500

I am trying to find others who went through this. I truly found out as an adult, 3o years old approximately, my missing father, was a Vietnam Combat Vet, injured and 1 year before I learned he was still alive, service connected.

I was homeless as a kid. My mom had to leave as he was untreated with serious debilitating PTSD.

I am just putting the puzzle pieces of my life together. There is some dark hole that I am understanding here.

I am that kid who by todays standards would of gottten all the support in the world from the VA, and at the Very Least, not been homeless with a young young young struggling mother who was now alone, and no consistant money, and no money a lot, to feed her kids.

I am still alive.

I am sad.

I just don't know what to do.

I could tell this story a million times.

It does me a bit of good. It is cathartic. I lived it. It was embarressing and stressful not having much of a childhood, and also, just knowing stress and moving around, without money and or food and being that broke as a kid.

And I am not even mentioning my own service. Although served honorably, I served under conditions so bad, and unessary, and uncontrolled, and uncoordinated for my enlistment, that the same Year I signed my enlistment, called a Sea and Air Mariner Enlistment 1994, the DOD Manpower Requirements Report to Congress DrewDown, took my enlistment package off the shelf, for more experienced Veterans to fill.

I was assaulted in service. I served a dud enlistment in the hardest unit, where experience is mandatory. My enlistment gaurenteed me minimal experience. So it was an enlistment that basically gaurenteed me the parameters of a Anxiety or Stress Disorder.

COSC Combat Operation Stress Control lists Youth, Inexperience, New Command, New Job due to transfer inbetween units, No Trust Built with my new unit, doing Hazardous Duties Day 1 serving on a COMBAT ship.

And get this, I was in this enlistment, that limited my health care access entitlements to only when I was in uniform doing the Hazardous Combat Operations with the Ship. As a reservist enlistment, I could not access any MHF Miltary Health Facility on my own behalf for any ache pain illness that I was concerned with, after 48 or more straight hours out at Sea Doing Simulated Combat General Quarter Drills for 1, which are the highest stress level one can endure, to simulate real life and death realities at Sea due to combat in war.

Now I am SSDI for anxiety and mood disorder with 2 hernias and DDD at 38. I am trying to live off of 900 a month and beg for money before the end of the month in the street.

I was denied for disability simply, some would say, not because of what I did in uniform over 8 years, but that I was a RESERVIST enlistment.