Correspondent speaks about loss of connection between civilians, veterans

NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence said he started to gain more in common with the soldiers serving in Iraq he was covering, many of whom served three or more tours of duty, because they had been sucking the same dust for 10 years.

While Lawrence was still a correspondent during a U.S. military conflict, he spoke with a soldier on his way home after serving multiple tours.

He said jokingly, “Good luck to you trying to fit in back home.”

It slowly hit Lawrence many of those soldiers he covered would have a hard time adjusting to civilian life.

“I’ve joked before about yellow-ribbon fever,” Lawrence said, adding election season and Veterans Day happen to be when many people attach a yellow ribbon to their lapels. “They want to talk about veterans at football games or during the election. ... They get the lip service but not the follow-through.”

Lawrence spoke Friday at the Veterans Day breakfast hosted by KRCU at VFW Post 3838. He spent 10 years in the Middle East, mostly in and around Iraq from 1999 through 2009. He covered the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and periodically reported on other stories in Afghanistan.

During that time, he embedded with combat units. As veterans correspondent for NPR, he now focuses on issues affecting war veterans. That includes trying to obtain medical services from Veterans Affairs — which he described as a labyrinth of red tape — to various approaches in treating post-traumatic stress disorder and finding housing for homeless veterans.

He told the story of Matt Lambert, who lost three of his limbs to an improvised explosive device.

Lambert has a tattoo on his remaining arm in Arabic that reads, “My name is Matt, and you missed.”

Lambert was fitted for prosthetic limbs but the limbs no longer fit because he gained and lost 100 pounds after he was confined to a wheelchair.

Lambert has been trying to get replacement limbs through the VA but has been unable to acquire new prosthetics because of rules establishing time frames between replacements.

Lawrence also talked about Dan Martin, who after serving in two combat deployments was living on the streets of San Diego, abusing alcohol. Other veterans were trying to get Martin to attend the Stand Down San Diego event where he would have been given temporary housing.

“There’s a lot of people coming home that need help, physical help,” Lawrence said. “It’s getting harder and harder to tell their stories to a civilian population that has lost that connection.”

Lawrence said it took him two weeks after being back in the U.S. to forget there was a war in progress. With fewer people serving in the military, most U.S. citizens that Lawrence talks to say they do not have a family member who was in the military until they think about their grandparents.

Two Americans were killed in action during the third presidential debate in October, and it was not mentioned, Lawrence said.

The connection people build with returning veterans is key to helping them cope with PTSD, Lawrence said. It does not matter whether it’s a mountain-climbing, horseback- riding or hunting group, as long as people are making that connection.

Lawrence said there always will be a gap between what the VA can provide and what veterans deserve. The gap needs to be filled by charities that have not grown to match an increasing need.

“I’m worried about the connection between civilians like myself and the people who served,” Lawrence said.

Freedom Corner

Navy Warrant Officer Tim King’s experience when he volunteered for the Navy in 1970 was different from the experience of military men and women now serving overseas, he said.

King was the main speaker at the Veterans Day ceremony at the Freedom Corner at Capaha Park.

“When we returned, we weren’t welcome back,” King said during his speech. “We didn’t wear uniform articles in public because we were afraid to get our butts kicked.”

Fellow Vietnam veteran Gary Bridges agreed American society has improved in its treatment of veterans, but King and Cape Girardeau VFW auxiliary members Sandy Prichard and LaDonna Hengst spoke about a generational divide between older and younger veterans.

“The young guys getting off the plane is completely different,” Prichard said. “If we could get some of the younger veterans in to talk to the older veterans, we’d get smiles from the older veterans.”

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In general, Prichard and Hengst said it has been difficult to reach younger veterans because many of them continue to serve — as many as five tours in some cases — and because they so far have been unwilling to accept help from older veterans.

“They’re not able to ask for help because they are still in it,” Hengst said.

An average of 20 veterans commit suicide each day. Prichard noted the number had decreased from 22 suicides a day.

“One is too many,” she said.

King said society has taken great strides to make veterans feel more appreciated , and Vietnam veterans finally are getting the recognition they were due. But the government still doesn’t support veterans-health issues as well as it could, he said.

However, King said he feels the millennial generation has little respect for the service of previous generations. He said millennials in uniform also have received different treatment from their officers.

“We, as parents, have failed these kids in trying to give them a great life, mainly with material things. We didn’t give them the value of life,” King said. “They feel like life is handed to them.”

About 1 million people deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan were between the ages of 20 and 29 as of 2013, all of them millennials, according to National Academic Press.

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