Introducing The American Veterans And Servicemembers Survival Guide

After I was shot and paralyzed in Vietnam, I spent over a year in the Kingsbridge Veterans Hospital in New York City, learning how to live life as a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair.

My ward was the focus of a Life magazine cover story that portrayed the conditions within the hospital as a "medical slum." That issue was the second-highest selling in the history of the magazine.

As the Walter Reed scandal and subsequent revelations show, when it comes to failing to provide our wounded troops and veterans with the medical care they need, history is repeating itself.

Then, as now, some troops and veterans become so beaten down by the bureaucracy, the lack of care, and the general indifference to their situation, that in despair, they take their own lives.

I felt immensely betrayed by my country when I returned home, and it kills me to see another generation of American servicemembers grappling with the same neglect. When I became a veteran, I quickly learned that the only way to survive was to become my own advocate and the same is true for today's troops and vets if they want to survive the mammoth DoD and VA bureaucracies.

So, it is with great pride that now, twenty-two years after Craig Kubey, David Addlestone, and Barton Stichman authored the The Viet Vet Survival Guide, we here at Veterans for America have joined with them to publish a new Survival Guide.

This American Veterans And Servicemenbers Survival Guide will have twenty-eight chapters that our veterans and men and women in uniform will find invaluable in getting the care and help they need. It will be constantly improved and updated. The book can be downloaded by clicking here.

The Survival Guide will help current servicemembers navigate through DoD programs and will help veterans with critical issues like re-employment rights and homeless veterans programs. It is a great guide, and I'm trying to get in the hands of as many people as I possibly can.

Please use the Survival Guide, forward it on, post links to it. Anything you can do to help me make sure as many servicemembers and veterans know about it, would be very much appreciated.

Our veterans, servicemembers, and their families deserve far more care, attention and support than they are getting now. Please join me in doing everything we can for those who do everything they can to protect us.

Comments

[larry278]

This look like something that I'll buy. I survived a stay in the old VA Hospital in the Bronx & it encouraged me to feel that old veterans & old dogs can & must learn new tricks. It is all a matter of survival. Besides I have an ex-wife or two who will be even more pissed off at me if I live a few more years. One must have a reason for living to survive & thrive.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think they should save the money and the
hospital space for folks that are really
hurt. I saw a news story about some young
PFC who decided to make a big sob-story out
of the fact that she was in the service, now
a veteran seeking lifetime entitlements.
Wasn't missing any limbs, but did seem to
be sporting a pretty good sob story. Be
really patriotic, and make sure you really
need the help etc. If you don't, employment
office...national debt goes up by a million
bucks a minute, currently standing at 9.1
trillion dollars...and climbing...

[Pdubya]

step 1. vote for ron paul in the primaries. he has the strongest record in support of our veterans and has the highest support by the military than any other candidate.

[STFU2]

I'm impressed. This is quite an ambitious project...I hope you get all of the chapters finished!

I'd take another look at your paragraph regarding characterization of discharge. H-CON discharges must be honorable.

[usna73]

Mr. Muller. Thank you for ackowledging these needs and promoting solutions. I just made it my duty to take what you have to offer and bring it to my communty here in Ohio.

I owe a great deal to the Kingbridge VA. As a boy of the Bronx, my dad ( a decorated WWII vet) was severely disabled by a stroke. We barely survived both financially and emotionally back in 1965 and 1966. But, thanks to Kingsbridge he made it through, walked again, and with the passage of Medicare and receipt of SS disability and his small military pension, his only son went on to the U.S Naval Academy in 1969.

I pledge that I have never forgotten where I came from. I'll be on your website later.

The real heroes deserve nothing less.

[steamboat]

Bobby, I've found the cheapest price for the book is through Amazon over the internet. Are you aware of that?