Showing posts with label Army Wives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Army Wives. Show all posts

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Angry Army Wives Stage Protest of Their Own

Angry army wives protest in Paris over military working conditions

BBC
August 26, 2017
Several hundred women married to French soldiers are holding a demonstration in Paris to denounce the "deplorable working conditions" in the army.
The protest was organised by the group Angry Soldiers' Wives, which has nearly 5,200 members.
AFP/GETTY IMAGES Members and supporters of the Angry Soldiers' Wives group pictured at the protest
Mercedes Crépin, who helped set it up, said some troops on anti-terror duty were being housed in damp hangars infested with cockroaches and lice.
Around 500 people were expected to join the protest, Le Figaro reported.
After the Islamist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, the French government deployed more than 7,000 soldiers to guard prominent public places and events.
French news sites reported on Saturday that one soldier linked to the operation had shot himself dead on Friday night.
The military wives have several concerns - among them, the lack of support for the families of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
"We feel completely helpless, we do not know how to cope with the condition, how to support our men," said Ms Crépin, whose husband has PTSD after serving in Afghanistan.

Wonder how many would turn out here if we actually fought for our families in this way?

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Lifetime has no more time for Army Wives

Lifetime Army Wives
Two-hour Special March 16 at 9.8c
Final Show
I watched Army Wives from the start even though friends were making fun of it. I couldn't help it. I got addicted to it. My favorite was Roxy. When she left the show, it just wasn't the same for me.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Jesse McCartney talks about portraying PTSD soldier on Army Wives

Jesse McCartney talks touring with BSB, 'Army Wives': 5 highlights
by OnTheRedCarpet.com Staff
07/30/2013

With a role on "Army Wives," new music and a tour, Jesse McCartney is having a busy year.

The actor and singer recently spoke to OTRC.com correspondent Tony Cabrera about joining The Backstreet Boys for their "In A World Like This Tour," starting on August 2 in Chicago. McCartney also chatted about his new music, how preparing for his role on "Army Wives" was life-changing and his charitable work with City of Hope.
Preparing for his 'Army Wives' role was life-changing.

"The top of this year I was in South Carolina for about five months. I was working on a show called 'Army Wives.' It was in its seventh season, they brought me in. I played a young Army recruit straight out of high school who gets shipped over to Afghanistan to fight and, really sweet kid," McCartney said of his character on the show. "Just happy to be there. Trying to make friends with everyone. Doesn't really know quite what he's doing, but he just knows he wants to fight for his country."

McCartney's character,Tim Truman, goes through a traumatic experience during the war and begins to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

"I got to sit down with a lot of ex-military who have actually struggled with PTSD and I heard some unbelievable stories that were kind of life-changing," he said about preparing for his role. "It was great to really shed some light on an issue like this, 'cause I feel like most of America doesn't realize what these soldiers go through and that most of the time the war really starts when they come home."
read more here

Monday, June 3, 2013

'Army Wives': Tim Nearly Kills His Wife While Suffering Through PTSD

I am not ashamed to admit I am a fan of Army Wives. I have been since it started. Friends make fun of it but I can't help it, I like it. Last night a young soldier suffering from PTSD and survivor guilt had a bad nightmare and in the process, repeated strangling someone to death. In reality, his hands were on his wife's throat. It was pretty powerful and it is something that does happen more times than most people know about. More wives are punched out over waking up a veteran from a nightmare in striking distance and end up calling 911. The veteran is arrested all too often ending up in jail over domestic violence and the spouse is left in shock. In a perfect world, the wife is safe while the veteran receives treatment and she is supported to understand what happened. This is not a perfect world and too many face fates left up to commanding officers.
'Army Wives': Tim Nearly Kills His Wife While Suffering Through PTSD
(VIDEO)
Huffington Post
Posted: 06/03/2013

A frightening scene that was all too real for many veterans and soldiers on "Army Wives." Tim was still readjusting to live back on base, but he was also struggling with some rather serious post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In one scene he was dreaming that he was choking a man only to have the scene cut to the real world and find him choking his wife, Holly, in their bed. She was pleading with him to stop between desperate gasps for air. Luckily, she was able to get through to him in time.

TV Fanatic said that this storyline sends the message that 18-year-olds may not be ready to fight our wars. "We're essentially saying you're old enough to protect your country but not relieve your stress with a beer," they wrote. "'[Tim's] PTSD is beyond the help of friends and fellow soldiers, and if Holly doesn't demand he seek help, there could be a time when she doesn't live through the night. That's pretty heady stuff.”

While the storyline does tap into things that are really going on in the world, there is encouraging news. According to a study released this spring, the Army says that 80 percent of its soldiers diagnosed with PTSD remain on active duty and can be treated.
read more here

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Fort Campbell honors selfless volunteers

Fort Campbell honors selfless volunteers
159th Combat Aviation Brigade Public Affairs
Story by Capt. Xeriqua Garfinkel


Deborah Varna (left) and Tamra Shaughnessey, volunteers with the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, pose for a photo with Col. Jimmy Blackmon, the brigade commander after an awards ceremony at Fort Campbell, Ky., Oct. 18. The monthly ceremony recognizes outstanding volunteers who donate their time in support of other military families or their communities.

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - "Ladies and gentlemen, the ceremony will begin in two minutes," the Voice of the Eagle announced over the microphone.

The last of the awardees found their seats as approximately 100 friends and family members, soldiers and leaders found theirs. The gathering in McAuliffe Hall Atrium, Oct. 18, recognized the Fort Campbell, Ky., Volunteer of the Month, where 159th Combat Aviation Brigade had three recipients.

The Volunteer of the Month program is dedicated by the post to recognize all the volunteers for Fort Campbell, explained Sonya Long, the family readiness support adviser for the 159th CAB. Each brigade has two months during the year to nominate their volunteers, and the top three with the most hours or an exceptional community outreach get awarded a certificate, division pin, post parking pass and a bag with other goodies.
read more here

Friday, July 30, 2010

Jill Biden appears in Army Wives

Some of my friends in the military think I'm nuts because I love Army Wives. Can't help it. I'm hooked. They tell me how unreal it is but when it comes to this show, considering it's about the military, it has broken the long list of failures of other attempts to show any kind of military life. Movies fail more than they succeed and so do TV shows. Army Wives will never be another MASH but it outlasted what a lot of critics had predicted. This summer fill in has a lot of loyal fans and I'm one of them.

Jill Biden appears in ‘Army Wives’

The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jul 30, 2010 11:11:02 EDT

WASHINGTON — It isn't much of a stretch for Jill Biden when she takes an acting turn in an episode of Lifetime network's "Army Wives."

The second lady, playing herself, visits the show's Fort Marshall to hear about the challenges facing military families and offer them words of encouragement.

"I'm proud to be here today as a second lady, but I'm even more proud to be here as a military mom," Biden tells a group that gathers for the post's annual fun run to benefit military kids.

In between all of the bickering, smooching and other interpersonal drama of the TV show, Biden gives the crowd a pep talk. She tells them how important it is to build "stronger ties between our civilian and military communities."

"Although only 1 percent of Americans are fighting our wars today, we need 100 percent of Americans to support them and their families," she says.
read more here
Jill Biden appears in Army Wives

Monday, June 23, 2008

Army Wives and Forgotten Families

'Army Wives': I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV
Zap2it.com - USA

Roland Burton is an excellent doctor. We know this because they told us so throughout the entire first season of Army Wives. This is a man who has received national acclaim for his work counseling patients through post-traumatic stress disorder. He's a man who, as soon as he decided at the end of the first season to look for a job elsewhere, was instantly offered a new job at Northwestern and presumably could have had his pick of places to go. In short, this is a guy who knows what he's doing.

So what exactly does it say when one of Roland's best friends is suddenly dealing with some post-traumatic stress, but abjectly refuses to seek counsel from him? Strange, right? But that's exactly the case we've got on our hands. Claudia Joy is hurting, badly, but rather than seek help from a respected and trained professional who also happens to be a great friend, Claudia Joy would apparently rather seek support from a mysterious stranger.

As it happens, Roland isn't even the only medical professional here whose professional expertise is falling by the wayside as somebody else assumes that role instead. Denise is a registered nurse, but you wouldn't know it from her behavior in this episode, in which flirting rather than nursing seems to be her priority. In the meantime, Roxy ends up acting like more of a nurse than Denise does. Roxy takes care of Betty, dishes out medical advice on Betty's fight with cancer, and ends up bedside looking after Betty as she prepares for chemotherapy. So to recap, in this series there's both a doctor and a nurse, but others are taking over the roles of doctor and nurse instead.

The case of Claudia Joy refusing to turn to Roland for support is especially interesting. Is she operating under the presumption that everybody on post is sure to gossip about her, and so even though she should theoretically trust Roland she still worries that if she talks to him, people will undoubtedly in turn begin to talk about her? Or is it simply a matter of pride, in that Claudia Joy still believes that she should present an invincible face to the rest of the post community, that she should be strong because that's what everybody else needs?
click above for more



This is a great piece on a show I really like. If you missed Army Wives last summer, turn on Lifetime next Sunday night and watch a good show. You can catch a repeat of yesterday's show on Saturday.

The point of posting this is that TV is being played out all across the nation on a daily basis. The suicide bomber is not on a base here, but is in Iraq and Afghanistan. The family torn apart is not just on TV but right here in our own neighborhood. They do not all live on bases with other military families to turn to for understanding. They are surrounded by people without the slightest clue what they're going through. These families are National Guards and Reservists families living right in our own communities. As bad as it is for regular military families, it's worse for the "part timers" who are expected to just be like the rest of us, act like the rest of us and deal with the same problems the rest of us do. But they are not like us.

Think of what the families of National Guards and Reservists go through. They face the same problems the regular military does, except they did not expect their husbands and wives to be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan over and over again. They did not expect to have to do without the kind of income they based their budgets on. They may have expect their spouse to have to respond to national security problems here on US soil, respond to natural disasters, but to be sent over and over again away from home is not what they planned on.

When members of the "part time" weekend warriors come home, they are expected to just go back to work, if they can, picking up where they left off. Their families are expected to just go on with life between deployment and homecoming. We expect much of them but no one is really talking about what they expect from us.

When they sacrifice their incomes to live on military pay, who makes up the difference? They do. When they have to leave their own businesses, who pays their bills? They are expected to. When they come home wounded and need to be taken care of, they are on their own until their claim is finally approved to deal with the injury as well as the loss of income. But there is a catch to that too. When they have a job making a certain income, that is what they base their budget on paying for mortgages, car payments and other issues in the lifestyle they planned on. The money in compensation, is not determined on what they make in their private lives. Most of them make a lot more money working than they can ever hope to receive as a disabled veteran. Who pays the difference?

We ask a lot of our military and their families but we expect even more sacrifice out of the National Guardsmen and Reservists. We've all heard "they knew they could be sent" when they signed up, comments along that line, but when you really understand what these families expected, being totally disregarded in the process was not part of the deal.

As great as Army Wives is, there should be a program on the National Guards and Reservist families because these people are our neighbors and we've let them all down expecting them to just deal with it all. The local communities do not understand what they are going through and have been reluctant to step up to help them. Local pastors are ambivalent when it comes to the stresses and strains on families and hardly none of them want to even hear the term PTSD, yet they are supposed to be their for their congregations. They need help to heal that wound and their families need help to cope with the changes. The spiritual needs are not being filled either.

When it comes to these citizen soldiers, we have a lot to catch up on and make up for but we won't unless the media sticks their stories in our face on a daily basis and humiliates us into paying attention. They have the same problems the regular military familes do but they also have the same problems the rest of us do. The military has bases and gain support from other families but who do the citizen soldiers have? Us and we are not there for them.





Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington