Veteran's anti-war broadside posted on his barn

[babylonsister]

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9246

February 21st, 2007 3:44 am
Veteran's anti-war broadside posted on his barn

By Eric Parry / Eagle-Tribune

CHESTER, MA - Bruce Juchniewicz doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, he wears it on a barn written in white letters.

It's because he knows what war can do to a person that he decided to post the message "Stop The War" in bold letters with an American flag on the side of his red barn, a statement visible to anyone traveling through Chester on Route 102.

"It's just the way I feel," the Vietnam veteran said, sitting in his Colonial home, built in 1812. "With every war there's more veterans."

As a veteran himself, Juchniewicz is worried about the next generation of soldiers returning from war.

Since returning from Vietnam in 1972 after serving as a rescue swimmer and helicopter crew chief with the Navy, Juchniewicz's life has been plagued with insomnia and post traumatic stress disorder, he said. He's worried that the president and U.S. military leaders don't consider how much war can affect the lives of returning troops.

"Anybody exposed to that trauma, it will affect your livelihood," he said.

Juchniewicz, who regularly attends meetings with a combat support group in Lowell, Mass., said he knows veterans who led normal lives and held normal jobs for more than 20 years but who are now so paralyzed by post-traumatic stress they can't leave their homes.:cry:

more...

[Monkeyman]

1. You knew you get a K&R from me

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Good for him! Wish there was a picture with the article.

[blm]

3. KandR...this is a huge matter....

and contributed to one of the reasons Kerry will not be running again.

Kerry only had a circle of vets surrounding him who were countering the GOP attacks on his service. Bigname Dems wouldn't come forward to do the everyday lifting. Now they have most of the same bigname Dems trashing the response to the swift, and the vets take alot of it personally.

Coupled with the constant bad news from Iraq, and plenty of vets and their nerves are being raked over and raw, yet again.

I wonder how many here at DU are even aware that one of our favorite vets, Max Cleland, has been suffering with PTS since not long after the 2004 campaign?