nothin He Didn’t Pull The Trigger | New Haven Independent

He Didn’t Pull The Trigger

Burke with Murphy Monday.

Marine veteran Thomas Burke will never forget cleaning up the remains of Afghan children after an explosive device ended their lives. Now, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is promising to help less-than-honorably discharged vets like him get the mental health care they need.

Murphy delivered that message Monday morning at New Haven’s City Hall. Sharing a podium with Burke, Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans Of America (IAVA)-CT team leader Steve Kennedy, Connecticut Veterans Legal Center Executive Director Margaret Middleton and Marine Corps veteran turned legal advocate Jonathan Petkun, Murphy spoke on the Honor Our Commitment Act of 2017, which he introduced with U.S. Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Michael Bennet of Colorado and U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas.

Currently before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, the bill proposes that the Department of Veterans Affairs provide mental health and behavioral health services” to former combat members who have received Other Than Honorable (OTH) discharges and are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and other behavioral and mental health issues. The bill does not cover dishonorable discharges, which are different from OTH or less-than-honorable discharges, also called bad papers.”

Murphy said tens of thousands” of veterans annually go without the mental and physical health care that they need, including treatment for PTSD and the neurological attention necessary to diagnose and treat TBI.

Self-Medicating

That’s what happened to Burke, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran turned Yale Divinity School student who also serves as the president of the Yale Student Veterans Council.

Burke’s Marine Corps and Arabic-speaking background brought him to Iraq during the George W. Bush presidency; his Pashtun then brought him to Afghanistan as a marksman and team leader during the Obama years. In Nawa, Afghanistan, he said, his unit worked with local kids who would often find explosive devices, and bring them to American soldiers.

In January 2010, they found a RPG (Rocket-propelled grenade) near a canal where they were swimming. They were bringing it back to the soldiers when it exploded, killing several of them instantly.

Burke was one of the troops charged with cleaning up those remains.

Through his Pashtun skills, he had gotten to know those kids. The carnage of the scene followed him, growing into undiagnosed and untreated PTSD. He began smoking hash that he could find locally.

A month later, he found himself at the Helmand River, with the barrel of his rifle in his mouth. He didn’t pull the trigger, and he finished out his deployment in Afghanistan.

In May of that year, he was charged with smoking marijuana while serving. Months later, he was given an OTH discharge, and was unable to access VA benefits beyond a month in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) psychiatric unit. It took seven years, fighting for recognition of his PTSD diagnosis with other veterans, before he received health care benefits. 

I owe my life to Sen. Murphy and his staff,” Burke said. These are not men and women who are taking advantage of the system. These are men and women who are broken.”

He added that reintegrating to society is a perilous journey” after the military, and there is no chance of resiliency” for veterans who are unable to receive the treatment they need. 

If You Fight …”

Murphy at Monday’s press conference.

Petkun estimated that OTH discharges affect between 800 and 1,000 veterans in Connecticut who are unable to receive benefits and services from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Those include veterans from the Vietnam War era up to more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans with OTH discharges are three times as likely to commit suicide as those with general discharges. As of 2016, a VA Study suggested that 20 veterans commit suicide each day. 

At the heart of this bill is a very simple premise,” said Murphy Monday. If you fight for this country … then you are due benefits.”

Arguing that we are breaking our promise to veterans,” Murphy explained that the bill aims to push the military to treat rather than stigmatize or dismiss mental health problems among soldiers receiving other than honorable discharges. If service members show behavioral discrepancies, suicidal ideations or behavior, or go AWOL, they are often handed OTH discharges, and return home both severed from their military units and unable to receive health care. That’s because only veterans who receive honorable or general discharges are granted access to VA services.

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