Serving on the home front

Old soldiers may never die, but unlike Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s famous observation, they don’t all just fade away either.

Many local veterans work to help their brothers in arms, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, by providing financial aid, moral support and political clout. They say helping the next generation of veterans is a natural extension of the brotherhood they feel for those who served beside them on the battlefield.

“Today’s older veterans are real rabble rousers about getting with these kids and teaching them about the VA system,” said William “Dusty” Rhoads, president of the Panhandle chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Rhoads said he worries that the government isn’t putting enough money into veterans mental health and medical programs, and that could make things difficult for American troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s especially true for those maimed by roadside bombs, he said.

And Rhoads added that he expects a greater percentage of Iraq war veterans to have post traumatic stress disorder than Vietnam veterans.

“In Iraq and Afghanistan today everyone is in the line of fire,” he said, adding that it’s more difficult for troops there to tell friend from foe.

Paul Kelsey, a Korean War veteran living in Coeur d’Alene, has been trying to make life better for today’s troops by helping to prepare and send care packages.

The Korean War is ever present on Kelsey’s mind. He was wounded twice by shrapnel, seriously the second time.

“I got a mortar on the parapet of my foxhole,” he said of that September 1951 attack. “I lost my lieutenant and my … sergeant.”

Knowing that troops fighting today are experiencing the same horrors increases Kelsey’s commitment to helping them.

“If you haven’t been there to understand the moment of life and death, it’s hard to explain,” he said.

One group of local military officers meets and works to help veterans and active-duty and National Guard troops.

In just the past few months the Spokane Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America has raised money to buy furniture for the television room at Spokane’s Veterans Affairs hospital and to buy pocket knives for veteran sailors attending their annual Farragut Naval Station reunion.

The group is open to those currently in the military, but many of its members are retired veterans. The local chapter includes members from North Idaho and northeastern Washington.

They comfort veteran widows and widowers. They fight to help active-duty service members by lobbying Congress for better pay and other benefits.

They’ve been pushing for a North Idaho veterans cemetery.

“We still serve,” said MOAA member Frank Potter, a former Army Air Corps pilot and veteran of World War II and the Berlin Airlift.

“Service is bred into us when we’re in the military,” said the chapter’s president, Marilyn Hunt, a retired Navy commander. “When you spend a whole career dedicating your life to a higher cause – the national defense – it just carries over.”

Operation Desert Storm veteran Mike Foth said he hopes that veterans of his war can bridge the gap between older veterans and those serving today.

Foth is commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 51, and he said he hopes that more troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq decide to join the VFW for the companionship it provides.

“If you’re a combat veteran there’s a common thread. It’s like a brotherhood,” he said. “When you speak to other veterans, there are things that don’t need to be said.”

VFW chapters sponsor units serving overseas, providing them support from home. And when something goes wrong at home, the VFW has a program called “Unmet Needs” to help out.

When the wife of a deployed service member recently needed money to fix her washing machine, Post 51 stepped in to pay the bill.

“Our motto is ‘Honoring the dead by helping the living,’ ” said Foth. “We think about other veterans every day of our lives.”