Note from Leslie McColgin--West Kentucky Journal Editorial Board

This submission was solicited by me for a speech to be delivered at the April 12th 2025 HandsOff! West Kentucky Fights Back rally.  The disabled veteran who was eager to share his story at the same time was inhibited from sharing it because of a non-profit he has connections with that serves the community's most vulnerable residents, and he was fearful of jeopardizing the support and funding if he exercised his First Amendment rights to speak out freely.  It is truly a sign we are in uncharted territory when a story like this cannot be freely and openly shared by someone who fought and sacrificed defending those very freedoms.  The speech was read for him at the rally by Alex Waldrop, native of Mayfield and son of a WWII decorated veteran.

 
Hello, This submission is provided anonymously because of my connections to a non-profit organization that serves the community's most vulnerable residents.

As a combat medic serving in Fallujah and Ramadi, Iraq, from 2005 to 2006, I sustained severe injuries, including back, neck, knee, and ankle damage due to the strenuous demands of my role. The intense combat, including multiple IED attacks and direct enemy fire, resulted in five separate strikes on my Humvee, causing traumatic brain injuries and migraines from the shockwaves.

During and after the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the Department of Veterans Affairs struggled to accommodate returning veterans. However, notable progress was made in recent years, particularly during the Obama and Biden administrations, when the quality of healthcare provided at the VA significantly improved. Unfortunately, this progress was reversed after the Trump administration's layoffs, including the loss of my beloved psychiatrist of over a decade.

The VA called and said my mental health appointment was canceled, and my regular video call appointment was unavailable, meaning I had to drive out of town to see a new doctor. Then, a week later, that appointment was canceled and postponed again. The woman on the phone sounded extremely stressed. She said she used to have coworkers who helped at her clinic, but she was now doing the work for two clinics by herself. I then experienced three more cancellations, pushing my appointment further out.

The layoffs led to severe disruptions in my care, with multiple appointment cancellations and delays. My pain management appointment, back surgery, and neurology consultations were also canceled and rescheduled months later, resulting in a month-long lapse in pain medication and delayed surgery.

What happens to veterans who need vital healthcare right now and not months later? Long wait times for appointments are detrimental to their health. Without proper healthcare, many veterans are at risk of worsening health issues or even fatal outcomes.

Something my generation of veterans is dealing with, similar to our Vietnam War brothers and sisters who deal with Agent Orange, is toxic burn pits on our camps and bases. The one at my camp was bigger than a football field. Everything was burned there: from trash, sewage, plastic, rubber, and jet fuel to chemicals and radioactive waste. The burn pit was on the west side of the base where the wind blew it all through where we lived. We breathed that black, toxic smoke all day, every day for a year straight. When I look at that location on a map today, 20 years later, it is still a huge black scar on the earth where nothing grows or lives.

Less than a decade after we returned home, my medical platoon sergeant was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which was determined to be caused by the burn pit, and he only had a few short months to live. He was in his early 40s, had two young children, and he and his wife had just conceived another child. Without the proper healthcare that we need, deserve, and fought for, more veterans are at risk of this happening.

Once it became known that many veterans were dying from exposure to toxic burn pit smoke, the government hired 80,000 new people to work at the VA to help. That is when our care improved most significantly.

Now, 80,000 of the roughly 480,000 doctors and workers have been fired from the VA. This not only takes us back to a time when care was subpar, extremely hard to get, and even then required an hour or two of travel for some appointments, but this sudden action has also caused shockwaves throughout the VA and many other government agencies that we citizens fund with our taxes and depend on, making services extremely hard to access or unavailable. Programs we paid for through hard work, that contribute to actually making America great are being crushed!

It's devastating to see our hard work and sacrifices beings stomped on by a billionaire draft dodger's bone spurs, who does not understand real work or selfless service. And to top it off, all this chaos and suffering is done purposefully to benefit him and his billionaire friends at our expense.

Given his past actions and statements denigrating veterans, his recent behavior is incomprehensible. Why any veteran would align themselves with him, thereby harming fellow veterans, citizens and betraying their oath to the country, is deeply concerning and disheartening.

We swore to protect the Constitution, and he is doing everything to undermine it. Our ancestors from our forefathers to our World War II veterans, would be livid, seeing all the sacrifices they made for our country and future generations crushed by a wannabe dictator who obviously does not know the meaning of service and sacrifice to our country.

Sincerely, one of the millions of disabled veterans who depend on the VA to live.