By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
“I’m just one of roughly 400 members, men and women who compose VFW Post 9076 here in Hays. Our post is a great group. We have several heroes among us. In fact, some of them are here in the first few rows. But I want to make clear that I do not consider myself one of them.”
That was how retired Hays Lt. Commander Mike Morley, who served in the U.S. Navy for 23 years, introduced himself to the crowd gathered Saturday for the annual Hays VFW Veterans Day observation.
As the program’s featured speaker, Morley, who is communications coordinator for Midwest Energy, focused on what he called “my heroes, invisible veterans.”
He started with a reflection back to the devastation of World War I in which 20 million people were killed on all sides.
“Twenty-one million were wounded. And that’s significant because it was the first war where more men came home injured, surviving their combat wounds, than dying from them,” Morley noted.
There were horrific physical injuries. But other injuries were not so obvious.
“For example, shell shock. That’s a polite term for what we call today PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Or nerve and brain damage from widespread use of chemical weapons.
“H. G. Wells famously wrote that World War I will be ‘the war that will end war’ because a rerun would be just to horrific to contemplate. Of course, we know things didn’t turn out that way.”
Morley recalled the wars since then, several other smaller actions and places today where troops are fighting in small numbers.
“In the 100 years since the end of World War I, November 11th, 1918, tens of millions of men and women have worn the uniform of their country and all of them to a greater or lesser degree, have been changed forever by that experience.”
Life is just a little bit different for those invisible men and women who made it home, just like those in World War I, he said, whether they served in combat or not.
Morley talked about his friend Brian. “He doesn’t have any ships or places named after him, but his sacrifice is every bit as real as those who do.”
The two met 26 years ago as young sailors. Brian was from Texas; Morley was from Topeka, Kansas.
“We had three things in common: a love of heavy metal music, a love of Japanese beer and a curiosity about amateur boxing.”
One evening after work the two put on sparring gloves. “It wasn’t pretty,” Morley said with a wry grin.
Morley was knocked down in about 40 seconds. Brian had neglected to mention he was a Texas high school Golden Gloves boxer. Rather than rub it in, Brian taught Morley how to improve his boxing skills.
They kept in touch over the years by email and Facebook.
While Morley stayed on active duty, Brian went inactive and into the Navy Reserve, moving to Manhattan, Kansas, and taking a job at Fort Riley to raise his family.
Brian volunteered for his first combat deployment to Afghanistan in 2008. While on patrol with a Marine squad, a teenage boy approached them with a smile, said hello in English, and then detonated the explosive vest he was wearing.
The bomber was killed instantly. The blast scattered the Americans who suffered various injuries, including lost limbs and eyes. Brian was sent into a wall, knocked unconscious and shattered three vertebrae in his back.
After a long convalescence stateside, Brian received the Purple Heart and re-enlisted in the Navy Reserves.
“I was stunned when he volunteered for a second tour,” Morley recalled.
This time, Brian’s base was hit several times by Taliban rocket attacks. During a nighttime attack, Brian fell from his bunk, hitting his head hard on a metal table. He was knocked unconscious and re-injured his back.
His tour was again cut short and he was sent home to recover.
Brian’s wife reported something was different after that event; his normally happy-go-lucky personality had changed. “He became short-tempered, suspicious. His mood swings at work became more pronounced and he couldn’t deal with stress very well,” she said.
Brian ended up losing his job at Fort Riley.
His medical care was also different the second time. Instead of the long inpatient stay at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, he received after his first injury, Morley said, “Brian was given cursory outpatient treatments at the VA [hospital] in Topeka.”
Brian was on 26 prescription medications in 2010, according to his wife. He was taking anti-psychotics, anxiety drugs, sleeping pills, stimulants and pain pills, all at the same time.
The VA twice scheduled and canceled the back surgery Brian needed for permanent pain relief. There was a surgeon shortage and more severely injured veterans took priority.
“So Brian was simply given more and stronger pills, and the chemical mix made him more and more unpredictable.”
In July 2011, when Brian’s mood swings were at their highest, his wife and children moved out.
“For seven months, Brian rarely left the house, only for food, doctor’s appointments and to pick up prescriptions. His Facebook posts had gone from fun and edgy to being an incoherent mix of statements and paranoid rants.”
On Feb. 11, 2012, Brian received a mail-order prescription for 90 pain pills, double the dosage of an earlier prescription.
That evening he took 10 of the new pills along with the cocktail mix of his regular meds.
When Brian didn’t show up for his son’s track meet the next afternoon, his son went by the house and found him on the basement couch.
The chief petty officer was just 39 years old.
“Ironically, Brian was not among the 22 veterans who would take their own lives that day, or the next day, or every day since,” Morley said.
Brian left no note. His death was declared “respiratory arrest by accidental overdose.”
“He died as he lived his last few years, as an invisible veteran,” said Morley of his longtime friend.
Brian’s story is not unique.
“This country, its VA system, and dozens of non-profit groups have bent over backwards to ease the transition for severely [physically] disabled combat vets. These guys are true heroes,” Morley declared, “and they really deserve to be cared for as such.
“But for the thousands and thousands of invisible veterans whose injuries are less obvious or poorly documented, they fall through the cracks trying to navigate a system that wasn’t designed for them, and this is not new.”
There are Vietnam War Agent Orange vets with cancer, veterans with Gulf War Syndrome, and more recently, veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries from non-fatal blasts or severe PTSD from events they’ve experienced but can’t unsee.
“They suffer in silence for years on end, hoping and praying that a slow-moving bureaucracy will someday validate or at least acknowledge that they are now different from before they served.
“So H.G. Wells was dead wrong when he predicted an end to war a hundred years ago,” Morley declared.
“Today, we’re in a war against faceless, nameless terrorists with no end in sight, which means we are continuing to make these invisible veterans.
“As we pause today to remember the veterans we’ve lost, let us also remember those we still have with us, especially the invisible ones. Let us vow to never again minimize their service or minimize their symptoms. Instead, let’s embrace them and their families with dignity, compassion, and most of all, understanding,” he concluded.
Morley’s speech was met with a standing ovation by the audience, filled with veterans, family and friends.