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Helping our struggling heroes

The veterans of America cannot and will not be forgotten, especially our Gold Star Mothers.

For those who don’t know about the Gold Star Mothers, they lost their loved ones who they brought into this world and lost them in this world. No one really knows what they have endured, doing the best to survive after such an ordeal.

They must endure those hardships for the rest of their lives. God bless them. We also cannot forget those that never returned home.

We cannot forget those that have survived, but when they returned home, the physical and mental anguish will never be forgotten. Some lost their limbs, some came home with PTSD. Years ago, that was called shell shock.

What is sad is that so many veterans return home only to commit suicide because of their mental status. We must improve our VA hospitals so this can be stopped in the future. The waiting time to see a doctor at the VA hospitals sometimes takes a long period of time. The larger the VA hospital, it takes longer to see a patient, but the smaller the hospital, the better the service.

Our VA hospitals seem to turn into a business sometimes rather than a hospital. But not all the VA hospitals are the same. It all depends on the service that the veteran is receiving. Non-veterans just don’t understand this situation and never will until they themselves experience what those veterans have experienced.

So in light of the recent Veterans Day, please take time to think about our veterans and their needs and fight for those needs. It is a shame what those veterans have to live with for the rest of their lives.

The American people must show more comfort toward our veterans and try to understand their problems more. We must stop those veterans who want to take their own lives and try to figure out how this can be changed for the betterment of all our veterans.

God bless American and our veterans.

Richard Makuch is a Dunkirk resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com

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