Rao bulletin 15 June 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles

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  The “care package” wrapped in brown paper that was sent to a U.S. soldier, Charles L. Stewart Jr., in Vietnam in 1972 have been selected for display. Stewart, 19, had been killed by the time the package arrived, and it was returned to his family in Gladstone, Mich., marked “KIA,” killed in action, “10-31-72.” A person who curators said may have been a brother left it at the Wall in 1993, with a note.
  
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  The black and white snapshot of the seven enemy soldiers was left in a box at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with a two-page letter.
  
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  The writer explained how he had grabbed the picture from the knapsack of a dead North Vietnamese soldier after cursing him, kicking him and firing into his corpse in a fit of rage.
  
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  “Mom and Dad want you to have these cookies and Kool Aid. . . . They send all their love.”
  
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  On Oct. 1, 1990, the mother of another soldier who had been killed left the knitted sweater that he had worn as a baby and a handwritten letter: My Dearest Son, Today I am coming to see your name on the “wall.” I haven’t been ready until now, but I know that I must see it before I die. . . . I wanted to bring your teddy bear but just couldn’t part with it. Instead I brought your first sweater. You are always in my heart. . . . God be with you til we meet again. Love, Mom.
  

No one anticipated that visitors would leave tributes when the memorial was dedicated 33 years ago. But the black granite Wall, where the names of 58,000 killed in the Vietnam War are etched, has become a place where spirits seem to reside. The veteran who left the box and 40 years of anguish at the Wall called it “a very sacred place, very holy.” Now in his 60s, he recently agreed to tell the story of his encounter with the Wall, but he spoke on the condition that his name not be used, because of the sensitivity of his account. His is one of thousands of stories of grief, love, loss and reconciliation. “There is no sociological or anthropological precedent in the United States for that kind of behavior, until the Wall was built,” said Jan C. Scruggs, whose Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund created the memorial. “The Wall gave people the license to mourn publicly and to start bringing things,” he said. “There’s something very profound about it, feeling the connection between the living and the dead, feeling the way we still love and care for people.”

The legend is that the first object left was a Purple Heart medal, which was placed at the cornerstone of the Wall, said Jason Bain, a senior collections curator with the memorial fund. As more things were left, park rangers stored them in boxes in their offices, and as the volume increased, the Park Service realized the importance of what was being left, Bain said. The formal collection was established in 1984. The items numbered about 1,300 then. Four years later, there were 12,000. “We will have researched about 30,000 to 35,000 by the time my portion of the project is complete,” he said in an interview last month. “We will have selected . . . about 6,000” available for display. Bain said most of the items left at the Wall lack provenance — experts don’t know who left them or why. But in some cases the details are clear.

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  The young American soldier was searching for enemy bodies at night when he came across the dead North Vietnamese by the light of illumination flares. The American and his comrades had just surprised a group of about 90 North Vietnamese soldiers walking down a trail and “slaughtered” about half of them, he would later write. He had been in Vietnam for about six months as an “11-bravo,” a front-line infantryman, in the Mekong Delta, south of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. He had seen a lot of action, had been badly wounded and was devastated when a sniper killed his sergeant a few days earlier.
  

Six months later, his tour ended. He left Vietnam, placed the trophies in a footlocker, and later in a wooden box, and put them away. He got married, started a family and found a good job. But he was chronically troubled by memories of the war. And the contents of the box haunted him. Sometimes he would pause to look inside. “I felt like I was looking into some forbidden abyss within my soul. An unnamable feeling would jolt my heart and I would close the lid.” The snapshot was especially difficult. The seven young North Vietnamese soldiers posed in uniform, standing on the slope of a small hill. They wore distinctive pith-type helmets. An eighth man, clad in black instead of a uniform, stood behind them to their left. They were clearly a squad of soldiers, the American realized, much like the U.S. Army squads he served in. “I examine the photo closely, looking at each face and wondering which one was you, trying to imagine the unfathomable grief of your mother and father.”

In the years after the war, the soldier said, “I had a classic, classic, terrible case of PTSD. I kept saying to myself, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I readjust? Why can’t I come home and just sort of forget about that?’ But I couldn’t.” He pored over books about war — the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam — searching for clues to his pain. Decades passed. Finally, seven or eight years ago, he started going to counseling. “I began to understand my journey, where I had been, who I was,” he said. Many things got resolved. “But there was one deep dark secret that was sitting right in my closet,” he said. “I knew it was in there. I felt its presence.” When he was ready, after more counseling, he sat down and wrote the letter. Then he asked his wife, who was unaware of the box, to come to a counseling session with him. There, he opened the box and read the letter. It began, “I came upon your body, lit by the ghostly glare of illumination rounds . . . .”

Afterward, he realized that the contents of the box belonged at the Wall. “I don’t know where it came from, but it was my idea,” he said. He told his wife: “I can’t keep these in my closet any more.” One day near dawn in 2011, he and his wife went to the Wall with the contents in a nicer box that they had bought. It was cold outside, and the sun was just reddening the sky over the Capitol. The soldier could see his reflection in the polished stone. He found his old sergeant’s name on the Wall. Then he read the letter aloud. “I cried,” he said. “I wept, I keened, in a way I never have before. I felt an enormous release, a weight off my soul . . . [and a] peace and a calm . . . that I’ve never known.” He placed the box against the Wall and propped the letter behind it. As he and his wife walked away from the memorial, he glanced back. “The day was dawning,” he said. “It literally felt like a new day for me.”

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  A higher percentage of men have no healthcare coverage.
  
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  Men make half as many preventive care visits as women.
  
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  Men are more likely to be employed in dangerous occupations.
  
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  Society discourages healthy behaviors in men and boys.
  
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  Research on male-specific diseases is underfunded.
  
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  Men may have less healthy lifestyles including risk-taking at younger ages
  

This month, everyone is encouraged to participate in activities promoting men’s health awareness and education. From health care providers to policy makers, each of us can take an opportunity to encourage the men in our lives to get regular medical care and get treatment for disease and injury. Visit the Preventive Services web page http://www.tricare.mil/preventive, for more information about TRICARE’s preventive health services which include:

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  Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening 
  
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  Body measurement 
  
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  Blood pressure 
  
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  Cholesterol testing
  
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  Colorectal cancer exams 
  
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  Hearing exams 
  
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  Hepatitis B screening 
  
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  Immunizations 
  
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  Lipid Panel
  
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  Oral cavity and pharyngeal cancer exams 
  
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  Parent & patient educational counseling 
  
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  Pediatric lead level screening 
  
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  Prostate cancer exams 
  
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  Rubella antibodies 
  
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  School physicals 
  
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  Skin cancer exams 
  
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  Testicular cancer exams 
  
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  Thyroid cancer exams
  
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  Tuberculosis screening 
  
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  Vision screening (See also Eye Exams)
  
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  Well-child care 
  

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  At www.dcoe.mil/include/exitwarning.aspx?link=https://www.facebook.com/DCoEpagef follow DCoE on Facebook
  
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  Log on to the page between 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. June 26
  
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DCoE uses live social media events to raise awareness on important topics and to engage with the public to provide supportive resources. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur after someone experiences or sees a traumatic event, such as combat, a terrorist attack, sexual or physical assault or abuse, a serious accident, or a natural disaster. Many people experience post-traumatic stress symptoms, but not everyone develops PTSD. In 2010, Congress named 27 JUN as PTSD Awareness Day to raise awareness about the disorder and the treatment options available. [Source: DCoE | Sarah Heynen, DCoE Public | June 03, 2015 ++]