Veterans for Common Sense

July 9, 2008 – Former U.S. soldiers who were disabled fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and live far from government hospitals and rehabilitation centers pay more for health care than other veterans, a government report found.

To address this “inequity,” Congress should pass legislation waiving the requirement for disabled soldiers to pay premiums to enroll in the federal Medicare program, the report said. Under existing rules, the injured soldiers must pay $1,157 a year for their premiums until they turn 65, according to the report.

Disabled veterans who don’t live near clinics and hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Defense Department can use Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, or purchase private health insurance. Either way, they pay more, said the report released yesterday by inspectors general of the two departments.

The report is one of several government reviews triggered by a series of articles in the Washington Post describing the poor quality of care for wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. The investigators focused their recommendations on three issues not covered by other reports.

The report also urged the Defense Department to create an office to ensure that injured soldiers have a “seamless transition” as they transfer out of the military health care system and into the system operated by the VA.

In a third recommendation, the inspectors general urged the VA to propose legislation in Congress that would provide grants to help disabled veterans remodel their homes for wheelchair ramps, accessible showers and other needed amenities.

June 24, 2008 – On a warm day last summer, new father and Marine Corps Capt. John Jacobs got an e-mail from a buddy he’d served with in Iraq.

“I do need help in get(ting) out of home for awhile, or maybe for good,” the message read. “All I need is moving my family in any place that might be safer than where we live now.”

Jacobs, a 34-year-old Santa Cruz native who was deployed twice during the war, knew without hesitation he had to help his brother in arms.

He had to rescue his Iraqi translator, Haitham, a man he calls “Falcon.”

“He believed in our cause,” Jacobs said. “He was willing to stand beside us and face the same danger that we were facing. He rode around in Humvees waiting to get blown up like everyone else.”

Nearly a year later, Haitham, his wife, Jameela, and their two young children are about to arrive in San Jose – thanks to the efforts of Jacobs and his wife, Veronica, to bring the Iraqi family to safety.

The 34-year-old Haitham is one of the estimated 7,000 Iraqis who have served as translators for the American military during the war. While the job is a way for educated Iraqis to help rebuild their country, it also comes with many risks. Translators are seen as traitors among insurgents and supporters of the old regime.

The interpreters and their families are often targeted for retaliation, Jacobs said. Haitham, who served with Jacobs in the Third Battalion, First Marines in Al-Hadithah during 2005 and 2006, goes only by his first name for security reasons.
And despite the practice of adopting code names – such as “Falcon” – to further protect their identities, some secrets get out. Haitham’s father was kidnapped in 2005 and hasn’t been seen since.

After receiving Haitham’s plea, Jacobs and his wife launched Operation Falcon, a Web site aimed at bringing the family to America and raising awareness of the plight of other Iraqi translators. Jacobs is seeking donations of cash, gift cards and household goods.

He recently lined up an apartment for the family, who will arrive July 4. The Jacobses have a garage full of donated furniture ready to be moved in.

During two stints in Iraq, Jacobs worked with dozens of translators. But he says there was something special about Falcon.

A graduate of the University of Technology in Baghdad with a degree in electrical engineering, he spoke English well and seemed smarter than the other translators, Jacobs said. And he cared.

When told that Veronica Jacobs was expecting a baby girl, “he bought gifts for my daughter – baby clothes, a rattler, that kind of stuff,” Jacobs said. “It meant a great deal to me. It showed me that he listened and that he paid attention.”

In response, Jacobs’ wife sent coloring books and markers to Haitham’s children, who are 7 and 3.

“He was just a good guy,” said Jacobs, the principal of the private Challenger School in San Jose.

The Marine is also involved with a documentary project. With footage of the two families in Iraq and San Jose, filmmaker Tim O’Hara has created a 16-minute video that highlights the bond between the two – and Jacobs’ efforts to save his friend.

“I really do think that what he is doing is a great thing,” O’Hara said. “He sees helping Falcon as an extension of his service.”

Ironically, the lives of the Marine and the translator soon will switch: Jacobs has been deployed back to Iraq next spring.

It will be the first time he’ll be away from his children, 2-year-old Mae and 9-month-old Ellie.

“It will be tough,” he said simply.

While he’s gone, Jacobs hopes to keep Operation Falcon alive and rescue more interpreters like Haitham.

July 6, 2008 – Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

Despite those longstanding connections – and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board – the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September.

At that time, administration officials said Hunt Oil’s deal with the Kurds jeopardized delicate negotiations among competing Iraqi sects and regions for sharing oil revenues, talks seen as vital for achieving national reconciliation.

“I know nothing about the deal,” President Bush said. “To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I’m concerned.”

However, on July 2, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing that senior administration officials were aware that Hunt was negotiating with the Kurdistan government and even offered him encouragement.

Hunt also personally alerted Bush’s PFIAB about his oil company’s confidential contacts with Kurdish representatives.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, committee chairman, complained that the administration’s comments last year were “misleading.”

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed,” Waxman wrote.

Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.

Plus, there’s the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

Administration officials – and much of the mainstream U.S. media – have ridiculed the oil motive charge as a conspiracy theory.

Oil Deals

But many of the oil companies now stepping forward to benefit from Iraqi oil were instrumental in both supporting Bush’s political career and giving advice to Cheney’s secretive energy task force in 2001.

For instance, Ray Hunt’s personal relationship with the Bush family dates back to the 1970s as Hunt, the chief of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, helped build the Texas Republican Party as it served as a power base for the Bushes rise to national prominence.

The Hunt family donated more than $500,000 to Republican campaigns in Texas, while Hunt Oil employees and their spouses gave more than $1 million to Republican causes since 1995, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ray Hunt also had strong ties to Dick Cheney during his years at the helm of Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-services giant. In 1998, Cheney tapped Hunt to serve on Halliburton’s board of directors, where Hunt became a compensation committee member setting Cheney’s salary and stock options.

In 1999, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush turned to Hunt to help fund his presidential campaign efforts in Iowa, according to Robert Bryce’s book, Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, And The Rise Of Texas, America’s Superstate.

“By the summer of 1999, Bush had already raised $37 million but he wanted to conserve his campaign cash so he turned to a Texas crony, Ray Hunt, to help fund the Iowa effort,” Bryce wrote. “In July of 1999, Hunt was among a handful of Bush supporters who each donated $10,000 to the Iowa Republican party.”

In May 2000, Bush appointed Hunt finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hunt also donated $5,000 to the Florida recount battle and spent $100,000 on Bush’s inaugural party.

Bush Presidency

When Bush became President in 2001, Hunt emerged as an advisor to Cheney’s energy task force, according to highly placed executives at Hunt Oil whom I have been in contact with over the past seven years.

Bush also appointed Hunt to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and to the PFIAB, giving him access to highly classified information.

Hunt’s son, Hunter, a vice president at Hunt Oil, became another top energy advisor to the new administration, the company’s Web site said.

One of the topics before Cheney’s task force was the hoped-for opportunity for American oil companies to regain access to Iraq’s underdeveloped oil fields as a way to meet increasing U.S. energy demands.

That opportunity opened up after the U.S.-led invasion and conquest of Iraq in March and April of 2003, although a stubborn insurgency and political disarray slowed efforts to modernize the Iraqi oil industry.

Further bolstering Hunt Oil’s influence in the region in November 2003, Bush named James Oberwetter, a Hunt Oil vice president, to be U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Hunt Oil finally nailed down a major oil agreement with the semi-autonomous Kurdish region on Sept. 7, 2007. But the deal outraged many Iraqi officials because it was enacted before a national law could be adopted on the distribution of oil revenues. Bush administration officials also criticized the deal.

At the time, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, questioned whether Ray Hunt benefited from inside information from Bush, Cheney and/or other White House officials about Iraq’s stalled national oil law.

“As I have said for five years, this war is about oil,” Kucinich said. “The Bush administration desires private control of Iraqi oil, but we have no right to force Iraq to give up their oil. … The constitution of Iraq designates that the oil of Iraq is the property of all Iraqi people.”

Amazon Pipeline

The production-sharing agreement Hunt Oil signed with the Kurds is not the company’s first controversial energy project. Nor is it the first time the company has received help from the Bush administration for its work overseas, as documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show.

In August 2003, the Bush administration threw its support behind the Camisea gas-pipeline project in the Amazon jungle in Peru that drew international criticism because it threatened to destroy a pristine stretch of rainforest and jeopardized the lives of indigenous people.

The London Independent reported that the beneficiaries of the project “would be two Texas energy companies with close ties to the White House, Hunt Oil and Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton.” [Independent, Aug. 4, 2003]

When the pipeline deal went through, Hunt hired Halliburton to conduct the engineering work on the project as well as to build a $1 billion export terminal on the coast.

“Bush Pioneer Jose Fourquet played a pivotal role in the financing of a massive Peruvian natural gas project that benefited Hunt Oil Co., whose chairman, Ray L. Hunt, signed up to be a Pioneer and is a longtime ally of the president,” the Washington Post reported on May 17, 2004.

“Fourquet, the Treasury Department’s U.S. representative to the Inter-American Development Bank, rebuffed the official written and oral recommendation from other U.S. officials to vote ‘no’ on the project.

“Instead, he abstained on $135 million in financing for the project, allowing it to proceed. Opposition from the United States, a primary funder of the IDB bank, would have jeopardized the deal,” the Washington Post reported.

Wink and Nod

Now, the new evidence suggests that Hunt Oil at least benefited from the administration’s wink and nod in striking the Kurdish oil deal.

In a July 12, 2007, letter to PFIAB, Hunt disclosed that Hunt Oil was “approached a month or so ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region.”

Hunt described a visit of a Hunt Oil survey team and stated, “we were encouraged by what we saw. We have a larger team going back to Kurdistan this week.”

In a second letter to PFIAB, dated Aug. 30, 2007, Hunt revealed that he would travel to Kurdistan in early September for meetings with the Kurdistan regional government, including its president, prime minister and oil minister.

Those meetings led to the oil agreement between Hunt Oil and the Kurdish leaders — and now have raised questions about Bush’s denial that he had any advanced knowledge about the deal.

“State Department officials similarly disavowed involvement in the contract,” Waxman said in the letter to Rice. “Department officials claimed that to the extent they were aware of any negotiations, they actively warned Hunt Oil not to enter into a contract because it was contrary to U.S. national security interests.

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed.”

Waxman asked Rice to cooperate with the committee’s investigation. Hunt Oil declined to comment on Ray Hunt’s relationship with Bush or his administration.

July 3, 2008 – In the spring of 2007, Fred Wilpon, the owner of the New York Mets, accompanied his team on a visit to the wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Wilpon was haunted by the experience, especially by a lieutenant who had just arrived at the hospital after being severely wounded in Iraq a week earlier. The doctors said the lieutenant would have bled to death in previous wars, but the efficacy of the battlefield medical care in Iraq and Afghanistan was remarkable. “I’d say it was a miracle that kid was still alive,” Wilpon says, but then he realized he was in a hospital full of miracles. As he thought about this afterward, Wilpon figured–as others involved in the care of veterans have–that there was going to be an unprecedented need for psychological counseling for the survivors of horrific wounds. “The other thing that struck me was how removed most Americans are from the troops,” Wilpon says. “Most people don’t think much about the war. When I was a kid during World War II, we were always being asked to do something for the troops. I wanted to reconnect the public with the military.”

Wilpon went to work, talking to military leaders about what the returning troops needed most–and to his fellow baseball owners about organizing a massive program to help out. The result, unveiled this July Fourth weekend, is an ambitious effort to raise $100 million to provide free psychological counseling for returning veterans and jobs for those who need them. The scope of the problem is enormous: upwards of 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of combat veterans are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As recently reported in TIME, the military is prescribing antidepressants to troops downrange to help blunt the psychological effects of combat. “There’s just a tremendous need for counseling,” says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The [Department of Veterans Affairs’] psychological-counseling program is overwhelmed. The suicide rates for returning vets are just off the charts. If Major League Baseball can get this program up to scale, we could save thousands of lives.”

Psychological counseling is a sensitive subject in the macho world of the military. “There’s tremendous stigma attached,” says retired general David Grange, president of the McCormick Foundation, which will administer the program for Major League Baseball. “In my day, you’d never ask for psychological help because you’d be disqualified for command.” To eliminate the stigma, a few regular Army units have started to make psychological counseling mandatory for soldiers returning from combat. “We decided to do it after those murders at Fort Bragg,” said retired general B.B. Bell, who initiated mandatory counseling when he commanded the U.S. Army in Europe. (Bell was referring to the three returning soldiers who murdered their wives in 2002.) There is a similar program at Fort Lewis, Wash. According to Dr. Charles Hoge in the New England Journal of Medicine, such programs can significantly reduce the number of soldiers reluctant to go for counseling.

But those are isolated programs. And the need is even greater in the National Guard and Reserves. Because of the all-volunteer Army, “we’ve never had so many Guard and Reserves involved in combat,” Grange says. These troops tend to be less well trained and yanked out of settled civilian lives and therefore more susceptible to psychological stress. “They also come home totally removed from the base of support that regular troops have. They’re all alone,” he says. Indeed, a disproportionate number of Guard and Reserve service members have civilian jobs as first responders–police, firefighters, emergency workers–and they can be removed from their posts, sent to desk jobs or medical leave, if they seek psychological counseling for PTSD. “A lot of these people come home and find that their jobs are no longer there,” says Grange, explaining why Major League Baseball included a jobs component in its program. “Ideally, if this thing works, we’ll be able to link up a returning veteran with a job and counseling–and prospective employers can be reassured that the veteran isn’t going to go postal on them.”

With Veterans Affairs overwhelmed by two wars, it may be a good thing, spiritually, for the rest of us to help those who have sacrificed so much in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few years ago, a colonel who had just returned from combat told me, “Over there, it always felt like we’re stuck in hell and the country is at the mall.” Part of the responsibility for the disconnect lies with President George W. Bush, who never asked us to sacrifice for the war effort. It’s time to rectify that. “I’d like to see every kid in America give part of their allowance to help the troops,” Wilpon says. As an elderly kid, I’m giving part of mine.

July 6, 2008 – Sen. John McCain is getting battleground-state help this week from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who will appear in a television commercial aimed at convincing the public that the United States is winning the Iraq war and should stay to finish the job.

Produced by Vets for Freedom, an organization of veterans of the two wars, the ad will run in Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and on cable nationwide. The group, with about 20,000 members, will spend $1.5 million on what it says is the first of many spots during the next month.

“As an organization, we have four months here,” said the group’s chairman, Pete Hegseth, an Iraq veteran. “A window of opportunity of heightened awareness. We think it’s crucial that the success our troops have made on the battlefield is relayed to the American public.”

The ad features eight veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and the mother of a soldier in Iraq. “We changed strategy in Iraq,” one of the soldiers says in the ad. “And the surge worked. Now that’s change we can believe in. We need to finish the job. . . . No matter who is president.”

Hegseth says his group is not operating on behalf of McCain and notes that federal law prohibits the organization from coordinating the ad with his campaign. The states were chosen, he said, not because they are crucial swing states for McCain, but rather because the heightened interest in those states will give it a larger audience.

“We’re going to tap into that heightened awareness,” he said, noting that his organization has supported several Democratic candidates in the past year or so. “It’s not an attack on anybody. We’re not taking on any presidential candidates.”

But he conceded that the message in the ad is almost identical to McCain’s on the stump: The troop buildup worked; let’s continue the war until we win. He said McCain has been the “strongest advocate” for the veterans of the two wars.

“We would hope that success in Iraq could benefit everybody,” he said.

July 6, 2008 – The painful experience of homelessness is ending for more than 200 Bay State veterans who are getting a chance to start over under a revived federal housing program that is providing $2.5 million in rental assistance. Last week, housing authorities from Boston to Northampton began issuing 245 rental assistance vouchers to chronically homeless veterans. In the Boston area, 1,950 former service members are considered homeless.

“With the new number of homeless vets that we are creating because of Iraq and Afghanistan, this is focusing on their needs,” said U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Somerville), who will make a formal announcement Tuesday.

The vouchers are part of a $72.3 million federal spending plan to give housing subsidies to 10,000 homeless vets nationwide through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a spokeswoman said. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that there are 154,000 homeless veterans nationwide.

Rental assistance issued by HUD’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program works like Section 8 vouchers and will allow veterans to rent private housing at a fixed rate of 30 percent of their income. All voucher recipients will be assigned a case worker from the VA Healthcare System.

“It’s a blessing,” said Stephanie, a 48-year-old former Army parachute jumper, who asked that her last name not be used. “I’ve been living for 17 months in the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans. I’ll be ever so glad to get out of there.”

Although Vietnam-era soldiers make up the majority of the homeless veteran population, shelter operators said they are seeing a rise in homelessness among Iraq and Afghanistan war vets.

“They are coming much faster, and they are coming with much more individual needs than the Vietnam veterans,” said Steven Como, vice president of Soldier On, which runs veterans shelters in Northampton and Pittsfield.

Como said the traumatic brain injuries and the post-traumatic stress disorder experienced by many young soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is contributing to the rapid slide into homelessness. Last week, seven Iraq war vets stayed at a Soldier On shelter, Como said.

Unemployment among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans is also three times the national average, said Vincent Perrone, president of Massachusetts Veterans Inc.

The federal government began issuing rental vouchers to homeless veterans with severe psychiatric disorders or substance abuse problems in fiscal year 1992. But the funding stopped after three years, a HUD spokeswoman said.

The new vouchers are available to all homeless veterans regardless of whether they are mentally ill or substance abusers.

“The key here is the supportive services being provided by the VA,” said state Veteran Services Secretary Thomas Kelley.

The Boston Housing Authority will issue 105 vouchers, while the remaining pool will be split evenly between the Northampton Housing Authority and state Department of Housing and Community Development, according to HUD.

The VA is hiring three new Boston and Brockton case workers to provide services to voucher holders, said Karen A. Guthrie, the health care for homeless veterans coordinator at Boston VA Healthcare Systems.

Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray, who leads two different statewide councils dealing with homelessness and veterans services, said the state may secure even more rental aid during a second round of federal funding. “It’s about time we put our money where our mouth is, and this a good step in that direction,” he said.

John, a 51-year-old Marine veteran who did not want his last name used, said he’s been depressed since moving into the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans in March 2007.

“Having never been homeless before, I was surprised at how traumatizing it is,” said John, who was issued a voucher last week. “I’m really grateful for the opportunity.”

July 5, 2008, Framingham, MA – Coming home from a tour of duty in Afghanistan just after Thanksgiving 2006, Marine Staff Sgt. David Animas-Esquivel returned with a broken ring finger and a few scars, but otherwise physically unscathed.

However, he would go on to wrestle with demons less tangible than terrorists.

Last Tuesday, the father of two succumbed to liver failure inside his mother’s 100 Phelps Road home. He was 33.

His ex-wife, Robyn Animas, a 30-year-old former Marine, said he suffered from post-traumatic stress, as well as “severe anxiety and depression.”

“He wouldn’t sleep. He’d always be checking locks and he would panic in a car if he got boxed in,” said Animas.

His siblings, gathered in his mother’s kitchen, recalled some of the more harrowing stories he shared with them.

A convoy that he switched out of at the last minute getting bombed. Bullets pinging off the side of a Humvee, just below a machine gun turret he was manning. Seeing a child with burns from from head to toe smile at him.

“It freaked him out for sure,” said his brother Victor Animas-Esquivel, 36.

He began drinking heavily in February 2007, his ex-wife, Robyn Animas, said in a telephone interview. He was also on anti-depressant medication.

Victor Animas-Esquivel described his brother as a free spirit, a mischievous but gentle soul who was the one who used to skip school when they were younger, a gifted drummer who enjoyed rock bands like Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots.

He suggested the military had hardened his brother.

“The pain of not being able to be himself could have made (him) start to find ways to forget about that pain,” said Animas-Esquivel.

However, his ex-wife said the Marine Corps was a big part of his identity.

“He loved it,” said Robyn Animas. “That was his pride.”

His wife’s first pregnancy was induced in the fall of 2001 so that David could travel as a Marine to New York City to help in the recovery efforts of 9/11, said his family.

Kezwick Animas was born Sept. 14, 2001.

David purposely moved the family to a North Carolina military base to increase the likelihood he would be deployed to Afghanistan, said his ex-wife.

The second of six children, Animas-Esquivel was born in Mexico City and came to the United States at the age of 10.

He graduated Ashland High School, where he wrestled competitively, according to his brother, in 1993, then enrolled in Framingham State College for two years before enlisting in the Corps on April 16, 1996.

That same week he received an acceptance letter to Johnson and Wales University that would have allowed him to pursue a career in one of his passions: cooking.

“I was the one to convince him to go (into the Marines),” said his brother, seated before a kitchen table with several of David’s photos, Thursday morning. “His personality would fit, I thought. He was always a leader, and he was always impressed with the uniform, even in middle school.”

His sister, Alexandra Griffin, 24, said her older brother was a role model.

“If we messed up anything he was the last one we wanted to know about it,” she said.

Griffin said he wanted to return to Alaska, where he was once stationed, to open up a customized T-shirt shop for tourists dubbed “Dave’s T-Shoits.”

“He’d always say it just like that,” said Griffin. “He loved it up there.”

His mother articulated another unfulfilled dream of her son’s.

“He wanted to buy a trailer and travel all around the country, maybe visit Mexico again,” she said.

David Animas-Esquivel served 12 years in the Marine Corps, but never became a U.S. citizen.

“I think he looked at it as a red-tape thing,” said his brother Victor. “He wasn’t angry about it or anything.”

During his last tour he served as a staff sergeant with the 2nd Maintenance Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group.

Upon returning, his six-year marriage began to unravel.

Eventually, strain from abusing alcohol and post-traumatic stress became too much and the two separated.

His ex-wife indicated they had attempted to enter David into an alcohol rehabilitation and in-patient programs several times, but were denied each time by the Marine Corps.

“His command was no help,” she said.

Marine Capt. Leticia Reyes, while saying she did not know specifically of David’s case, said rejecting such services simply “wouldn’t make any sense because Marines are our greatest asset.”

The couple’s divorce was finalized a couple weeks ago.

The breakup of his marriage and the distance between himself and his two children, Kezwick and his daughter Magdalena Roze, age 3, who moved to New Jersey, took an additional toll on him, according to his family.

“His kids were his life,” said his mother.

“From that point on he went nuts with the bottle,” said brother Victor. “He wasn’t eating and he was only drinking.”

His ex-wife said the children saw him “as much as possible.”

“He was an absolutely wonderful father,” she said.

He was first hospitalized in North Carolina with liver problems a week after his April 16 discharge.

On May 25, he was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital so that he could be closer to his family.

Since that time he had been in and out of hospitals and was placed under Veterans Administration hospice care.

A memorial service is scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday, July 10 at the John Matarese Funeral Home located at the intersection of Rte. 135 and Main Street in Ashland.

Marine Capt. Susie Gallucci, who is the New England Recovery Care Coordinator for the Wounded Warriors Project, noted that “post-traumatic stress is on the rapid rise.”

Gallucci said her organization visited David in the days before his death.