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Commanders Comments

March 2004

Spring is just around the corner and that means there is a lot of things happening at Post 52. There will
be many work sessions at the Post, plus getting the trailers ready for the summer events. The color
guard will soon have some practice time to be ready for the summer.

As far as the meeting that Phil,Charlie and myself attended in Bloomsburg as to what is

going on in National. We have not heard anything as of today. At the meeting we will give an up-to-
date report on what we know by then.

If you are going to Rolling Thunder and the opening of the WWII Memorial on Memorial Day
weekend, let us know right away unless you already have reservations elsewhere.

The Post needs many things in order to renovate; such as kitchen cabinets, top and bottom; insulation,
building material, floor covering and plumbing supplies, just to name a few. Talk to Phil if you have
something you think we can use.

We have to work together to support the Post and our members. If you have some time to help at the
Post contact Phil Dave at 814-336-4654. I am sure he can find something for you to do. As the
weather breaks, there will be a lot of outside work to be done as well.

Thank you for any and all support you can give to your Post.

Yours in Brotherhood

Fred Neff, Commander

Note from the Secretary

Hi folks. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods. Things around the Post have been busy as usual.
The Post Home has been getting some work done on it. We received a new 3 tub sink and it has been
installed along with a few shelves. So the kitchen is shaping up quite nicely.

Still work to be done, so volunteer to help out when needed. This is Your Post Home too.

Support Our Troops is getting ready for it's March packing. Please remember with the big rotation of
servicemen/women underway now, we need to keep our records up-to-date. If you have any updated
addresses, get them to Laurie or I. Also, if you have anyone who is currently serving, get us their
names so we can keep in touch with them. Every man and woman serving our country deserves our
support, so let's keep this going strong this year!

We were recently contacted by WSEE Channel 35 to be part of a special military/war series they will
be airing the week of March 15, 2004 in conjunction with the 1 year anniversary of entering Iraq.
They want to do an in depth interview with Laurie and I on the Project. We are pretty excited about
that! It will give the Project and our Post some great exposure.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support!

Kim Keas

Veterans Recognized with Korea Defense Service Medal

RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas, March 8, 2004 -- A new defense medal will be issued to
servicemembers who served in South Korea, or adjacent waters, after July 28, 1954. This includes
those serving there today, and those serving up to a not-yet-determined future date.

The Korea Defense Service Medal will be awarded to those assigned, attached or mobilized to units
operating or serving on all the land area of South Korea, and the continuous waters to 12 nautical miles
from shore and all airspace above those areas. Recipients may include active duty, Reserve, Guard,
veterans and retirees. This medal is not to be confused with the Republic of Korea War Service
Medal.

Individuals will only be awarded one KDSM regardless of amount of time spent in Korea, said Air
Force Personnel Center officials here. The medal does not have any associated promotion points under
the Weighted Airman Promotion System. It is directly above the Armed Forces Service Medal in
precedence.

Procedure for receiving the KDSM varies.

The medal will be issued to Air Force active-duty, Reserve and Guard people by their servicing military
personnel flights beginning in the fall. Questions should be addressed to the contact center at DSN
665-5000 or (800) 616-3775.

Veterans, retirees or their next of kin may claim entitlement by writing to: National Personnel Records
Center, 9700 Page Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63132-5100. Requests should include documents clearly
proving service and dates in Korea such as orders, performance reports, DD Form 214, Certificate of
Release or Discharge from Active Duty, flight records, a decoration citation or other official
documents. Veterans and retirees should address questions to the NPRC customer-service center at
(314) 801-0800.

Air Force Reserve and Guard veterans, retirees and next of kin may submit their request with
supporting documentation to: Headquarters Air Reserve Personnel Center, 6760 Irvington Place 4000,
Denver, CO 80280-4000. Reserve and Guard veterans and retirees younger than 60 should address
questions to ARPC headquarters at (303) 679-6134.

Reserve and Guard veterans and retirees older than 60 and next-of-kin of deceased Reserve and
Guard veterans and retirees must send requests to the NPRC with supporting documentation.
Questions should be addressed to the NPRC customer-service center at (314) 801-0800.

Not So Fast on Agent Orange Compensation Cutoff

WASHINGTON, March 04, 2004 - Some Vietnam veterans have already developed cancer related
to their Agent Orange exposure. Others will become ill decades after coming home. Bottom Line:
Environmental cancers don't have cutoff dates, and there should be no cutoff after which a Vietnam
veteran with respiratory cancer is no longer presumed to be a victim of exposure to the herbicide.

A committee of the Institute of Medicine on Tuesday confirmed this, the long-advocated position of the
2.7 million-member American Legion, the nation's largest veterans organization. Although Congress
eliminated a previous 30-year limit for respiratory cancers in late 2001, it mandated the Department of
Veterans Affairs to explore whether a new limit is warranted.

"Victims of Agent Orange exposure have cleared a major obstacle, and the men and women of The
American Legion scaled that barrier with them," American Legion National Commander John Brieden
said. "Who knows how long after exposure to Agent Orange one will suffer from its harmful effects?
Our government must expedite just compensation and medical treatment to all victims of this harmful
substance, regardless of when their service-connected disabilities arise."

The American Legion, which will mark the 85th anniversary of its founding March 15-17, reiterated its
call for a comprehensive, government-funded study of the health of Vietnam veterans.

"The effects of wartime experiences can be long-lasting," Brieden said. "The sooner the government
plans and funds a comprehensive study, the sooner veterans suffering from the lingering effects of their
sacrifice will receive long-overdue health care and disability compensation."

The American Legion and Columbia University broke ground with a joint study of Vietnam veterans'
health conducted in the 1980s and a recent follow-up study. Both studies identified veterans who are
still suffering from PTSD, illnesses linked to Agent Orange and other service-connected conditions. The
American Legion also fights on behalf of Korean War victims of Agent Orange.

Veterans seeking more information about how to obtain benefits may call (800) 433-3318 to locate the
nearest American Legion service officer.

Walter Reed Treating 500 Cases of Leishmaniasis from Iraq

Army News Service

FORT DETRICK, Md., March 5, 2004) -- A little-known parasite that causes chronic, festering sores
will be returning home with some of Operation Iraqi Freedom's warfighters.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis, which affects the skin, is caused by a sand fly bite that deposits the parasite
that eventually causes weeping sores that don't heal as quickly as regular sores.

"The majority of these are lesions on the face or on the hands over joints. So in the short term, it's just
not pleasant to have a lesion that won't heal potentially for up to a year - -and some of these get quite
large," said Lt. Col. Peter Weina, a "leish" expert at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. "In
the long term, the problem is the scarring, which can be disfiguring if it's on the face and can limit
movement of the hands if it's over a joint."

Iraq's sand flies are most active during warm nights from March to October, so troops on the move
during Operation Iraqi Freedom were right in the middle of "Sand fly Central."

"In the march up to Baghdad, people would literally fall asleep on their HUMVEE or out in the middle
of the desert, so we had enormous amounts of exposure in the evenings in areas where there were a lot
of sand flies," said Col. Alan Magill, another of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research's experts on
leishmaniasis.

Leish experts suspected the disease was going to be a problem for troops, but until Weina arrived in
theater to serve with the 520th Theater Army Medical Laboratory, they didn't know just how big the
problem was. Initially sent to look for weapons of mass destruction, Weina's team also looked for
common diseases in the area, like leish, to see what risk they posed to warfighters.

By April 2003, fears were confirmed.

"We found sand flies in the area and started testing them and found some extraordinary infection rates
in the flies," he said. "We expected to find maybe one tenth of one percent of the sand flies to be
infected with leishmaniasis, and we were finding two percent of the sand flies were infected in some
locations."

Finding that many infected sand flies meant a huge increase in the potential number of cases, so Weina
and his team went into full prevention mode.

"We went to units and talked to everyone from the commander on down to the private. They needed
to know that the best thing to do with this disease was to prevent getting it in the first place," he said.
"We did everything from stand-up comic routines out in an opening in the middle of tents, all the way to
full briefings in conference rooms."

Though travel was hazardous, Weina's message to the audiences he reached was simple: Wear DEET
insect repellent so sand flies don't bite; use permethrin, a pesticide, on uniforms to keep sand flies
away; and sleep under mosquito nets that have been treated with permethrin. The discovery of the leish
problem coincided with the war, so getting the word out on the disease wasn't easy, Weina said.

"I tried to get the attention of the brass above me ... but their concerns weren't about the guys sleeping
under bed nets but making sure they weren't going to get killed."

He and his team also talked to the medical professionals in the area so they'd be on the lookout for
leish. "The problem is that some (lesions) look like any other type of sore that you may have with a
bacterial infection, but they just don't get better," Weina said. "We treated with antibiotics first. Then if
the antibiotics failed, we considered leishmaniasis."

So far, more than 500 cases of leishmaniasis have been diagnosed. Magill said he hedges when he's
asked how many total cases to expect.

"The simple answer is: I don't know. But if you extrapolate, you're probably looking at the 750 to
1,250 range. It could be higher."

Because the disease is difficult to diagnose without a lab and experts equipped to look for it, all leish
smears are currently sent to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research for confirmation. The institute,
in fact, has the only leishmaniasis lab in the country that is accredited by the College of American
Pathologist and is operated in accordance with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act.

The ability to deliver a diagnosis lets the lab cross the boundary that typically exists between research
and health care, Magill said. "Though the (institute's leishmaniasis) research program was eliminated (in
1996), the lab was maintained for just the scenario being played out today," he said.

Many of the leish researchers, like Weina and Magill, are also caregivers at the only U.S. military
hospital where the treatment for leish can be offered, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Because
the drug of choice used to treat the most severe cases was never submitted to the Food and Drug
Administration for its approval, the drug must be offered as an investigational new drug, which means
following strict research protocols and keeping meticulous records when the drug is given. The drug,
sodium stibogluconate (Pentostam), is hardly "new," as it's been used for over 50 years to successfully
treat leish.

Treatment typically consists of an outpatient regimen of receiving the drug intravenously daily for 20
days, though the type of leish acquired in Iraq, leishmaniasis major, responds in 10 days.

The volume of patients who need treatment has overwhelmed both the institute and the hospital named
after Walter Reed, Weina said.

"This is really the largest outbreak in the history of the military since World War II. I know for a fact
that Colonel (Naomi) Aronson (the doctor who kept the hospital's IND current) has brought her
sleeping bag to her office so she can sleep there if she needs to," he said. "We've never been set up to
be able to treat this many cases."

To put the current leish outbreak into perspective, Magill said that for Operations Desert Shield and
Storm, the official number of leishmaniasis cases was 32.

"When you're treating 30 to 40 cases a year at the most, it's no big deal having the patients come to
Walter Reed Army Medical Center to be treated," Weina said. "But having 400 in a couple of months,
now there's a problem."

Weina and Magill are traveling to posts with large numbers of returning troops -- like Fort Campbell,
Ky.; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Carson, Colo. -- to let the troops and the medical professionals there
know what to look for.

"The only problem is, like with most of tropical medicine, the expertise to make the diagnosis is not well
distributed. To physicians and lab technicians at Fort Campbell, this is not something many of them
have seen in their entire careers," Magill said.

The leish experts are also looking at other treatment options for patients, including freezing the lesions
or using a device that uses heat to kill the parasite.

"There's a good biologic rationale for it (heat therapy) to work and some data that we've seen that says
it works, but we are reluctant to recommend a treatment when there's been no experience." Fifteen
patients at Walter Reed are currently enrolled in a study see if the thermal device works, and results
should be available by March.

At the hospital, Magill has seen patients who have more than 30 lesions, patients with lesions up to 3
inches in diameter and patients with nodular lesions that look like tumors. The good news, he said, is
the lesions do heal, even without any treatment. The bad news is healing can take up to a year without
effective treatment.

"In the natural history of these lesions, if you do nothing, even for the worst lesions, they will get better,
he said. "But cosmetically this is very damaging. If you're walking around with some of these big lesions
on your face, psychologically there's a big impact there. This is an operationally acquired disease, and
it's our job to address that."

Treating the lesions is important to the troops and their families, Weina said.

"The American public sees Johnny come marching home from the war, and Mom and Dad aren't
thrilled about this nasty weeping lesion that's on his face that might be there for a year. They want it to
go away," he said. "Even though it's not contagious, it's still a stigmata that they'd rather not have."

Military Quote:

"Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor."

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

"Come on, you sons of bitches - do you want to live forever?!"

Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly, USMC, Belleau Wood, June 1918

Happy Birthday to our Members!

William Baldwin 3/21Gerald Coward 3/29

David Fairfield Jr 3/12James Galkiewicz 3/20

Kenneth Gilmore 3/30William Grossman 3/25

Bonnie Kilburn 3/6Richard Mahon 3/14

James Potts 3/26Alvin Sandrock 3/1

Walter Schumaker 3/4Richard Thompson 3/16

John DeJohn 3/19Raymond Loesch 3/8

James Potts 3/26

EVENTS

04/13/2004

Social Night at the Post Home 7:00PM - ?

04/17/04 Spring Turkey Party

Pleasant Social Hall 7pm till ---?? Also 3 gun raffle ticket $5.00 More info. As it is provided.

6/19/04 - Meadville Club event at Grotto Park.

We have been asked to sell doughboys and paraphernalia. Mark the calendar - more info. t/b/a

09/17/04 Annual POW/MIA Vigil @ Diamond Park. Ceremony 8:00 PM.

09/18/04 Ride For Freedom VI Staging at B&T's Scooter Inn. Registration Noon-3PM.

Remember folks. If you hear or know of events the Post may be interested in, please let us know!

Tentative Schedule for Redneck Dinners

HOURS 3-7 - COST $6.00

MAR 20 - ROAST BEEF

MAY 15 - CHICKEN PIE

JULY 17 - CHICKEN BBQ

SEPT 18 - STUFFED CHICKEN BREAST

OCT 16 - SWISS STEAK

NOV 20 - STUFFED PORK CHOP

Next Meeting

Regular monthly meetings are held the 3rd Monday of each month. The next meeting will be held
Monday, March 15, 2004 at 7:30 PM at the NEW POST HOME

Post Web Site: vietnamvetspost52.freeservers.com

OFFICERS

COMMANDER, Fred Neff - 814-425-7433 (smokies1@zoominternet.net)

VICE COMMANDER, Chuck Muddiman - 814-336-3928 (camcjp@alltel.net)

TREASURER, Dave Fairfield - 814-425-7929 (Fairfieldjr@alltel.net)

MASTER SGT-AT-ARMS, Ed McClay 814-336-2274 (mcclaye@toolcity.net)

SECRETARY, Kim Keas - 814-382-0854 (keas@mdvl.net)

***** ***** *****

Veterans of the Vietnam War

Jack Greer Memorial Post #52

PO Box 771

Meadville PA 16335