“Would you like to help wounded veterans?”

Please read on…

 

May 1, 2009

One of many Operation Ward 57 aids in recovery!

In the summer of 1986, I was one of a group of four men hurriedly moving into position to defend a section of wall during what was quickly becoming a successful base overrun by the enemy. After only a few moments of exchanging small-arms fire, an RPG slammed into our position. I woke up in a hospital bed a day later with a bandage around my head. It took two weeks for the initial recovery from the concussion—I was the lucky one.

Two of the men next to me were killed out right by the shrapnel and blast. The other lost his left arm. So, even though I served as a corpsman, I really don’t like being in hospitals. I especially find it disturbing when hospitals are unable to deliver—either because of funds or bureaucratic inefficiency—what wounded warriors need in their recovery beyond the surgeries and food.

That’s what so impresses me about OPERATION WARD 57: filling that gap and helping veterans in so many ways as they’re processed through Walter Reed Hospital, the US entry point for many servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan—You probably read about what was happening in the news and it was atrocious!

A lot of people talk about how bad things have become and how something should be done, but how many people really put themselves out and do it?

I wondered what I could do and realized that if you couldn’t put your time in assisting directly, you could at least put your money where my mouth is. And what better way than to donate a portion of your purchase of a book about how a combat veteran dealt effectively with the psychological effects of war?

Front page article of release from Vietnam

So, contacting my publisher, I ordered copies of my memoir that jumped to #2 Topseller for three weeks on Amazon.com when it was released in 2004. What more appropriate to help wounded veterans than donating 50-percent of the profits of a book on how I, unable to do anything else, confronted the psychological effects of war while in seven months solitary in a Vietnamese political prison?

Long before I went to war as a 20-year-old, I was a four-year-old American ex-patriate living in South Vietnam during the worst parts of the war: we arrived in 1968, just in time for the bloodiest part of the Tet Offensive—as you can imagine, I’ve had a long time to deal with effects of war. The memories affected me so much that by 1983 I was not only back in Southeast Asia as a teenaged, fledgling photojournalist, but in Vietnam on trumped up charges of spying for the CIA.

During the seven-month solitary of an 11-month imprisonment, as I waited for my ransom to be paid, I confronted those war demons haunting me. Those techniques and tools I found during that time are what my memoir’s about and the basis for my prior counseling work and now as a speaker to veterans and those dealing with post-traumatic stress.

As you can tell, helping is what I’m all about. And if you’re still with me, I’m sure you have this great quality of humanity, too!

Cork Graham just after release from the hospital.

…Perhaps you’ll order your signed copy of The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War because you’re patriotic, also. Perhaps you consider yourself lucky to still be able to walk on your own feet and hug those you love with your own arms…

…Perhaps you’ll get it because you like a good read that lets you escape and feel as though you’re there during a number of moments in world history with all its intrigue. Or even better, you’re getting one not only for yourself, but a friend or loved one who might be dealing with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress and would benefit greatly.

…Whichever reason, I want to congratulate you and assure you’re doing a very good thing!

Thank you for clicking on the Paypal “Buy Now” button below to begin the process of assistance through your memoir purchase:

Best Regards,

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50% of the Profits Go Directly to Operation Ward 57!
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