{"id":1121,"date":"2014-03-10T16:46:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T22:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2014-03-10T16:48:53","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T22:48:53","slug":"mobile-unit-puts-on-the-miles-to-help-military-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/03\/mobile-unit-puts-on-the-miles-to-help-military-veterans\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile unit puts on the miles to help military veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Doug<\/a>

<\/p>

Readjustment counselor Doug Bell, left, chats with veteran Bernard Rustad inside the Mobile Vet Center. The mobile unit visited Roundup last week.<\/p><\/div>\n

ROUNDUP \u2014 Doug Bell, a readjustment counselor with the Billings Vet Center, said it\u2019s typical of military veterans to insist that they don\u2019t need help.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s that mentality of, there\u2019s always someone worse than them, so they don\u2019t want to take away from them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And sure enough, when the Billings-based Mobile Vet Center pulled up in front of the Musselshell County Courthouse last Thursday, the first person to stop by was just such a veteran.<\/p>\n

Bob Newman is a Roundup resident who served in the Montana National Guard in the 1970s. He said he was accidentally shot during training, just before he was to ship out for Vietnam.<\/p>\n

He stopped by the Mobile Vet Center to visit and to sign the roster, his way of showing support for a service he hopes will continue indefinitely. And that\u2019s all he was there for, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t ask for anything because I believe there\u2019s guys more important out there who need it more than I do,\u201d he said. \u201cLook at some of these guys coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan with their arms and legs gone. \u2026 That\u2019s where I like to see the help go.”<\/p>\n

Thursday was a relatively slow day in Roundup, with just seven vets coming in between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Bell said the monthly visit of the Veterans Administration\u2019s 38-foot-long RV usually attracts 12 to 15 veterans, sometimes as many as 20.<\/p>\n

\"Mobile<\/a>

<\/p>

The Mobile Vet Center, which is based in Billings and serves all of Eastern Montana, parked in front of the Musselshell County Courthouse last Thursday.<\/p><\/div>\n

The RV, one of 50 in the continental United States, is based at the Billings Vet Center and serves 33 Eastern Montana counties. Missoula has a smaller four-wheel-drive vehicle that serves Western Montana.<\/p>\n

The Mobile Vet Centers are an extension of the storefront readjustment centers established after the Vietnam War, when it became apparent that veterans were reluctant to visit VA clinics and hospitals. In states like Montana, the need is based on that reluctance and on geography.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt beats the hell out of everybody up here having to go down to Billings,\u201d said Jim Hatter, a Marine Corps veteran. \u201cSome of these old boys don\u2019t even like to leave their house, much less go into the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until the Mobile Vet Center began making monthly visits to Roundup in 2009, Hatter had not had any interaction with the VA since moving to Roundup 22 years ago. As a result of his visits, Hatter has been working with Bell for the past year on a claim for his post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n

\"Viviano\"<\/a>

<\/p>

John Viviano is the Mobile Vet Center operator.<\/p><\/div>\n

The unemployed master carpenter didn\u2019t want to talk about what caused his PTSD, saying only that he saw a lot of death up close. When he visits the Mobile Vet Center, he said, \u201cI talk to Doug. It helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a minimum, the RV is staffed by Bell and John Viviano, the operator of the mobile unit. He\u2019s the one who runs the RV\u2019s technical and mechanical systems. There are satellite telephones, a fax machine, computers and a camera and display screen for telemedicine consultations, among a lot of other equipment.<\/p>\n

Last Thursday\u2019s crew included Dan Altmaier, a veterans representative for the Montana Job Service. A veterans service officer usually goes along, too, to help vets with benefits claims and paperwork, but the officer was on assignment elsewhere last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach mission is kind of tailored to who\u2019s available and who our target audience is,\u201d Viviano said.<\/p>\n

The challenge of providing services is greater in Eastern Montana, Viviano said, because of the great distances involved and the type of people who live there. He said many of the vets they serve are \u201cold hardscrabble cowboys\u201d who aren\u2019t used to asking anybody for anything.

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

Another visitor last week was Bernard Rustad, a combat medic who was finally awarded a Bronze Star Medal last year for saving the lives of three soldiers in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

He said he lives outside of Roundup and stops by the Mobile Vet Center if he\u2019s in town that day and sees the RV. He said he was diagnosed with PTSD during one of his annual VA checkups.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried talking them out of it, but they told me I had it,\u201d he said with a chuckle. He was given a 40 percent disability rating, for which he receives a small monthly check.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call that our psycho money, my wife and I,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the Mobile Vet Center doesn\u2019t have to set up shop before veterans seek its services. Once, near Crow Agency, a veteran from out of state flagged the RV down and asked for crisis counseling. His medication was gone and he was in bad shape.<\/p>\n

Bell said they managed to obtain medication for him, got him into a hotel for the night and then sent him on his way back to his home state, where his counselor had been informed of the situation.<\/p>\n

\"Vet<\/a>

<\/p>

Viviano, left, visits with veterans Blaine Tull, Jim Hatter and Tony Ditonno.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sometimes, Viviano said, veterans who work in law enforcement will visit the Mobile Vet Center for \u201cbelow-the-radar counseling.\u201d If they seek psychological help from a clinic or hospital, he said, a report will be generated and could end up being seen by their superiors. A quick visit to the mobile unit and no one\u2019s the wiser.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to live within the bureaucracy without being overpowered by the bureaucracy,\u201d Viviano said.<\/p>\n

Bell said he\u2019s often amazed at how little veterans are aware of what they are eligible to receive. Vets suffering PTSD are afraid to seek help because they don\u2019t want to miss work, he said, but then find out they can go on 100 percent disability while undergoing treatment.<\/p>\n

The regular mobile visits are also important because they allow the vets to get to know Bell and the other service providers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to build a certain level of trust with them before they open up to you,\u201d Bell said.<\/p>\n

He described the mobile unit as \u201ca safe place where they get things off their chest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, as Viviano put it, \u201cWe\u2019re the aid station at the edge of the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROUNDUP \u2014 Doug Bell, a readjustment counselor with the Billings Vet Center, said it\u2019s typical of military veterans to insist that they don\u2019t need help. \u201cThere\u2019s that mentality of, there\u2019s always someone worse than them, so they don\u2019t want to take away from them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[262,254,259,256,260,257,253,261,258,255],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-bernard-rustad","tag-billings-vet-center","tag-bob-newman","tag-doug-bell","tag-jim-hatter","tag-john-viviano","tag-mobile-vet-center","tag-musselshell-county","tag-ptsd","tag-veterans-administration","prominence-category-featured","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}