Disabled Iraq war vet will serve two to four years for arson

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Pittsburgh Tribune Review

A disabled Iraq war veteran will not have to make $43,000 in restitution to cover an insurance company's payout on a mobile home he set on fire while it was occupied by two women and his young nephew.

Salvatore "Sam" Ross Jr., 25, was sentenced Thursday to two to four years in state prison, to be served concurrently with two, six- to 12-month terms he already is serving for probation violations.

Ross, of Hardy Hill Road in Dunbar Township, is charged by state police with arson, aggravated assault, terroristic threats, recklessly endangering another person and resisting arrest.

Police said Ross, who was blinded and lost his left leg while serving with the Army in Iraq in 2003, walked to a trailer near his home and set it on fire in February 2007 because he was upset with one of the women.



Read more: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/breaking/s_573703.html

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One of the sadder local stories to come out of this damn war. This young man has never adjusted since his injuries and has been on a path of self-destruction since. Hopefully he will get help in prison, but I doubt it.

Sam Ross AGE 21; DUNBAR TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA
Paratrooper and combat engineer in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Injured May 18, 2003, in Baghdad, when a bomb blew up during a munitions-disposal operation.

I lost my left leg, just below the knee. Lost my eyesight, which it's still unsettled about whether it will come back or not. I have shrapnel in pretty much every part of my body. Got my finger blown off—it don't work right. I had a hole blown through my right leg—had three skin grafts to try and repair it. It's not too bad now. It hurts a lot, that's about it. You know, not really anything major. Just little things. I have a piece of shrapnel in my neck that came up through my vest and went into my throat and it's sitting behind my trachea, and when I swallow, it kind of feels like I have a pill in my throat. I never had a health problem my entire life. Now I'm going to be seeing doctors every couple of months for the rest of my life. I just went and got fitted for my hearing aide. I've had 15 surgeries and at last 5 more to go. I ask myself that all the time, Why didn't I die because in a sense. You know, I think I should have.

It was the best experience of my life. Twenty-one years old and I've seen a couple of countries. I've been pretty much everywhere and done everything. I've jumped out of airplanes, I got to play with mines, got to see how the Army works. I got to interact with people of another culture, people who live their lives 100 percent different than the way we live here. That's something that one in a million people will ever get to see in their lifetime—another culture.

After high school I was kind of like undecided on what I wanted to do in life. And I went to Texas for a while and stayed with one of my aunts who lives down there. I got a job but got bored with the life. I worked in a machine shop. $27 an hour, more than I make now. It was a good job, right out of high school. Everybody's dream job, but it was kind of boring just standing there all day. I always thought I could do a little bit more than just stand there. So I came back home and joined the army.

I want to go into politics. Run for office, maybe.



http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/03/03_100-2.html

[stillcool]

1. He asks 'why didn't I die?'

in the meantime he already has..he just doesn't know it yet. What a life.

I've seen bodies ripped to pieces by bullets, blown into millions of scraps by bombs, and pierced by booby traps. I’ve smelled the stench of bodies burned. I’ve heard the air sound like it was boiling from rounds flying back and forth. I’ve lived an insanity others should never live..."
-- Dennis Tenety, Fire in the Hole----

●-Michael C.C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II About 25-30 percent of WWII casualties were psychological cases; under very sever conditions that number could reach as high as 70-80 percent. In Italy, mental for 56 percent of total casualties. On Okinawa, where fighting conditions were particularly horrific, 7,613 Americans died, 31,807 sustained physical wounds, and 26, 221 were mental casualties.-Adams, 95
Trying to repress feelings, they drank, gambled suffered paralyzing depression, and became inarticulately violent. A paratrooper’s wife would “sit for hours and just hold him when he shook.”
Afterward, he started beating her and the children: “He became a brute.” And they divorced —-Adams, 150

Haunted
by Mark D. Van Ells
Did the soldiers of the Good War really come home psychologically unscathed by the horror and stress they experienced? Or did they simply suffer in silence?
by Mark D. Van Ells


For many, continued exposure to combat conditions wore them down. "It was not going into battle the one time, but the going back again and again, that finally got to you," " a sailor from the USS Yorktown told Jones in a Honolulu bar in May 1942. A navy veteran from Texas compared his service on a destroyer off the Tokyo mainland during the Okinawa campaign to a death sentence:

They strap him in the electric chair, he can see the warden's hand on the switch, he knows he is going to die, and he waits all day. Then at the end of the day they come and get him, take him back to his cell, and all night the other prisoners try to kill him. The next day they come get him and strap him in the chair and he expects to die again--this goes on and on day and night for three months....
---------------------------------
Despite the host of conflicting opinions about battle fatigue, few people questioned that combat had profound effects on the minds of soldiers. "We were all psychotic, inmates of the greatest madhouse of history," claimed Manchester. Two psychiatrists who worked with veterans after the war noted that "mild traumatic states...are almost universal among combat troops immediately after battle."

Some aspects of war are timeless. The emotional trauma it causes is one of them

Da Nang, Vietnam. A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing. 08/03/1965
http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/haunted.htm

[Tutonic]

3. Thanks.

[donco]

4. Operation Starlight nt

[brentspeak]

5. Is the Manchester who's quoted the author William Manchester?

[stillcool]

6. sorry I didn't provide the link...

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/haunted.htm
and yes the man's name is William.

Combat veterans had to find ways to block out the madness and tragedy of war. Marine noncommissioned officer. William Manchester claimed that "a foot soldier retains his sanity only by hardening himself.

[downindixie]

2. The Army and the Va should

been charged with the crimes this vet committed.He needs help that he obviously didn,t
get!

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. How does a blind guy with one leg walk to a trailer and set it on fire?

:shrug: