The first thing of course, even before coffee is to pull the morning paper through our letter box in the front door, turn on an extra heater in the room I’m in and do a scan of the paper before actually settling down to read it all.  Sometimes there are two papers.

Well, scanning the paper today I came across this story and was just floored by what I’d read.  So I immediately booted because I want this story shared before I get bogged down with other things.

This was just one hospital out of hundreds and hundreds that I am sure would not have acted this way.  But then I have to wonder.  Is that really true?
Given the state of thinking in today’s world, who is to say with certainty that the same might not apply somewhere else.  The USA as well?

This really is so totally outrageous it needs a category all to itself.
Where’s the common decency? Where’s the humanity? The common sense?

If there were no other way to transport this poor old man who once served his country well, and even had he never been in the army, never mind.
Is this any way to treat an old man?

People who know me well enough also know that of all the folks I have ever disliked in my life, I have never disliked anyone so much as I do the MIL, and with many a valid reason.  However, as much as I loath her, even I would not condone treating the miserable old bag in this manner.  Even I know better and flinch at the idea of this sort of callas behavior on the part of people who are supposed to be “care givers.”

If there were NO OTHER way of sending this dying old man home, could they not have spared just one person to accompany him so he wasn’t alone?
Couldn’t someone have reached a family member?

Oh good.  They said “sorry.” In a pigs ass!  They’re only sorry because of bad publicity and how long will that last?

Saying “sorry” seems to be the password for everything in this screwed up world.  Thugs arrested for god awful crimes only need to say sorry to get a lighter jail term if they get that at all.  “Sorry.” Who really believes that? 

This story bothers me a lot.  Maybe I’m not as cold blooded as I thought I was. Or maybe I see myself in the same situation some day in the future.

For the first time in my life I’m seriously beginning to wonder if just maybe we really need MORE, not less religion in our lives.  Perhaps if Christian charity
or compassion were at work here in this Christian country, someone would have known this was not right on any level.  And you need not be religious to see how terribly wrong this was.  But perhaps if the staff at this hospital had a bit of old time religious feeling and charity, they would have acted otherwise.

I feel very bad for the victim here, and I see him as exactly that.  A victim not just of the hospital, but of a Godless culture as well.  He deserved better at the end of his life.  Much better.

Dying World War Two hero ‘stripped of human dignity’ by hospital care, family say
A decorated Second World War hero aged 101 was sent home to die by a hospital in a taxi wearing a nappy and a set of ill fitting pyjamas, clutching a bag of soiled clothing.

By John Bingham
Last Updated: 8:17PM GMT 30 Dec 2008

Brigadier John Platt recieved the DSO bravery. The family of Brigadier John Platt, who won the Distinguished Service Order for his leadership in one of the fiercest battles of the Italian campaign, told how he was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital, unable to feed himself.

They said he was in a confused state and incontinent, after a stay which left him “degraded and humiliated”.

During his five-day spell in a mixed-sex observation ward, his hearing aid was crushed, his false teeth went missing and soiled pyjamas were piled up unwashed in a locker by his bedside, they said.

Knowing he was dying after losing the ability to swallow food, he asked to go home. But no ambulance was available so he was sent in a taxi on an hour-long journey to the care home where he died a few days later.

When his family later complained about the hygiene issues around the soiled pyjamas, the hospital wrote back to say that it was unfortunate that he had been “unable to avail himself” of its laundry service.

It has since apologised to Brig Platt’s family for the “unacceptable” nature of his discharge in a taxi in late 2006 and vowed to learn lessons from his ordeal.

His case came to light as Nial Dickson, chief executive of the health thinktank the King’s Fund, warned of a deterioration of compassion from under-pressure staff in NHS hospitals.

Brig Platt’s daughter-in-law, Amanda, said that his case highlighted a “shocking and disgraceful” lack of care.

“All that he had at the end of his 101 years was his dignity and they took that away from him,” she said.

In May 1944 Brig Platt, then a Lieutenant Colonel, personally led the men of the 2nd Battalion, the Somerset Light Infantry, in the heroic assault across the River Gargliano.

He was wounded twice during the operation and later received the DSO for his bravery. In later life he wrote books about military history and hunting.

“It wasn’t the fact that he was my father-in-law and a dear old soldier, it was the complete lack of respect for a dying person, for a human being, that I thought was so terrible,” said Mrs Platt.

“They packed him off without so much as a by your leave in the back of a non-medical car taxi, sitting bolt upright with somebody else’s pyjamas on and a nappy so tight that he could hardly breathe and two cotton blankets on his shoulders.

“They had lost his false teeth which were brand new, I never saw my father-in-law without his false teeth ... and somebody had stood on his deaf aid, which was crushed.”

But she said that what angered the family most was the soiled clothing.

“I just can’t believe that any hospital would keep excrement-covered clothing in a locker for five days ... I got the impression that this lack of attention must be endemic because it was so lightly treated.”

In a statement, the hospital said: “Clearly some aspects of Brigadier Platt’s discharge from hospital in 2006 were unacceptable and the trust apologises for any distress that this caused the patient and his family.

“In apologising, the trust also acknowledges the concerns raised about some of Brigadier Platt’s personal effects.”

TELEGRAPH

“I just can’t believe that any hospital would keep excrement-covered clothing in a locker”

Well I can because something close to that happened here. 
Back in 2005 the wife’s mother fell, broke hip and had other serious ailments and was carted off to the hospital.

When my wife paid a visit she was given what appeared to be a transparent, pink plastic bag containing her mothers soiled nighties. These were meant to be taken home and washed and then brought back to the hospital. 

Well, that pink plastic looking bag was in FACT, made of soap and was dissoluble in water.  But we weren’t aware of that at the time. That bag contained more then a nightie that needed washing. You can guess what.

After that experience we asked that the hospital laundry do her soiled garments.

Here’s the kicker.  Sure, the hospital can do the laundry. But you have to know ahead of time that, you should ask if they will.  See, you might take for granted that they will.  They won’t volunteer the info.  And nobody told us that the bag would dissolve in water.  We may have been lucky in that.

Thankfully, we never put that soap-bag in our washer. It was done outside in a bucket.  Foolishly perhaps, we hadn’t expected the extra ingredients that bag contained.  But we kind of suspected.  It wasn’t until we opened the bag that we found it all.  It did however confirm my belief that the old lady was full of it.

Finally, wife has just informed me that the hospital in question here has had a number of problems in the past.  This hosp. trust is one of the worst in the country, so she tells me.

While not exactly in the very same league as this article, I did once witness in an American hospital in Riverside, Ca., the same sort of gross indifference and callousness towards an elderly patient in my room when I was recovering from back surgery. And that was over 20 years ago.

I am leaving this posted here for awhile.  I want people to see this. Lots of people. PLEASE pass this one on.

Posted by peiper     on 12/31/2008 at 04:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Health-Medicine • Heroes • Medical • Outrageous • UK •  
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   Sunday - December 07, 2008

December 7th, In Memorium

I believe I’ve posted this before. Sorry.

It’s the anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. We went to war against ‘sneak attacks’. Much like we are fighting a war against ‘terrorism’.

Right?

Not my favorite version. My favorite is the one by the original Highwaymen. That’s the version I have in iTunes.

UPDATE:

Just stumbled across this.

To all our men and women serving right now, Thank YOU!

From one Vet to another.

Posted by Christopher     on 12/07/2008 at 05:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Heroes •  
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   Friday - December 05, 2008

Bypass grandfather fights off Samurai sword post office raiders. Another battling Brit, in civvies

Take a look at this.

Hey people, what do you hear in this video that shows how vulnerable they are here?

CCTV: Bypass grandfather fights off Samurai sword post office raiders
A grandfather who survived a triple heart by-pass fought off two hooded raiders when they attacked him with a Samurai sword in his country post office.

Alan Garratt was slashed with the three-foot long weapon when he refused to give in to the raiders’ demands.

Despite his injuries, the 68 year-old put up such a fight the attackers fled empty handed.

“I don’t think they thought anyone would tackle them, but I did,” he said.

The raid, which lasted 40 seconds, was captured on a CCTV camera only installed 24 hours earlier following another raid on the premises last week.

The images show two men wearing balaclavas and holding the weapons aloft, ready to strike before deciding to make a run for it.

In a final act of defiance, Mr Garratt, hurled a bottle of sherry at the raiders as they fled.

The terror began when one of the men vaulted the counter, apparently thinking Mr Garratt’s wife, Erica, 69, was alone in the shop in Knipton in Leicestershire’s Vale of Belvoir.

Alerted by his wife’s cries for help, Mr Garratt rushed from the back of the shop, forcing the raider to jump back over the counter.

One of the raiders swung the sword down on the pensioner’s left arm and hand, causing deep wounds.

Both men took turns slashing at him, while he searched for something to defend himself with.

The robbers fled empty-handed as he began to tackle them once more.

He needed eight stitches in his arm following the attack on Monday.

He said: “It was all over in 40 seconds. You can see they’re proper Samurai swords on the CCTV footage.

“I didn’t really feel it when I was cut on the arm and hand until afterwards. There was blood everywhere.

“The only thing I could find to arm myself with was a bottle of sherry.”

Despite their ordeal, the couple insist they have no plans to be forced out of their livelihood.

A family friend said: “It’s shaken them up quite a bit, but they have said they don’t want to be driven away.”

ONE BRAVE SENIOR CITIZEN

Posted by peiper     on 12/05/2008 at 09:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Heroes • UK •  
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   Wednesday - November 05, 2008

a blade of grass, growing

I went up to the grocery store to pick up some breakfast and to buy the Morning After newspapers. I can’t tell you the last time I bought an actual newspaper, and I could write for hours about the naive idiocy I’ve read in the stories therein. But that’s another post.

I was coming up the aisle and saw an old man trying to get some soup cans off the bottom shelf. He had to squat down with his shaky knees while holding onto the shopping cart handle. Various lady shoppers were detouring around him, wearing various looks of annoyance and impatience.

“Hey, do you need a hand with those?” I asked him.
“I sure could.”

So I knelt down on the floor and got the cans for him. Dozens. Every last can of Beef Noodle soup in the store. He sure must love this kind of soup! No, it wasn’t for him. He was buying it for the soup kitchen over in Phillipsburg. ( a small city in NW NJ that has a lot of low- and no- income families ). He goes shopping for them in the off-hours when the stores aren’t too crowded. I let him know that I’d grown up working in grocery stores, and that any store will always get him a clerk to help him if he asks at the desk. He thanked me for my help and we both went on our way.

I got my OJ and was on my way to the check out when I passed him in the frozen food aisle. He was buying the bargain brand Banquet frozen dinners by the dozen. I jokingly said that he didn’t have any trouble reaching those. We chatted again, and that’s when I noticed his shirt had the Order of the Arrow monogram. I was in Scouts when I was a kid. Cub Scouts, Webelos, Arrow of Light, Boy Scouts, Merit Badges, the whole bit. Nearly 30 years later and that arrowhead still impresses the hell out of me. In my day it was a very rare sign of the best of the best. We talked some more. “Scouts doesn’t teach morals anymore”, he said, “I don’t know what the world is coming to. It’s just one more activity, like soccer camp. Parents just drop off their kids and leave. They don’t even attend the Eagle ceremony, and that’s the biggest event in a young man’s life. And now the country is turning Socialist. That’s not what I served three tours in Vietnam for. I didn’t have to go back the last two times, but I felt my country needed me. And when we all came home, what happened then was disgusting.” Turns out he is also the Scout’s Shooting Sports Program Director for this whole big chunk of the state. Teaching boys how to shoot guns. In New Jersey. Talk about an uphill battle.

So I talked a bit more with this kindred spirit, asking him about the food bank. Were the Scouts involved? Were they funding this? No to both. The whole thing was out of his pocket. “I’ve been part of the food bank in Phillipsburg for 10 years. We used to help out 78 families, now there’s 459.” I said that we always had a can or two for the food drive barrels, and that I’d always gone out of my way to put old clothes, cleaned, in the Goodwill boxes, until I learned what a con that is. [Those clothes get shredded, the pulp gets sold to China, and some of the earnings get distributed. Meanwhile the management gets paid enormous salaries. None of the clothes actually go to your neighbors in need.]

So I got his card, wished him luck, and gave him $20 to help his efforts. And you’re damn right I thanked him for his military service and let him know that it was the right thing to do.

We don’t need big government programs to help each other out. What we need are more people like this guy, John Kauza, to make an effort close to home. Willing to get involved, willing to actually do something. One more blade of grass, growing, sending down roots.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/05/2008 at 11:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Heroes •  
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   Thursday - August 14, 2008

AN OBIT FOR A BATTLING BRIT FROM ANOTHER TIME. RIP COLONEL JOHNSON.

THIS IS A FAIRLY LONG STORY BUT FASCINATING OR IT WOULDN’T BE HERE.  THIS MAN WAS MOSTLY UNKNOWN TO THE PUBLIC AT LARGE, AND THIS READS LIKE AN IAN FLEMMING STORY.  THIS IS HOW THE TELEGRAPH DOES OBITS ON THOSE WHO’VE PASSED AND LEFT A STORY BEHIND THEM.  IN OTHER WORDS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE FAMOUS.

BRITS HAVE BEEN PRETTY DARN GOOD AT THIS IN THE PAST.  COULD DO WITH ANOTHER ENTIRE GENERATION LIKE HIM.  BUT HEALTH AND SAFETY ACTS WOULDN’T ALLOW FOR IT.  MORE’S THE PITY AND SAD FOR ENGLAND AS WELL.

Colonel Jim Johnson
Former SAS officer who in the 1960s led a three-year guerrilla campaign against Egyptian forces in Yemen.

Colonel Jim Johnson, who has died aged 83, was responsible for running Britain’s clandestine war against Egyptian forces in Yemen during the mid-1960s, an experience that inspired him to set up Britain’s first post-war private military company.

Six years after the allied withdrawal from Suez in 1956, the Yemeni monarchy fell victim to a military coup staged by Egyptian-trained officers, an event which served as a warning to the British protectorates of Aden and Oman.

In London the Macmillan cabinet was divided between those who were ready to recognise the new Yemeni regime (the approach taken by Washington) and those who favoured supporting a guerrilla campaign of resistance on behalf of the displaced ruler, Imam al Badr, who had been forced to retreat into the hills.

As the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) dithered, Colonel David Stirling, founder of the Special Air Service (SAS), suggested that Jim Johnson, a retired SAS officer, “put something together”. Johnson was then asked if he might be willing to go to Yemen to destroy the Egyptian Mig aircraft which were bombing tribes loyal to Imam al Badr with phosgene poison gas; and there followed an adventure that would have done credit to Bulldog Drummond.

Weapons of indeterminate origin were stored at Johnson’s home in Sloane Avenue, Chelsea, for use by former SAS regulars and reservists, some of whom had left the Army to take part in the operation.
Among the leaders selected for the operation were Colonel John Woodhouse, a prominent figure in the fortunes of the post-war SAS, and Major John Cooper, David Stirling’s wartime driver, who was now working as a professional freelance soldier.

A cheque for £5,000, signed by the Imam al Badr’s foreign minister, was paid through the bank account of the Hyde Park Hotel, where the SAS’s colonel commandant, Brian Franks, was chairman of the board.
Johnson took leave of absence from his job as a Lloyd’s underwriter and recruited a number of French mercenaries, among them Colonel Roger Faulques, a veteran of the Foreign Legion, and the notorious Robert Denard.

Then, the day before the first reconnaissance team, led by John Cooper, was due to leave London, Macmillan’s war minister, John Profumo, resigned because he had lied to the House of Commons. The Foreign Office now became concerned by the possibility of political embarrassment, and it seemed as if the Yemeni operation might be called off.
Johnson, however, reasoned that SIS would probably not put the brakes on before the relevant duty officer took over at 9am the next morning, and Cooper’s team left the country.

When David Stirling then received a telephone call from the Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, he denied any knowledge. Immediately afterwards Stirling then rang Johnson, who told him: “Too late. They are half way across already.”
While they were changing planes in Libya, one of Cooper’s suitcases broke open and rolls of plastic explosive spilled out; he explained that the substance was marzipan, and the Libyans obligingly helped with the repacking.

(Marzipan is an almond and sugar paste used to ice cakes and other pastries or sculpted into a variety of shapes to be eaten as candy or used as cake decorations. Marzipan is simply a mixture of almond paste, powdered sugar, and a moistening agent such as water, corn syrup, glucose, fondant, or egg whites. After the ingredients are mixed, marzipan reaches a consistency of dough or soft rubber and can be rolled, shaped, cut, or molded.)

After the team had arrived in Yemen, supplies were dropped from a variety of aircraft – some of them Israeli – using the drop-zone expertise Cooper had acquired during the war in Occupied Europe. Johnson himself flew in to Yemen later, on a Canadian passport in the name of Cohen and with a pocketful of gold sovereigns.

Over the next three years he and his men conducted a resistance campaign, wearing down the Egyptian forces sent in by Nasser. The Saudi Arabian government, meanwhile, funded the Yemeni royalist faction and dictated overall strategy, but the hostilities became a war of attrition which eventually led to stalemate. Nevertheless, the Egyptians lost 10,000 men. “Yemen,” Nasser later reflected, “was my Vietnam.”

Henry James Johnson born on December 21 1924, the son of a Ceylon tea planter who was employed on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park during the Second World War; one of his forebears had been a soldier in the privatised East India Company army who had later guarded Napoleon on St Helena.
The young Jim was educated at Westminster, where he was a contemporary of Tony Benn, and as a schoolboy he joined the Home Guard.

Subsequently he was serving as a junior officer with the 2nd Battalion, Welsh Guards, near Caen in 1944 when the artist Rex Whistler was killed.

After his unit had liberated Brussels, he was involved in the hard fighting across northern Germany until he and a brother officer found themselves on the steps of Cologne cathedral. As two armed Wehrmacht officers ran past them, Johnson reached for his revolver, but his companion exclaimed: “No, Jim! Not from the cathedral.”
After the war Johnson joined Lloyd’s, and in his spare time rose to command 21 SAS (TA). On retiring from the TA in 1963 he was appointed OBE, and was later appointed ADC to the Queen.

After his three years running the operation in Yemen, Johnson wrote a memorandum for the British and Saudi governments pointing to “the apparent lack of interest by HMG and the stated indifference to our activities by MI6”, and the “absolute disinterest” of the Saudis. He identified three possible policies in such circumstances: to withdraw; to replace resistance with intelligence-gathering; or to “hang on… and hope we will be used sensibly again”. But he added the reminder that the operation had “discovered, trained and helped arm tens of thousands of tribesmen without official help”.

In 1975 Johnson and David Walker, a former regular officer in 22 SAS, set up their firm to operate in the grey area between the politically acceptable and the officially deniable. Having begun by providing protection for British diplomats in South America, and then for foreign statesmen, the firm trained mujahideen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

It also made a substantial contribution to the defence of Oman after the British-backed victory over Communist forces in that country. KMS was allowed by Whitehall to set up the Sultan’s Special Force, an elite unit modelled on the SAS and trained by former SAS personnel. Now “omanised”, it remains an integral part of the country’s armed forces.
In later years Johnson recalled that, during his final audience with a member of the Saudi royal family after leaving Yemen, he had made two requests. These were for the orderly disposal of the heavy weapons, particularly mortars, under his control, and for his men to receive an enhanced month’s severance pay. He had added: “French mercenaries have a habit of blowing up the aircraft of national airlines if they don’t get paid properly.”

Both his requests were granted, and Johnson and his comrades celebrated with champagne a month later at the Hyde Park Hotel.
The final reunion of those who took part in the Yemen operation was attended by eight survivors last year.
Jim Johnson died on July 20. His first wife was Judith Lyttleton, with whom he had a son and a daughter. After her death he married, in 1982, Jan Gay.

http://tinyurl.com/57mxu6

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 11:04 AM   
Filed Under: • Heroes • UK • War-Stories •  
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