The 4th of July is an amazing time of year. We celebrate Independence Day, the day that the United States broke the shackles that bound us to the most powerful nation of the then earth – Great Britain. No longer were our citizens and sailors conscripted to serve for years (or for life!) on British ships. No longer were we held taxation prisoners by an island nation so far away. No longer were we part of an empire that kept local populations under the thumb of military might. We were FREE.

Our United States veterans have been fighting this country’s battles for over 250 years and yet many of today’s veterans are not free. Many veterans are imprisoned by physical and mental problems that make their lives sometimes unbearable. The male and female veterans of this country are sometimes held hostage by drugs, legal and illegal, that require daily worship at the altar of the bathroom sink or the car or the shot house. Many veterans have alcohol chains around their hearts and lives.

Other veterans find that life as an unfree person is too painful to continue and thus use the skeleton key of suicide to end their bondage. Some documents say that 20+ veterans each day turn their lack of freedom into self-induced capital punishment. Thus, some veterans leave their family and friends in great shock over such an unnecessary penalty for the supposed crime of having served one’s country.

Some vets achieve a double dose of unfreedom when they commit crimes and offenses that put them behind iron bars as well as the mental and physical bars of their lives. Incarcerated veterans face a loss of whatever few benefits that may have accrued from their military service. Many of these former service members find their difficult lives all the more heinous in actual lockups and afterwards.

Sometimes veterans, male and female, are unable to maintain any real relationships based on their service-connected experiences. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD (which is recognized in the month of June with yesterday, June 27 delegated as “PTSD Day”) afflicts not only veterans but their spouses, children, parents, siblings and other close loved ones. Formerly “shell-shock”, or “combat fatigue” PTSD is a mental/emotional cancer that eats away at the happiness and sanity of many onetime soldiers, sailors, airmen, coast guarders, and marines.

Some veterans have trouble finding and keeping a job. Current veteran unemployment ranges at or near 6.6 percent. Not only are their lives hampered by military experiences, but many employers find the vet not the “sort of person” they want to hire. Then again, some vets can’t carry through with the civilian duties they are assigned and a double whammy takes over as vets appear to not be “make it in the outside world.”

Many veterans become homeless and have lives built upon finding a pasteboard box under a bridge as a sleeping place. Their meals come from various shelters or even from Dumpsters behind restaurants and grocery stores. Not only are these homeless vets confronted by the police, but by criminals, and also by injuries and disease. The loneliness and helplessness of this worst sort of lifestyle is heartbreaking and without a doubt a curse on our military system, our civilian system and our Judeo-Christian value system.

This brings us to the worse form of punishment that our former military people face – the indifference of a vast majority of the rest of us to the freedom losses of our veterans. The old concept of Ignorance and apathy – “I don’t know” and “I don’t care” leaves the veteran population easy prey for all the freedom-losing horrors that they face. The general citizenry can go along with its lack or caring and concern while the once desperately-needed military persons – our veterans – go through tortures that ISIS couldn’t even imagine. Shame.

Is it possible that this ”Land of the Free” has become the “Unhappy Home of the Brave?”

Remember that fireworks are hurtful to many combat and PTSD-stricken veterans – be considerate around your veteran neighbors.

Gerald “Joe” Stahlkuppe is a combat Army veteran of the Vietnam War. An ordained clergyman, public speaker and author of several books, he lives with his wife in Gardendale.

Questions or veterans issues you would like to see addressed in the column can be directed to Stahlkuppe at P.O. Box 849, Gardendale, AL 35071 or emailed to editor@njeffersonnews.com.