Maine’s director of the Bureau of Veterans Services, Peter Ogden, summed up the focus of his agency when he spoke to a group of legislators in Brunswick this past December: “I am kind of worried about who is going to take care of Peter 30 years from now.”
While it is initially a sad statement, one which could humanize the individual, it is a damaging philosophy for a leader to take. This is just the beginning of the problems many young veterans discovered during the meeting.
Our nation’s recent wars have been fought by less than 1 percent of the population, and none of them are children upon return. Ogden, however, used the term “kids” at least a dozen times to describe the roughly 60,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan he claims to advocate for in Maine.
I will not bore you with the anguish this caused me, a two-tour Iraq veteran and retired Army captain.
The important thing is that even if we seem young to him, this sends the wrong message to our civilian counterparts.
He is our advocate, and to not tell the true story of these incredible veterans is a failure of leadership on his part. These young men and women have been given an impossible mission, not because there were too many bullets flying, but because there were too many complex tasks. The effort of rebuilding nations while fighting a war is something that has yet to be accurately communicated to the civilian world, in no small part because of the failure of leaders such as Ogden.
Ogden, during the meeting, demonstrated a continued desire to ignore a report conducted by the University of Maine in 2013. The report emphasized various ways to improve veteran outreach using social media and the Internet, often providing no- or low-cost options.
The report said, “Of the 132,000 (veterans in Maine), approximately 60,000 are younger veterans of the country’s most recent wars. It is these veterans who are falling through the cracks as the Maine Bureau of Veterans Affairs struggles to find ways to communicate the benefits and assistance available to them.”
While many other states have updated websites and mobile aps available to help returning veterans, Maine’s website is very limited and more informational. There is also no social media presence.
Ogden said, “The young kids today come back and we don’t communicate the way they do. I don’t tweet, I don’t twitter, I don’t do Facebook. I can barely answer my emails.” He cited staffing issues as primary reasons as to why his office has no plans to fix that communication gap and said, “You may not get quick answers back anymore.”
At one point, Ogden gave a textbook definition of PTSD, and then said it wasn’t. He perpetuated the stereotypes that PTSD is really just being “lost” or “depressed,” and then made casual linkages to employment. “But that’s the same thing with jobs. We talk about all these jobs in Maine, you know. If you tell a kid coming back who is a sergeant, earning all kinds of good money, having all sorts of responsibility, now you’re going to go get a job in construction or work at McDonald’s, they are not looking for that. So there may be great-paying jobs but if it’s not something they want to do, they are not going to be interested in going to work.”
That is when several young veterans spoke out for several minutes to correct him.
These are problems we are actively trying to fight in the community, and our advocate is perpetuating them. McDonald’s doesn’t pay well. PTSD is real and isn’t the same thing as depression.
The problem in Maine at the Bureau of Veterans Services is an organizational philosophy. One of the first lessons in leadership learned in the military is about eating last, after your soldiers. If you are leading the Maine Bureau of Veterans Services, you better be looking farther than just your own nose.
The reality is that wars will continue in the future, and the Internet isn’t going away. Just because Ogden does not feel like evolving, does not give him the right to ignore a generation of returning veterans.
Adrian Cole is a retired Army captain who served two tours of duty in Iraq as an Artillery Officer with the 101st Airborne Division. He holds a master’s degree in homeland security and bachelor’s degree in public management. He is a member of Bath’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7738, and serves as their adjutant. He lives in Brunswick.
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