Welcome to Lest We Forget PTSD Support!
Thank you for visiting our site. Our hope is that our website and information helps another family or military member. Much of the information comes from what we have learned, read and validated. Everyone needs to be informed but they also need to be educated. There are so many confusing websites, many with wonderful information and help, and some others with information that is based on poor research, unsubstantiated or misleading information, theory's or advice.
Lastly, our goal has always been for safer, effective and evidence based
treatments to be given to our active duty troops, veterans and their
families by the DoD and VA for those suffering from PTSD or TBI wounds.
Over medication and poly pharmacy is never a safe or acceptable
treatment, instead we hope to see more peer to peer counseling, 12 step
programs, evidence based therapies and quicker and easier access to care
and treatment. Our hope is that by reading our story and the
information on our website others will come forward and not be
stigmatized by this issue. There is good help available within the DoD
and VA, but you have to know when and how to ask. You must ask questions
and you must advocate for yourself or your loved one.
The Real Warriors Campaign promotes help-seeking behavior among service members and veterans with invisible wounds and encourages service members to increase their awareness and use of these resources. The Outreach Center can be reached toll-free at 866-966-1020 or via e-mail at resources@dcoeoutreach.org.
Please keep coming back for updates and new information as we obtain it. We are in the process of making some very important changes! We will be updating and adding those changes over the next few weeks and months as well as adding more important and informative pages.
If you have questions or need more help or information please email us at: vandeburgtfamily@gmail.com or click here to Contact us
For those of you who have followed us and are familiar with who we are we feel it is only proper to update you as to what has transpired in the last few months since we went offline and the reason why we went offline back in June 2011.
"Lest We Forget" PTSD Family & Military Support is a peer and family run support group created by Tom and Diane Vande Burgt. We are located in beautiful Beaufort, SC.
Tom is a retired veteran having served 15 1/2 yrs active duty in the USMC and retiring in 2006 after serving an additional 8 years in the WVANG. During 2004-2005, Tom served with the 3664th Maintenance Co of the WV Army National Guard in TQ, then in Baghdad with the 245th Maint Co atLog Base Seitz, then back with the 3664th FLE at Camp Anaconda, supporting Co H, 171st Aviation. His wife Diane, though not an Iraq War veteran knows how PTSD affects families as well as veterans being her husband suffers from PTSD. They are working together to provide support to the spouses, families, friends, veterans and soldiers who have been exposed to traumatic experiences and who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or TBI after serving in military hazard zones and provide whatever assistance is necessary.
"Lest We Forget"
Was founded in memory and in honor of the brave men of
Co B, 5th Eng, 5th Mar Div and their loving families
No monument, however large or elaborate, can pay just tribute to any person who has sacrificed their life in the defense of principals he knew God would favor.
We the living..the friends, the relatives and the fellow citizens of our honored dead, are obligated to live a part of our lives in memory of them. We common people of this company that lost twenty men have felt this in our heart, our soul.
The best of each of them is in the breast of all of us and the part of the guiding of our lives shall ever be controlled by knowing and remembering that some of us were unable to live out our natural span of years.
In this conflict of the far Pacific some men die unknown by name, but not unknown for valor None of us can foresee what engagements we will be in, or what casualties we will suffer. This is not for us to know....or worry over.
Someone subconsciously or with determination, shall serve somewhere, sometime to live out the purpose of our untimely, "joining of the great majority"
Written 1945-by Pete Klinefelter 5th MarDiv
