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After leaving Daniel the last vet standing in line with Daniel I looked over and I see a man standing about 6'3 with a US Army issued fleece on but had an Eagle Globe an Anchor (EGA) on it which one would take as him being a Marine. I asked and he told me he was in the USMC but wore an Army fleece because that’s all he could find at the last donation site he went to. His name was Lee and told me that he served from 78-83 as a 0331 grunt (Infantry). Where he went through MCRD. He told me that his dad was in the Army as a pencil pusher or POG (people other than grunts) so he was an Army brat.
Lee's story is different than most of the stories I hear however it had some similarities to others. He said while he was active, he deployed to Beirut and while over there he took a few rounds. He said that the experience will never leave his mind and remembers being on the Navy coral sea cv43 the sister ship to midway. He said he when got out he never claimed any of his injuries thus the VA wouldn’t cover him so its untimely lead him to experimenting with pain meds.
He said upon getting out of the service he obtained a job working in the financial sector because his father worked for PWC and encouraged it as a great career. The problem was because he wasn’t adequately taking the proper meds, he got addicted to what he was on and one pill led to the next untimely leading to crack which was his drug of choice. With this being his drug of choice working for a financial institution he was fired loosening everything because he was embezzling money to feed his habit which started from feeding his pain fix to needing more. He said he could remember at one point in life living great to now being “one of the homeless guys” losing everything. He told me that he got clean years back but not after losing it all. He said that now he is just another homeless veteran and that if he could go back he would have gotten treated for his injuries so that he could have been medically treated properly rather than experimenting with other drugs to fix his pain.