A 1345-word article on the struggles female veterans are facing, resulting in some becoming homeless. There is a disparity in the services available to female veterans compared to male veterans. Written by Valerie D. Lockhart, publisher and executive editor of the Detroit Native Sun. She has over 20 years’ experience as a newspaper editor and was the former Associate Editor of the Michigan Chronicle, the state’s oldest African American owned newspaper. She has won several awards in journalism that includes the Lincoln University Unity Awards in Media.
 
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Battles to protect human rights, of life, liberty, and freedom, have been fought overseas, but active combats for basic rights are underway on American soil.
    Thousands of female veterans have become casualties of war, wounding some with homelessness, denying medical treatment and benefits, and experiencing post-traumatic stress disorders.
      Following in her younger brother’s footsteps, Mary Busch enlisted in the army and volunteered several times to be deployed for combat hoping to become “a part of something bigger than myself.”
     Her requests were denied; but little did she know that she would face another conflict at home.
    Wounded from a Humvee accident combined with severe reactions to immunizations required to serve overseas, Busch was medically discharged from duty shortly before reaching her 3-year anniversary. 
     “I was literally at pre-deployment on my way to deploy as an individual attaché (along with a unit that I had never trained with), when I received my first-ever MRI,” she explained. “I was instructed that I would not be allowed to deploy as I could possibly put my fellow soldiers in jeopardy if I fell, stumbled, or couldn’t pick up a fallen comrade that was on my 24th birthday. I had started having problems after a service-wide change in physical training curriculums for Army soldiers, severe allergic reactions to some of our immunizations needed to go overseas, and a Humvee accident used in our training for ‘deployment settings’. I had never experienced falling for no reason, not being able to stand and walk, losing my words, incredible pain in my head, and forgetting how to add and where I put things. I was an athlete, dancer, and weightlifter and was used to sprains, bruising, pulled muscles, and tired body, but not this. I joined the Army as a weightlifting, dancing, running, jumping, and healthy woman. I did not enter with any medical waivers or allergies, without heart, lung, vision, bone, muscle or speech and vision issues.”