Wanted: Lawyers to Offer Veterans a Helping Hand

• Jurisdiction: California,United States
• Citation: Vol. 04 No. 2011 Pg. 01
• Publication year: 2011
• Pages: 01
• Year: 2011
• topic: Administrative Law

California Bar Journal 2011.

CBJ - April 2011 #01. Wanted: Lawyers to offer veterans a helping hand

The California Lawyer
April 2011

Wanted: Lawyers to offer veterans a helping hand

By Diane Curtis
Staff Writer

By the time he was 22, Matthew Sanders had received four Army medals, including the Purple Heart, as a soldier with the Third Ranger Battalion in Iraq and Afghanistan. In all, the Kansas City, Mo., native who had joined the Army at age 18 following 9/11, was deployed five times in four years and was promoted to sergeant for his outstanding conduct.

Besides the Purple Heart, awarded for heroism to those who have been wounded or killed in combat, Sanders received the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal and the Joint Service Achievement Medal. He was trained primarily as a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) gunner, sniper and team leader. In five high-priority, dangerous combat missions, he helped rescue members of his team when their vehicle was hit with enemy grenades, helped gain control of a dam and hold it for 21 days, responded to an ambush that injured several team members, conducted covert infiltrations and site explorations, secured a downed helicopter while fighting the enemy and participated in a firefight in which 50 combatants were killed.

But then it went wrong. With one year left on his second three-year tour of duty, Sanders went AWOL.

"I was having marital problems. I was unable to cope," says the 27-year-old veteran, now a student at Pasadena City College pursuing his dream to become a writer. "I wasn't able to think clearly. I was making irrational decisions."

Twenty-nine days after he disappeared, ashamed and sorry, he turned himself in. He was sent back to Fort Benning for another month, demoted...