As a matter of fact, I have. My father, who was a POW after being shot
down over Occupied Holland. The Red Cross was the only organization that
visited him in the Stalag.

Oh...me too! When that same father had a heart attack, and was supposed
to die, but was saved by Evil Organized Medicine, they arranged for me
to fly home from the boonies in South East Asia directly to McGuire Air
Force Base in NJ, non-stop.

The RC ran some programs in Saigon, Cam Ranh Bay and other places, and
we were never charged a dime.

As my

First I heard of it. Can you provide real documentation?

First I heard of it. Can you provide real documentation?

From http://www.greaterkzooredcross.org/News/Myths%20&%20Legends.htm:

The truth is that Red Cross officials and volunteers were just as upset
about the sales as were the soldiers. The Red Cross was ordered to sell the
refreshments rather than give them away as planned by Secretary of War Henry
Stimson in 1942. Noting that American soldiers in Europe had more money than
their Allied counterparts, Stimson feared that morale among the Allied
troops was suffering. American soldier received refreshments free; Allied
soldiers had to pay for them. To make living conditions more even, in the
hopes of improving morale, Stimson ordered the Red Cross to charge for
refreshments in the "rear area." Mobile units that served at the front lines
were exempted from the order and did not charge.

II.                 Myths about World War II
A.    The Red Cross sold cigarettes, blankets, and other "comfort" items
during WWII. The truth: if cigarettes or other such items that were
designated as "free" were sold, it was illegal and in violation of Red Cross
policy. It is believed that a few unscrupulous people did sell those items
provided by the Red Cross, but it was for personal gain, not to help the Red
Cross. In addition, Red Cross could not control items given to a serviceman
then sold by the service member to others.

B.     The Red Cross sold blood during the war. The truth: The American Red
Cross collected more than 13 million pints of blood for use in the was
effort at home and abroad, but "administered" no blood to the wounded
anywhere in the world. Neither did it ever charge anyone for blood. Once the
blood was turned over to military or civilian hospitals, it was out of Red
Cross control.

C.    The Red Cross indiscriminately refused to provide travel funds for som
e service men during the war. The truth: Travel funds for service personnel
were routinely provided when the commanding officer of an individual's unit
authorized emergency leave orderes. The Red Cross also authorized
pre-embarkation and post-embarkation furloughs, but the cost became so great
as troop strength increased, that these ordinary leave loans had to be
discontinued in 1944 as they interfered with other more essential military
services. A total of $2.5 million loans were made during the war.

Today, as always, military commanders make decisions about emergency leaves.
Red Cross provides verified information about the family or home situation
prompting the emergency.

Also, http://www.amherst.edu/~sajudycki/disaster_relief.html
http://www.sdarc.org/site/pp.asp?c=erKQL4NQE&b=131772
http://www.redcross.org/article/0,1072,0_312_4196,00.html

In all my work with the current Red Cross organization (wasn't around in
WWII), I have never taken a single penny from anyone in exchange for a
service or item.  I have written many *free* checks to victims of all sorts
of disasters; I have manned a *free* canteen for firefighters working
wildfires; I have performed every kind of odd job and task from cleaning to
child care; I have driven 30 miles just to take a canteen of coffee to a
family that lost everything in a house fire; the list could go on all night.
I don't get paid.  I've never seen ANY volunteer get paid for work.  I have
been reimbursed for purchasing things with my own money (such as water) for
victims/rescue workers because it would take too long to drive the hour back
to the chapter to get what was in the fridge.  What did they pay me?  Just
the cost for the items.  Not gas. Not mileage on my vehicle. Just what's on
the receipt.  Did I charge for the water? Nope.

So, whatever the history of the organization and requirements of old
governments, the current organization that I volunteer for and have had
experience with has been no less reputable than any other charity, and
better than some.  Yes, they have had issues because individuals make
mistakes, but these are corrected and not repeated.  I like volunteering
there.  I like helping people one-on-one.  Makes me happy to hand them a
meal and a check so they can get clothing, food, etc. at the store and begin
feeling like there is some hope of life returning to something resembling
normal.

Now, it's very late and I've rambled on quite enough about it.  Lack of
sleep tends to make for long messages... sorry!  Just that my personal
experiences create a much different opinion of the organization.

Shylirin
Remove the splinter to reply.

all charities get taken over by the Cartel
http://www.whale.to/cancer/charities.html and end up screwing for public for
money, as if robbing the taxpayer wasn't enough, although they take them
over to stop the truth coming out

First Person: Disastrous Disaster Relief

Thursday, September 08, 2005
By Brunilda Nazario, MD

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168849,00.html

ATLANTA — WebMD Medical Editor Brunilda Nazario, MD, spent three days
at shelters in the Atlanta area – and was shocked at the inadequate
resources. America is not prepared for disaster, she says.

I’m not associated with the Red Cross. But when evacuees began pouring
into the Atlanta area, I volunteered to see patients at a temporary
Red Cross shelter set up just south of Atlanta.

At that time there were no doctors at the center to see the patients;
this was only the first stage for many of the arrivals here. Many
evacuees were elderly and had special needs; they left their homes
prior to the hurricane with the expectation of returning soon.

The medical needs at the center initially included assisting older
people and helping to arrange daily medications and routine medical
care. Basic needs like calling in prescriptions for chronic medical
conditions became a tremendous task.

Sharing my experience in the aftermath of Katrina may highlight
glaring examples of a serious lack of preparedness in this country.

Many basic first aid supplies, such as over-the-counter disinfectants
for superficial wounds and scrapes, a container for needle disposal,
and accessible telephone lines were unavailable. In one makeshift
shelter, televisions, radios, and newspapers weren’t available to help
keep the victims informed about the disaster. While the rest of the
world stayed glued to the media coverage of the disaster, the victims
themselves were left with questions about what was going on.

Despite the power of medical advances in this country, we did not have
sufficient medical manpower mobilized to handle this major natural
disaster.

As the days passed, a very different group of individuals were being
seen in the shelter; a local hospital facilitated medical care during
day hours. Nighttime hours, however, were without medical care.

Stories of individuals caught in the hurricane were heard everywhere.
Bruises, blisters, scrapes, and extreme emotional and physical fatigue
were surfacing.

People were now coming from New Orleans and Mississippi, and different
emotions were beginning to emerge -- denial (as a way to deal with
this reality) and anger directed at the staff were reactions being
expressed. Elderly victims expressed confusion, teens revealed
depression, and parents attempted to provide reassurance with few
social resources to help them.

The lack of this country’s preparedness is completely unacceptable.

I also want to share stories of people I met at the shelters --
especially one New Orleans nurse who braved the rising waters in a
children’s hospital before driving hours and hours to Atlanta. In her,
I saw the mental distress we will find in many more survivors. She
made it through the storm but now must deal with a painful replay of
memories.

Total Chaos at Shelter

When I showed up at the refugee center on Sept. 1, there was a lot of
chaos outside as well as inside the facility. There were probably 800
refugees at that center. The parking lot that was jam-packed, and the
outpouring of donations was more than the facility staff could handle.
People were milling around.

People were dropping off lots of donations; there were clothes bags,
food and water even on the sidewalk outside. No one could identify who
escaped the disaster and who was here to volunteer.

Some people from the nearby neighborhoods were walking in and taking
the donations. The situation not only was chaotic, it was dangerous.
Officers and security initially were nowhere to be seen. No single
team was set up to control or coordinate this effort.

The positive aspects of this shelter: There were several televisions,
which allowed people to congregate -- to watch the coverage, and talk
about their experiences. The sleeping area and cots were grouped
together to form little communities. I think it helped people feel
more comfortable.

There was a nurse’s office that was an adequate size to see patients.
But one big problem surfaced quickly -- there was no phone jack. We
had many elderly people who had run out of medications and needed new
prescriptions called in, but we had no phone! We had my cell phone,
but my battery was pretty drained.

One patient had a history of seizures from a previous gunshot wound to
the head; he hadn’t taken medication for several days. The problem
with seizure medications is that you have to maintain a certain blood
level, so not having taken his medications for a few days made him a
high-risk patient that the medical personnel needed to be aware of. He
was awaiting the arrival of his medications, which would take a few
days.

A second high-risk patient had diabetes. She also had open heart
surgery just a week before I saw her. She didn’t have her insurance
papers, so we couldn’t get insulin for her. But she came with
relatives, so she was sharing some of their insulin. Her surgical
incision was clean but oozing. The stress of the disaster situation
and her lack of insulin would increase the risk of infection to her
wound. The shelter’s initial first aid kit had no form of antiseptic –
no betadine, no iodine, no hydrogen peroxide. I was shocked and angry
at this lack of basic first aid supplies. It is completely
unacceptable.

Trauma Among Refugees

Over the next two days, we began seeing those who weathered the storm
but were able to get out of New Orleans. A mother said she had just
started walking with her children. They had minor bruises, cuts,
scrapes, foot blisters, sores, as well as fungal skin infections and
rashes from walking in the dirty water.

These were fairly healthy people, with no acute medical crises. But we
were beginning to see significant psychological stress. I saw the most
significant case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a nurse
who had been working at the children’s hospital. She went through the
whole storm, seeing patients, seeing the water rising, hearing the
rioting, and had been scared for her life.

She and her family had planned to spend Labor Day weekend in Atlanta
with her father. They knew the storm was coming, and her husband took
the kids and headed for Atlanta. She was to follow later. At the last
minute, they switched cars -- she got the larger car, which she didn’t
want because it was harder to park. She had $12 in her purse when she
left the house that morning.

She and her co-workers (and patients) rode out the storm. They were
lucky, she said. They had a lot of generators there, plenty of water,
plenty of food -- although it certainly wasn’t good-tasting food. She
had a pretty good sense of humor as she started the story. But as she
continued, and the memories replayed the trauma in her mind, she broke
down. Her eyes showed despair, and she shook uncontrollably as she
recounted her story of survival. She was getting into a traumatic
state – really reliving everything that happened, all her fears.

There were a couple of kids they had to airlift out, but there was
nowhere for the helicopters to land. The hospital staff cut down a few
bamboo trees around the hospital to help stabilize the ground and
created a stable walkway. They got a child with cerebral palsy onto a
gurney and down the bamboo pathway to where the helicopter could pick
him up and transfer the child to a safe care facility.

In their nursing unit, the staff felt safe. They were listening to the
news, to the warnings of armed looters. Anytime they went into the
hall, they had no idea who was there, she told me. At one point, she
and her co-workers were told they had to evacuate. They pooled their
money together -- $7 from one, $3 from another; she had $12. Luckily,
she discovered, she also had a full tank of gas in that big car.

As they drove off, a man approached the car. They just froze and
didn’t know if he was going to hijack the car or what. She was in
mission mode, and kept driving, kept driving, kept driving. She said
it was a quiet ride up to Atlanta. They made one stop on the way up,
at an IHOP or something. Someone overheard them talking and said she
wanted to pray with them.

At this point in telling her story, the woman began to break down. She
began to realize what she had been through. She remembered the
18-wheelers coming by with generators, the helicopters, the shooting.
She remembered the image in her rear-view mirror of the scene she left
behind, like a war zone. She also remembered the smell.

When she arrived in Atlanta, she ate some macaroni and cheese,
probably the most unhealthy thing you can eat. But she had been so
tired of eating Jell-O and the hospital food. The comfort food tasted
really good to her.

Worst-Case Scenario

Within a couple of days, this New Orleans nurse and the other refugees
had to be transferred to a different shelter -- a sports dome at
Georgia Tech University in downtown Atlanta. That change stirred up
real problems. The Georgia Tech volunteers initially looked at this
strictly as a shelter and would not allow the same services to be
given to the victims, including medical services.

The facility itself was the worst set-up for these people, most of
whom were elderly. They had to go down steep stairs into the playing
field, where cots were set up barracks-style. These cots were very low
to the ground -- just a few inches off the ground. I could see
instantly that elderly people would have a hard time lying down on
them and getting back up. They could easily trip and fall on these
cots, because they were set so close together.

Eventually they took some of the better cots from a shelter at the
natatorium, but it took some convincing. Even though it had been
chaotic in the natatorium, at least it felt more like a home and we
were allowed to handle medical problems.

Refugees in Shock, Anger

Also, many of the volunteer staff did not understand the emotional
state that occurs when a disaster of this nature occurs. There are
stages you expect people to go through. The first stage is usually
denial. These people were still in shock. The next stage is anger. If
you’re a volunteer, you have to be prepared for people to be angry at
you. It’s not that they’re angry at you -- they’re angry at the
situation. You have to accept that and let them vent, because it’s
part of the healing process.

The evacuees were told they had to shut off TVs at 11 p.m., that they
had to go to bed. One woman said, “I’m not turning off that TV. I lost
five children.” She, like the others, was feeling anger, shock, and
was beginning to realize what had happened. You could see it on their
faces: “Now have nothing – yet this is what’s being done to us.”

I visited another shelter later on – a camp with buildings for housing
400 people. This shelter was staffed with a few nurses, a
psychiatrist, a pediatric doctor, and a primary care doctor. The next
day, a cardiologist was there. That shelter was the best-prepared from
an organizational standpoint.

My bottom-line message is this: This country is not prepared. We don’t
have enough medical personnel to help people in a major disaster. Even
when doctors try to help, there is no one in charge to facilitate the
process. We need to roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done.

Brunilda Nazario, MD, is a medical editor for WebMD. Her opinions and
conclusions are her own.

Don't like them? Well start your own charity then.