Vets Under Siege, How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles by Martin Schram; 2008; 289 pages; St. Martins’ Press, New York, NY; 978-0-312-37573-7; 7/15/09-7/16/09

“In World Wars I and II, for every military person killed, fewer than 2 came back injured but alive.  I Korea, for every military person killed, 2.6 returned injured but alive; in Vietnam just 2.8.”

” For every U.S. military man or woman killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 16 have come home injured but alive.”

“One out of every four homeless people in the United States is a veteran, while only one in eleven Americans is a veteran, according to an analysis of 2005 U.S. Census and Veterans Affair data.”

” The rate of suicides by young veterans, aged 20 to 24, who had served during the era of the war on terror, was between two and four times higher than civilian suicides in that age group.”

Each of these statements in and of themselves should be enough to provoke outrage about the way we treat those have fought our battles.  But when they are put together with real life stories on how individual veterans have fought battles to get benefits that they deserve, it is enough to make me want to storm Washington, D.C.  and start grabbing people by their Armani lapels and shake them until they start changing things.  There are too many stories to recount but the ones that startled me where the story of a World War II flyer who had to prove decades later that the injuries he suffered in a WWII plane crash were the cause of his problems.  Or the soldier who suffered shrapnel wounds  from an IED was denied his benefits because the VA lost the record of the action and therefore concluded that the shrapnel injuries were not service connected.  Or the soldier that the VA declared suffered from PTSD but because they could not identify a single stressor from his combat service so denied his claim.  Many veterans id the VA as the Veterans Adversaries, instead of Veterans Advocacy.  Attitudes from the top down must change as well as those of all of us who influence those at the top.

In the interest of full disclosure I am a veteran of the cold war and my dad is a career military officer who served during Korea, Vietnam and the cold war.  I have never had to deal with the VA but I detest the way they treat those who have served in the military.  RRRR