PTSD:WWII veterans first time claims rise

Still fighting war stress: VA granting more first-time disability claims to veterans in their 80s than ever before

Stan Lim/The Press-Enterprise
World War II veteran Tim Spiller, 87, of Redlands, fought at Iwo Jima, one of the most savage battles in U.S. military history. For decades he suppressed his feelings and the post-traumatic stress disorder that the fighting left with him.

09:54 PM PDT on Sunday, April 13, 2008

By JOE VARGO
The Press-Enterprise

Video: World War II veteran Tim Spiller recounts his military career

They beat Hitler, turned back the tide of Japanese imperialism and when the war ended, returned to civilian life to forge careers and raise families while seemingly unfazed by the horrors of combat many witnessed.

As World War II veterans have aged, and reflected on the dreadful experiences of war and carnage, more and more exhibited the symptoms of a malady unheard of when they went off to battle 65 years ago: post traumatic stress disorder.

And now, as they finally seek counseling and medical treatment, the department of Veterans Affairs is receiving -- and granting -- more first-time disability claims to veterans in their 80s than ever before.

Since 2000, the number of World War II veterans collecting disability from stress-related causes has risen 50 percent -- from 16,914 to 24,268 -- despite the deaths of 2 million veterans in that time.

In recent years, Veterans Affairs has established outreach programs to locate and assist aging veterans, set up vet-to-vet self-help groups and doled out disability payments, said Peggy Willoughby, spokeswoman for the VA's National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Willoughby, speaking by telephone from the center's headquarters in White River Junction, Vt., said Veterans Affairs doctors can't identify one overriding reason why World War II servicemen are coming forward now. She said she believes it's a combination of better information, outreach and counseling.

Guys like Gene Davis, of San Jacinto, say it's about time.

"We were done wrong," said Davis, 85, who spent almost a year in a German prison camp in 1944-45. "We didn't get what we deserved. There was no understanding of what was going on."

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