Veterans Turn To Online Strangers For Financial Help

If you've been paying attention, a report like this will not surprise you. The problem is, most people, well, they haven't paid attention at all. This is what happens when the government does not think "have they done enough" instead of just doing what they are forced to do.

Veterans Turn To Online Strangers For Financial Help
NPR - USA
by Daniel Zwerdling
Listen Now

Morning Edition, January 22, 2009 · When Robert Sprenger's Humvee blew up in Iraq, the Army specialist was burned black over large swatches of his body.

After the Army transported him to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, Sprenger spent months lying in his bed, wrapped in gauze, almost like a mummy.

When he was released, he moved back home with his mother to the farm town of Sleepy Eye, Minn., where they made a troubling discovery.

The government compensated him, but his mother says the money wasn't anywhere near enough to cover his family's expenses. So Sprenger and his family swallowed their pride, as a growing number of veterans have done, and went cyberbegging: They posted their story on a Web site and asked strangers to help.

"That was the most horrible-est thing," says Robert's mother, Vicky Sprenger. But she says they had no choice. "I wouldn't ever cut the Army down for any reason whatsoever," she says. "I just think ... it kind of stinks, you know, that we do have to struggle the way we do."

“If the VA is meeting [its] obligations to America's veterans, why is there a need for any other nongovernmental organizations or veterans service organizations to provide any level of assistance?”
Peter Gaytan, director of national veterans affairs, the American Legion
click link for more