Shock and awe at human flaw

Shock and awe at human flaw

Lessons in mistakes people make
by
Chaplain Kathie

We've all made mistakes and sometimes brilliant ones! Given the fact that I've made more than my share of them, it has lead me to not trust too much of what I think without knowing I am absolutely right. When it comes to PTSD, I know what I'm talking about but when it comes to the rest of what is required to operate the blog and website as well as taking the next step of trying to get some income from doing it instead of just volunteering, well, let's say I'm totally lost in all of that.

Today I got off the phone with the IRS after over an hour because I was wondering why I had not received the rest of the documentation I should have. After the last time when I assumed the EIN number I was given was for what I asked for, only to find out it was not, I decided to follow up on it. So far the IRS has not received all they needed from the IFOC on the Charter. This I wouldn't have known had I not called and found out what I needed to do. Any donations will still be tax deductible after July 1, 2009 because that is the date of the Charter but the rest still needs to be taken care of all the way through. The other issue was with the insurance I have to have. I was wondering why I hadn't received a bill by now and found out, they had the old PO box instead of the new one. Again, something I wouldn't have known had I not asked.

While I thought everything was taken care of since I am a OCD when it comes to taking care of things, had I not remembered the times when I either totally messed up or almost did, I would have been in a total mess.

When it comes to the military, well, they have their share of problems too. As serious as they are about documenting everything possible they make mistakes too. Imagine that!

Case in point is what they did back during Vietnam. Back then everything was typed, yes with a typewriter, and most of the clerks were not that diligent about what they were doing. After all, can you really blame them? Social security numbers were used on everything. My husband ended up with 6 different social security numbers in the copies of the documents he was given with his discharge. The problem is, one of them was very important. It was for his Bronze Star award.

When he was given the paperwork and spotted the wrong number. He was told they would fix the error. He assumed they would do whatever needed to be done and really didn't want to hear anything more about it. It showed up on his DD214 so he never thought about it again. That is until he had to file a claim with the VA and all hell broke loose.

Fast forward twenty years later and we arrived with denials from the VA we couldn't understand. We thought they meant he had to have a Bronze Star for valor or something higher when they were talking about no awards. His MOS was a clerk but during Vietnam, no one was left out of sweeps or pulling bunker guard duty. They all did it. Six years after we began to fight the VA to have his claim honored, I held all the documentation in my hands wondering how it was possible the VA could be saying what he had was not there. Then I spotted the wrong social security number. I asked my husband about it and he just repeated what the Army told him. It was fixed. The problem was, it was not fixed all the way through the paper chain.

I called the DAV and told them what I had found. A service officer (who sucked at his job) accused my husband of falsifying his award since he was a clerk after all. I told him if he was smart enough to do that he'd be smart enough to use his right social security number. Then I really hit the roof and ended up with another service officer. I was furious! I called the administrator of the hospital to find out what to do and was put in contact with a general's office. He pulled the records with the social security numbers I gave him and bingo, the award was finally fixed all the way through the paperwork chain. My husband received a new Bronze Star certificate with the right social security numbers on it. Needless to say, his claim was approved soon after that. The new one is tucked away but the old one, the one he was given in Vietnam is hanging in a frame.

There have been many cases of Stolen Valor and veterans claiming to be something they are not. I'm glad when they are caught but part of me reserves judgment after what happened to my husband. There are too many veterans telling the truth but because people make mistakes, they end up not only paying the price for those mistakes but are assaulted for telling the truth because someone else messed up. Claims are turned down because of this and the burden of proof is always on the veterans.

In a day and age where everything is done with computers, we need to wonder if files were not transferred correctly into the data bases everyone assumes are the gospel truth. If humans made errors with typing think of the kinds of mistakes they can make with a keyboard! Would you trust any of them?

We all need to step back and think that some of the reports we read about "fake veterans" and "stolen valor" cases until all the facts are in. I applaud the efforts of the groups tracking these cases down because there are just too many people claiming to be what they are not. We just need to wait until everything has been investigated before we judge them.



Gary Amster could very well be one of these it happened to only in reverse.

Another Medal of Honor Stolen Valor Case? Maybe not
Amster says he never knew what was on his discharge papers until he wanted to get a loan and needed it. This could be just a mistake, considering during the Vietnam War, there were many errors on records. Wrong social security numbers were typed all the time and while corrections were attempted to be made, most of them never ended up being fixed all the way through on every record in every file. The question here is, did Amster ever claim having the Medal of Honor to anyone for his own advantage? Seems really odd that it would take him until 2005 to come up with a story like this.

What if an award was supposed to be in someone else's file but had the wrong social security number on it? "What if" is something we should always be asking because people make mistakes but they also lie. We won't know which is which unless we are willing to understand it always could be something else.