So how is it that when a veteran seeks help and compensation for being wounded in service to this nation we send them away and make them fight for what society simply assumes is a debt we owe them? 65 years!
A soldier's 65-year fight with the VA
By William R. Levesque
In Print: Saturday, July 3, 2010
It was 1945 when Tampa native Marty Redding Jr. first asked the Veterans Administration for a pension and treatment for the psychological trauma he suffered fighting in World War II.
He was 20 years old.
On Sunday, Redding will celebrate his 85th birthday — and he's still seeking benefits. "Kind of hard to believe, isn't it?" he says.
In what might be one of the longest-running benefits cases at what is now the Department of Veterans Affairs, Redding has enjoyed some measure of victory in his on-again, off-again battle. After half a century, the VA agreed to pay him a pension for post-traumatic stress starting in 1997. With other ailments, that brings his total monthly pension today to $2,800.
Now the contest is over retroactive benefits dating to 1947.
The Lakeland resident's struggle has outlasted four of his marriages and 11 U.S. presidents. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was just 3 years old when Redding first filed a VA claim.
Delayed or improperly rejected claims at the VA "are a catastrophic problem," says Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "Marty should be labeled a hero for never giving up."Redding's discharge papers show that he spent more than 10 months in combat from 1944 to 1945 in Italy. He earned a Bronze Star for meritorious service.
He found that war held no romance. Forty of the 200 men in his company were killed in action, and another 45 were severely wounded, military records show.
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A soldier 65 year fight with the VA
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