Long wait for benefits underscores VA problems

There are too many sites online claiming PTSD is not real, was not happening to other generations along with a very long list of other reasons to deny the suffering of our veterans. While PTSD was called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the 70's, it was called other names and so were our veterans.

Self-medicating was called being a "druggie" or "alcoholic" and veterans went straight to jail because no one thought of the connection of some crimes and PTSD. Suicides connected to military service were not the subject of major news articles because they were just expected to suffer in silence and they did. It was not until Vietnam veterans came home and pushed to let their suffering be known and get something done about it.

That took great courage on their part. It would have been easier for them to go on dying in obscurity but they fought back and today's veterans have a better chance of living better lives because of their efforts.

The following article points out several things that should validate the fact that while Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are in the news, what they face goes back many generations.

This is about a Korean War veterans with what we now call PTSD and how he tried, like too many others, to commit suicide. It also shows how he has not received compensation for the wounds he carried back with him.

Families knew what was happening to these veterans but no one else did.

Long wait for benefits underscores VA problems
Marine's appeal "pending" more than four years
By Ben Wolford
Sun Sentinel
January 14, 2013

CORAL SPRINGS
The battle that ruined James F. Gunn's legs lasted 17 days.

The Korean War veteran's battle with the Department of Veterans Affairs has lasted five years. At 81, wheelchair bound and in constant pain from latent frostbite wounds, Gunn is wondering whether he will ever win his case for federal benefits.

"I don't want a freebie," he said. "I'm entitled to this."

The growing needs of ailing veterans frequently outpace the processes of the vast federal agency designed to serve them. Congressional leaders and advocates have criticized the laggard administration of the pension Gunn is seeking, known as Aid and Attendance, which has been known to take more than a year to approve.

For Gunn, the bureaucracy is frustrating. But worse things followed him down the mountains of northern Korea in the winter of 1950.

He and 15,000 United Nations troops cut a painful retreat through sub-zero cold and 120,000 Chinese soldiers at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. The 12,000 survivors are alternately called the Chosin Few and the Frozen Chosin.

Gunn returned home to Miami with two little-understood problems: post-traumatic stress disorder and frostbite. The PTSD attacked first; in 1955, overwhelmed by survivor's guilt, he tried to kill himself and landed in a North Carolina hospital.
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