DAV “We’re Just Disabled Vets Trying to Help Each Other”

Veterans who helped take victory in Europe in WWII need help 
Charleston Daily Mail
by Tyler Bell, Police Reporter
May 7, 2015

“We’re just disabled vets trying to help each other,” he said. “We had to fight for this stuff to get it.”

TYLER BELL/DAILY MAIL A.J. Brooks, a 90-year-old Army veteran of World War II, suffered from battle fatigue, what now is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, following his service in the European Theater of the war. He now relies on the Disabled American Veterans’ van program to get to VA hospitals for care because he doesn’t drive anymore.

The world stood together in celebration 70 years ago today, when the battered remnants of Adolf Hitler’s war machine officially surrendered and the European portion of World War II ended in Allied victory.

It’s easy to forget, however, that many of the men and women who slogged through the bloody sands of Normandy and huddled together for warmth outside of Bastogne are still alive, and in their old age are increasingly in need of help.

“The thing that bothered me real bad at the time, they called it battle fatigue,” said A.J. Brooks, a 90-year-old World War II veteran living in the Lewisburg area. Brooks served in the Army’s 3rd Armored Division during the war, following the division through its campaigns in France, including the Normandy Invasion, France, Belgium and eventually Germany.

He joined when he was 17.

“I was going to whip the war by myself,” he said with a laugh.

Brooks is one of the 6,892 World War II veterans living in West Virginia, according to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics. The majority of those veterans are upwards of 90 years old and just as susceptible to the strictures of aging as anyone else.

Brooks, like many veterans, relies on VA Medical Centers for his health care. But as he ages, he’s become reliant on others for transportation.

“I can’t drive and I don’t drive,” he said. “I always get my friend here to drive me.”

Brooks is talking about Mike Dawson, an Adjutant for Disabled American Veterans in West Virginia. Dawson, a disabled veteran himself, helped organize a van program to ferry veterans to and from VA Medical Centers statewide.

“We’re just disabled vets trying to help each other,” he said. “We had to fight for this stuff to get it.”
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