Mac-Coleman

24 January 2014 –

Death by VA Hospital       

Congress has finally passed a spending bill for the rest of 2014.  It approaches what Congress should have been doing for the last five years.  Sadly, our lawmakers’ spending cuts on veterans’ benefits show their ignorance -- or cowardice -- to prioritize spending based on fundamental governmental obligations.  A true story illustrates what I mean: 

My father spent the last years of his life in and out of the Veteran’s Administration hospital at Fort Harrison, Montana.  Drafted into the Army in 1940, he was wounded in the battles for the Aleutian Islands.  Until his death in 1963 at age 40, his body hurt and his mind suffered the effects of the war on top of the normal pressures of life.  The government responded by putting him into a VA hospital.   

I was too young to visit my father on the hospital ward.  When Mom went out to “The Fort,” we kids often went along and stayed in the car.  I remember my father waving to us from his third floor window around back of the hospital.   One time, in late 1962, I was allowed to go inside and sit in the ward’s day room.  The day room was full of young men in their twenties, thirties, and forties, and I shall never forget them, their faces and bodies. They were missing arms, legs, hands, and parts of their faces.  Canes, crutches, and wheel chairs were everywhere.  These men watched television, talked among themselves, played cards, and paid little attention to a small boy in their midst. One man in a thin, light-blue robe and slippers sat looking out the window, living somewhere else than in that day room.  He did not move a muscle the entire time I was there.  The experience was overwhelming.  I looked to a passing orderly for some insight.  He surprised me by saying bluntly that these men were WWII and Korean War veterans waiting to die.

I have never forgotten that moment.  Because of it, and later, after being forced through illness to stay in that same place, I vowed I would never die in a VA hospital.   

Who had the responsibility to ensure that these soldiers were taken care of and rehabilitated?  Like all military members, these men signed an “unlimited liability” contract with the government.  They agreed to risk life, limb, and heart acting as the human part of the nation’s military instrument of national power.  In exchange, the government contracted to pay them while on duty, give them pensions when they qualified, and, most important, take care of their medical needs when they returned less than intact from the battlefield.  This agreement is the most important and sacred contract the US government can make with any of its citizens.  Its fulfillment must take precedence over any entitlement and any benefits to anybody else at any time, in any place. 

This governmental obligation is just as important today as it was in 1962.  The three longest wars the US has ever fought have been prosecuted since then:  Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  The last two were fought with far smaller total forces than any competent planner would recommend.  The length of the wars and the size of the forces available for any theater of war demanded that the finest-trained warriors in the history of the world serve three, four, five, even six combat tours.  Patriots that they are, my fellow soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors have answered the call.      

Few can endure this type of abuse without significant damage to body and soul.  Our political leaders of the last two decades poorly structured and then poorly used our nation’s military instrument of national power.  In so doing, they ground real men and women into the dirt.  Now, these same political leaders are showing signs that they may renege on their fundamental obligation—their promise—to adequately pay and rehabilitate these patriots.  History may indeed show that the greatest waste of our last wars will not be the billions of dollars of equipment left on the battlefield or the failure to effect lasting change on the world scene. It will be the thousands of disabled and struggling warriors who seem to have been forgotten, and whose care and well-being have been ill-funded by a self-serving government.   

Senators, Congressmen, Mr. President: Is that the legacy you want to leave?  You are putting today’s generation of soldier in front of the window in the day room on the third floor of the VA hospital. 

Now, take care of him.