Veterans’ Benefits

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Persons born with poor vision don’t know what “seeing” is until they receive their first pair of glasses. Similarly, persons born deaf do not know that it is possible to hear.

Eyes and ears are not the only problems that begin with birth.

All people have organs that are weaker, more likely to create problems as they grow older. Some are born with potential heart problems; others have kidneys or stomachs more prone to disorder. The list and variety is equal to the list and variety of human parts. What has been well documented medically, is that extreme, prolonged, stress will accelerate the development of any potential problem in the weakest organ. And military combat is the most extreme of prolonged stresses.

Combat can be a relatively mild experience or intense confrontations between two armies: thousands of men attempting to kill each other. In Korea in 1952 and 1953 there were often weeks of relative quiet between the Communist and United Nations forces: casual shelling, casual shooting. Some were wounded and died, but not many during those quiet weeks. Still, it was wise to be alert – always alert, which meant always tense.

There were also days of intense conflict. The battle for Outpost Harry lasted eight days and included five nights of mass attacks. During the battle the American army fired more high explosive artillery than during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. In addition there was the noise of mortars and rifle fire. The Chinese matched this the first few days, probably exceeding it the first and second nights. To be present was like sitting in the center of a huge fireworks display that continued for days.

How is it possible for men who were there to have not suffered hearing loss? In addition to the normal “not knowing I have it” that is true of those who have hearing loss, the fact that all suffered it would contribute to its invisibility. The men involved would talk more loudly – a sign of hearing loss – but no medical records would show “hearing loss,” for two reasons. One was because the men didn’t know it was there. The other was simpler, men did not leave combat for medical assistance for anything so trivial as a hearing loss or minor cuts and wounds. Their comrades needed them.

Hearing loss is only one unrecognized problem. Those periods of relative but perilous calm, interspersed with vicious attacks by thousands, provided a constant, necessary, tension of living – twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Relaxation was unwise, dangerous, and too often fatal. Such tension would begin the deterioration of weaker organs: initiate the problems with heart or stomach that might not become serious and affect life until years later.

It is impossible for persons who have not experienced combat to appreciate the tension that combatants experience. In fact, the men in combat don’t realize how tense they are: they live with it twenty-four hours a day and become accustomed to it. It takes some later experience, after they have safely, hopefully, returned that arouses the same tension for them to say to themselves, “This is the way I was!” And that experience may never occur.

There are numerous studies that report the effect of tension on the human body. There is no single effect. Some develop ulcers, some have heart problems. No one knows the extent of damage to the system of extreme tension. What is the effect of a year of extreme tension? Again, no one knows, put there is some knowledge that combat accelerates latent organic problems, problems that appear only later in life, but years earlier than they would have if that combat stress had not occurred.

Military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan encounter that same need for readiness with its tension. They never know when and from where an attack will come. The tension must be constant. Recently, medical studies of men returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan have found that many, if not all, suffer from the effects of this combat tension as well as from physical problems unrecognized or ignored during their tour.

Such studies are not new. A British study compared men who had served in the combat arms, but never seen combat, with those who had experienced combat but were never “officially” wounded. The researchers found that men who had served in combat died at younger ages than those who had never experienced combat.

Recently, a study reported that veterans who had endured combat over a period of time had more heart problems than veterans who have never experienced combat when they grew older.

Another study showed that under stress certain chemicals were released in the body that increased the body’s ability to react to danger. No one knows what the effect of these would be if that tension was constant over a period of time. Perhaps this is the reason for the heart problems and for other physical problems that arise among combat veterans following their service.

Millions of Americans have served in the military forces, some as volunteers, some drafted. The volunteers can also be divided, those who make a career of the military and those who enlist for a short term with no intention of being “career” military, often because our nation has gone to war and they believe they should serve.

Of those millions, comparatively few serve in the combat arms and of those in the combat arms many never experience combat, serving in peaceful areas.

Happy to be alive, happy to be unwounded, combat veterans return to civilian life. It is not until years later that the stresses and experiences which initiated their unrecognized health problems become apparent. Then, when these men apply to the Veterans’ Administration for assistance, the first reply is, “There is nothing in your records indicating such a problem while on duty.”

Of course there are no records. Men in combat don’t live on nice posts where they can go to a hospital for every real or imagined problem. (A review of army hospital records in peaceful areas will show that any time there is a day of field duty there is a tremendous increase in the numbers reporting for sick call).

If they protest, they are asked to supply names of veterans who can support their claims. How can they do this? Comrades known only by their first names or nicknames; last seen thirty or forty or fifty years ago; widely dispersed and many dead, how can they be located?

I suspect there are many men who received damage in World War II, Korea and Vietnam: damage they never knew they had until later in life. Fortunately for taxpayers, most are old enough now that they’ll die soon, so no one has to worry about them, the Veterans’ Administration least of all.

But now we are receiving veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. Like the “unwounded” of earlier wars, many of them will receive those unrecognized, undocumented, wounds that won’t be noticed for thirty years.

The Veterans’ hospitals maintain a list for priority of treatment. Veterans who have received serious wounds receive first treatment at Veterans’ Hospitals. That is as it should be. Others, such as those who retired after twenty years of peacetime service, are then listed in order of eligibility for treatment. At the bottom are those who those who served two or three years, returned to civilian life and received those hidden injuries, those silent wounds that never appear on medical records (unless they are below the poverty line).

Combat veterans, officially unwounded, should be placed just below the Purple Heart veterans on the priority list. The criteria for such placement should be the Combat Infantryman’s Badge or its equivalents, the Combat Medics and Combat Engineers Badges.