Commentary—

It Doesn’t Pay To Be A Veteran

By William A. Collins

Our blessed vets,

We’d ne’er betray;

As long as we,

Don’t have to pay.

As a newly minted national board member of Veterans for Peace, my education in contemporary veteran reality is moving fast. You quickly learn that for most recruits there are only two well-compensated moments in their military career: when they sign up, and when they die. The signing bonus can be worth $10,000, since the Pentagon is so desperate for warm bodies. Getting killed is valuable too, worth $12,000 just now.

Otherwise you’re chopped liver. Or as commanders in Iraq are fond of referring to their new recruits, “red meat.” Tours of duty can be extended at will, available equipment is notoriously uneven, and your task there is to suppress a population that wishes you were dead, or at least gone. Fun job.

If you make it home in one piece you are finally free from roadside bombs, but other ambushes await. Military auditors scrutinize your accounts to make sure you turned in your knapsack and suspenders. Records are checked to assure that you were properly charged for your meals in the Army hospital. And in contrast to Haliburton, all your expenses are gone over with a fine-toothed comb. Collection agencies are on 24-hour call should anything be found amiss.

If fate should lead you back to Connecticut, you may have dodged another bullet. Being in a geographically small state, you’re never totally remote from a Veterans Administration hospital. Inconvenient perhaps, but not fatally. And now even the state’s own ancient Rocky Hill Veterans Home and Hospital is finally wending its way at least into the 20th Century to care for a few additional lucky survivors. You’d think such homes might be a federal responsibility, what with Washington starting the wars and all, but that’s not how it goes. The state often is left to pick up war’s pieces.

Connecticut also has a Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Fund (set up before we had airmen) to supply the basic charitable needs of some impoverished vets. This fund is run by the American Legion, which takes a third of its $3 million annual income for administrative expenses. At a rally organized by vets to protect this money — there are always budget-cutters who want to merge it into the general budget — the governor asked the assembled heroes to support the Groton submarine base. Everyone has their own agenda for veterans.

For instance, the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve always been miffed that the VA is authorized to bargain with them as a single unit for all its clients. This drives down prices to levels like those in Canada. Not surprisingly, their lobbyists are pressuring Congress and the VA to further restrict eligibility so that more and more vets will have to buy their medicines in the shark-filled open market.

There are lurking roadside health afflictions out there too, mostly ignored by Washington. Heavy ones include post-traumatic stress disorder (shell shock), and poisoning from such hazards as Agent Orange, toxic fumes, and depleted uranium. Research on these dangers has been grudging, as has treatment. Hartford alone serves 1,000 such discarded vets in its homeless shelters annually. And besides that, we’ve got thousands of old GIs still suffering from secret biological and chemical weapons tests used on them in the 60s that they weren’t even told about.

But none of this represents anything new to history. Soldiers have always been a disposable commodity. They are recruited as patriots, utilized as fodder, and discharged as a nuisance. Only World War II was different, being a “good” war. Later ones have had a more colonial cast, using either communism or “terrorism” as a cover. Each conflict soon displays disdain for its old troopers.

The big losers are those patriotic (or desperate) youngsters who sign up to defend their country, and only later discover that their country has little interest in defending them.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)