It’s interesting. My F-I-L who served in the Navy during the Korean War (in Boston the whole time) wants me to claim all the veterans benefits. I manned a desk in Omaha, Nebraska, doing the same kind of thing I did when I got out. The biggest risk I faced was that some SP would get crazy with his or her gun, which was a highly unlikely scenario.
Veterans benefits, to me, are for those who went to where there could be trouble. Not for those of us who stayed comfortably here in the U.S.
You wouldn’t accept your free National Parks access?
At the risk of causing a misunderstanding, you served, even though it was behind a desk, but you did it so someone else could be on the front lines. It’s not whether you were at risk or not. It’s that you served. “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
I was a military wife, mother, grandmother and widow, and though I wasn’t paid in dollars, I would have been entitled to all my husband’s benefits had I stayed married to him. Even though I didn’t “serve” those benefits would have allowed me to have a home.
So yes, you are entitled, yes, you did earn them, and yes, you should get them because your job allowed someone else to fight. </soapbox