I was at the VA Medical Center this morning in Augusta, Georgia, the man with whom I was talking having served in Korea and in Nam.
He worked with an engineerig unit in Nam as a First Sergeant, taking a group to near the line with North Vietnam to set up a forward bunker/stronghold.
The enemy apparently got word ahead of time and ambushed them, wounding several and killing four. He himself was severely wounded and is disabled, but working in a position to assist other veterans.
Said like so many things there that were 'surpressed - NEVER HAPPENED,' he not only did not receive a medal for valor for bringing the men back, but was "ordered" to notify the families of the deceased without describing the action that killed their sons.
There is NO RECORD of the event itself, and this was very common.
It is so bad that although they give disability to anyone who ever set foot in Nam with symptoms of Agent Orange or who develop certain medical problems, like Type II Diabetes, (including Navy personnel who simply briefly came ashore in Nam!) - they deny it to men in Laos and Cambodia and Thailand who WERE actually sprayed with it in the jungles and around the bases, or exposed to it after spraying. and "Oh, no - it couldn't POSSIBLY be carried by the winds over man's arbitrary country line!"
They also refuse to give it to the men not in Nam who loaded the drums of defoliants to ship, saying they were 'not exposed!'
There were a lot of these kinds of things that kept me off the board today after my return.
There will not be just treatment for hundreds of thousands of our veterans in their lifetime....
He said it was Clinton's recommendation they close ALL veteran hospitals, not approved; but he saw to it they were reduced in the patient load they handled.
It is a national disgrace.
Yes it is.