What is the appropriate veteran's response to ineptitude and arrogance from the D.V.A. ?

by Tom Barnes, Staff Writer

Well, pretty much any veteran in the United States since this whole veterans’s benefits thing started in 1864 has had at the very least some sort of glich or delay in the facilitation of the delivery of his earned benefits. It just comes with the territory. Some of us have had mountains of help from dozens of people to get it right. And in all fairness, most of those people have been veterans organization VSOs or Veterans Administration people. To demonize the D.V.A. is really off the point of my article.

Tom Barnes Rules for Dealing with a Disability Case;

1) Get a VSO to help you.

2) Get a VSO to help you.

3) Get a VSO to help you.

4) Get as many doctor’s notes as you can and have the doctor specifically state that "this" or "that" presentation most likely stems from your service time and is probably a service connected disability, even if there is no proof immediately available to him. Trust me, get him/her to state that on the letter.

5) Get statements if you can from old shipmates/platoon mates/squadron mates that saw you get hurt or saw the effects of the disability when you both served together.

6) I do not recommend going in front of a board personally. It will simply waste your time and in my experience does little to help your case. You are looking to explain your situation. They are looking to find a way to determine that you are physically fit. Unless your head and two arms are missing, they are going to look at you and decide that there is not much wrong. Remember that. I don’t recommend dealing with the D.V.A. in person. Let the VSO do that.

7) Remember at all times that they work about eight cases a day, every day, their whole career. There are millions of cases. You are just another one. You are not special to them. There are too many people who need help for you to be special. So, you can use that to your advantage. Get your paperwork in early and keep sending them stuff to support your case. Make a copy of everything you send them. Always. They will lose it and shred it even if they are not trying to do so. There is just too much paper involving too many people for them to adequately protect you. We are all essentially doomed under a mountain of documentation.

8) The most you can hope for after you wait years to get your case heard is about fifteen minutes to make a decision on your case. You can wait decades for that fifteen minutes. Never forget that. Make that fifteen minutes count, every second. Have evey piece of documentation you can find.

9) Never lose hope. If you don’t die before your eightieth birthday you will see some money. It may not be all that they owe you, you may have to wait a decade for back pay, but you will get something. Take that as a moral victory. Most veterans of most of our wars did not even get that.

Good luck.