Paralyzed Veteran Denied Wheelchair By VAHeadlines
Health
Lifestyle
Local
Nation
Op/Ed
Politics
One could argue that the era of modern warfare—at least war waged against the U.S military—began on a Sunday morning in Lebanon in 1983. On October 23, before seven in the morning, a truck that was supposed to be carrying water crashed through the concertina wire barriers, past a guard shack, and into the wall of a Marine barracks. The resulting explosion was estimated by The Army Times to be “the largest non-nuclear bomb in history up to that point.”
Suicide bombing had yet to become the preferred method of attack for Islamic jihadists, and the U.S. eventually withdrew from what was not a war, but a “peace-keeping” mission that failed to keep any peace. Still, the months spent in Lebanon left its effects on the soldiers, sailors, and Marines that were there.
One such sailor, Hosea Roundtree, was profiled in 2012 close to Veterans Day by The California Report. After struggling for over a decade with homelessness and addiction, Roundtree was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and filed a claim with the Department of Veteran Affairs. The VA, however, “denied Roundtree’s claim, saying there was no evidence that he had engaged in combat.”
Jamie Fox found Roundtree’s file in 2008. Rather than returning the claim, she wrote a four-page memo to her supervisor suggesting that after only a few moments of using Google, she was able to verify that Roundtree’s ship was where he claimed it was and had engaged in combat. He also had served during the first Gulf War. Rather than approve his claim, the VA in Oakland, California fired Fox.
Roundtree is not the only one of this generation of “peacetime” veterans who is having difficulty with the VA. According to a Way Cool Dogs, a blog about therapy dogs, Marine Robert Miller was recently paralyzed after surgery and “has been turned down for VA benefits because he was injured during a time when the United States was officially not at war.” Miller was given a medical discharge in 1985 due in part to injuries sustained in a hostile fire area while serving in Lebanon as part of a Marine force of 4000.
Opposing Views contacted the national VA press office to verify the claims made in the article about Robert Miller. The spokesperson couldn’t comment specifically on this case but said that what was described, “shouldn’t be at all,” saying that an honorable discharge is all he should need to qualify for benefits. Opposing Views will continue to investigate, but in the meantime friends and family have sent up a donation page to help the Millers with medical expenses so Robert can go home.
1 Reported by Opposing Views 4 hours ago.