In fact, to vets damaged/disabled in theater, it is no where near enough.
Two of my very dear friends were Nam vets... and their retirement/disability was meager. A pittance.
@roamer_1 When I got out of the army my disability rating was only 10 percent,and that was for an injured back on a parachute jump. That meant I was getting less than 80-some dollars a month (don't remember the exact figures),and that completely cut me out of more than that each week in unemployment because I was considered to be psychically unable to hold a job as a laborer,and those were the only jobs the unemployment geeks were willing to send me out on to interview.
After all,there aren't many jobs open in the civilian sector for "SF Recon Team Leader"
Plus there was the "baby killer" bias widely spread by the left against EVERYBODY that had been in the military.
Even in 1970 there was no way in hell you could even eat for 80 bucks a month,never mind pay rent,but car insurance,etc,etc,etc.
It even kept me from getting a job as a letter carrier with USPS because they claimed I couldn't carry a letter bag.
Things changed rapidly once Agent Orange became a public issue,and I went from being rated at 10 percent disabled,to 70 percent disabled. Which made a HUGE difference in my life.
And I was FAR from being the only VN vet treated this way by state unemployment agents,as well as people in the VA hospitals who kept telling me I had acne all over my torso and just needed to shower more often. That pretty much stopped the day I grabbed a VA clerk by the front of his shirt and dragged him across his desk to explain to him that "Yes,I WILL be seeing a doctor here today". I had driven close to 100 miles one way to get to the VA hospital,and had lost my whole sense of humor about that thing by that time.
Another time I was up there with 3 pulled muscles in my back to see about getting some Valium to deal with the pain,and after standing in the 3rd line to be interviewed by a VA clerk,had the black female clerk look over my shoulder and ask the black guy standing behine me "May I help you?" I kinda lost it and told her "Lookie here,bitch. You are either going to help ME next,or YOU are going to be the one that needs to see a bleeping doctor!".
THAT got me into a shrinks office,which got me into a doctor's office.
All this in order to renew a prescription for a bottle of Valiums.
I got a psyc evaluation and upgrade of 10 percent in my disability rating due to that.IIRC,that damn near doubled my disability pay.
I will give the VA shrinks I saw (3 different ones because you never saw the same doc twice at a VA hospital back then) credit for believing me when I told them I wasn't crazy,just pissed off at the VA system.
Even got to keep the extra 10 percent disability! I guess the VA was just covering their asses on that one.
The VA has changed immensely since those days. I recently had two different VA clerks call me at home to help me get registered at a outcare clinic closer to home,and I didn't even ask either to do this. I had applied to the outcare clinic twice and been turned down both times for "reasons" unknown to me,and for some odd reason these two clerks took it upon themselves to make the clinic accept me. They did this,and I have never even seen either of them. I just answsered their questions over the phone.
This would have NEVER happened in the 70's.
