I followed every order I was ever given.
From 1965–1969, I served as a USAF medic and surgical scrub tech. I stood in operating rooms where wounded Vietnam soldiers arrived, sometimes less than a week from the battlefield.
We debrided wounds.
We removed infected tissue.
We prepared young men for the loss of limbs.
We assisted in surgeries that would determine whether they would walk again — or learn to live with prosthetics.
Many of those wounded were grateful to be treated in hospitals closer to home, where their families could visit — instead of being shipped thousands of miles away to a Navy facility in Washington, D.C.
I remember sitting in front of a recruiter in my hometown. He told me:
“Don’t worry about healthcare. You will always be able to get VA healthcare.”
I believed him.
Thousands of us did exactly what we were trained to do — where we were told to go to school, and where we were ordered to serve.
But years later, I was told I do not qualify for VA healthcare.
Why?
Because I did not serve “in country.”
In my case, that meant I did not physically set foot in Vietnam.
Apparently, serving in operating rooms treating the wounded from that war does not count.
I am now 78 years old. My wife and I face health issues like most people our age. Yes, Medicare helps now. But before I turned 65, we paid out of pocket.
More than once, I have gone to my local VA office. Each time, I heard the same words:
“Sorry. You don’t qualify.”
That is not what the surgeons I assisted believed.
When we stood over wounded servicemen on those operating tables, no one questioned whether I was qualified to serve.
No one asked whether I had been “in country.”
They only knew I was there, doing the job I was trained and ordered to do — helping save lives and restore shattered bodies.
So I ask again:
Can you love a country that tells a medic who served honorably that his service doesn’t count? And he doesn't qualify for VA healthcare. As promised
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