Isn’t it amazing how you can jump from large vehicles while wearing heavy armor and packs, march for miles with those same armor and packs, maybe wear boots that don’t fit quite right at the same time, and yet years later your knee & joint pain or arthritis are miraculously unconnected to your military service? The Veteran’s Administration, or “V.A.”, will see to it that years of hard living had no affect on you, even if the ends of your bones are ground to fine powder.
The same goes for the mental toll. The stresses and strains and perhaps even brain injuries themselves will be the result of a hard partying life in your civilian youth rather than service related. What a relief, right?!
Okay, sure, I understand– the VA is trying to weed out the possibility of people making fraudulent claims and leveraging a “free ride” for themselves at government expense. But sometimes it seems that one of the conditions for hiring people to make these decisions is a complete disconnect from logic.
On a side note, right now we are all currently “enjoying” the COVID-19 shelter-in-place rules pretty much all over the world. A lot of us are now working from home, doing things like taking online classes, either job-related training courses or online school courses for colleges, universities, or trades. People who haven’t had to do this before are finding this a strange new world; veterans meanwhile are like “I’ve heard this music before”. Who says the military doesn’t give you skills to cope in the civilian world?