Photo By Sgt. 1st Class James McGuire | David Call, of Wheatland, was fresh out of Marine boot camp in 1963, when he was shot...... read more read more
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Wyoming is home to a lot of military veterans, and many of them live in places far from the cities. A lot of veterans do not know they are entitled to benefits related to their military service and or maladies that may have originated from that service.
In some cases, veterans feel they don’t deserve entitlements; others never thought about checking on benefits until a friend or family member urged them to do so; and still others determine years later to revisit their benefits.
This is why the Wyoming Veterans Commission and the Wyoming Military Department make it simple and efficient for veterans to get answers to questions about benefits with outreach offices spread throughout the state’s rural areas, in addition to a primary office in Cheyenne.
Bob Stall, state veterans service officer with the Wyoming Veterans Commission, can be found in Guernsey, Torrington or Wheatland on any given day.
His counterparts provide the same service throughout many of the state’s other small towns. Their service is free and confidential to all veterans seeking assistance.
“The rural nature of Wyoming may make it difficult for veterans in the smaller communities to make it to the bigger cities, and (veterans) don’t really know what’s available for them,” Stall said. “So we take the operation on the road. That’s our job, to let them know what’s available and to seek them out.”
While he encourages vets to address issues early and, for the younger ones, as they occur, Stall said a lot of veterans balk at investigating their benefits because they feel they didn’t have it as bad as someone else “over there,” or they have kept secret, sometimes for decades, what they went through, or they just don’t trust the system.
“But as time passes on, they may come to realize they should look into it, and that’s where the Wyoming Veterans Commission comes in and makes its services available to those vets,” he explained. “Sometimes in the rural communities, there is a trust factor. They have been holding onto things for a long time and never shared it with anyone. They may feel the need to visit a few times and get to know us, and build that trust. That’s why we do outreach.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a good example of an ailment veterans often do not want to discuss, even if its symptoms are negatively affecting their lives. Friends and family are often times key in encouraging the veteran to visit the WVC.
“It’s very difficult to get some of these soldiers to step up and accept the fact that maybe they do have PTSD and file a claim for it,” Stall said. “To get them to go to a psychiatrist and get an official diagnosis can be difficult. If we feel they may, and they feel they may, then we kind of let the VA do that process. Through the compensation and pension exam, let them determine if it is PTSD or just depression or something like that, and let them make those calls. It can be a touchy situation.”
David Call, of Wheatland, served as a Marine less than a year in March of 1969. He was shot in the chest during a North Vietnamese ambush after five months and three days in country.
“We got our (butt) whipped. There was 26 of us, and 13 of us lived,” Call recalled. “I laid there for five and a half hours with a hole in my chest. We had three medevac helicopters shot down, but they finally dragged us out of there.”
Call said he spent the next few months in three different medical facilities before being offered the option of leaving the corps. Unlike many vets, he filed for his VA benefits right away. Although he qualified, he said he didn’t see any of his 40 percent disability compensation for about seven years. After 20 years, his disability was increased to 50 percent by the VA.
In 2013, a friend of Call’s suggested he talk with Stall. The two, met at the doughnut shop in Wheatland. Stall suggested they reopen his file and see if they could improve on his benefits.
“He did a lot of paperwork, and got me up to 70 percent,” Call said of Stall’s effort. “I appreciate the man for doing it. He knows what to do and who to talk to and what strings to pull. I really recommend him.”
While there is no guarantee that a veteran will receive benefits from the VA, their odds increase significantly by going through the WVC rather than trying to file on their own.
“It’s quite a difficult process,” Stall said. “I’d say, and this is a shot in the dark, there is an 80 percent failure rate; or people don’t quite get the outcome they were hoping for simply because government forms are hard to understand and people might not understand what they are actually looking for. Wording something wrong could be the difference in the outcome of a claim.”
Capt. Tyler Schiele, director of public works at Camp Guernsey Joint Training Center, and a Guernsey resident, recently returned from his second overseas deployment. His first was in 2003 when he went to Kuwait and Iraq as an enlisted air traffic controller.
He was commander of the 133rd Engineer Company when it served in Bahrain 2013-2014. He said a lot of soldiers are intimidated by the system or may have trouble with the paperwork.
“The veterans commission has been the source of the right link to the right people. It’s such a big system and it’s so easy to get lost in it. But they have been really helpful in pointing out the who, what, why, how, when and where,” Schiele said of the WVC outreach.
Stall said the military, including the National Guard and Reserve, is doing a better job than it used to at setting veterans up for success when they discharge. The importance of conducting line of duty investigations, and keeping medical records is understood better and encouraged more than it was in past eras.
When Schiele deployed as a commander, he knew from experience his troops should be better informed, and made it a priority to have the Wyoming Veterans Commission brief his troops before and after deploying.
“I was part of the first wave in 2004 and, when I came home, there wasn’t a whole lot offered to us National Guardsmen as far as information on veterans benefits and health benefits and things of that nature. I didn’t know what I was entitled to or not entitled to,” Schiele explained.
He continued, “There are a lot of benefits out there for OIF, OEF veterans that weren’t there when I came home in 2004. And not just for me; as a commander, it was important to find out for my soldiers what was available. ‘OK, so I know we have a crisis line but what is it? How does it work? How do I know if I have a soldier that calls this line, that they are actually being cared for, and not just hanging out there? Or, how does it work if a veteran goes to the emergency room for psychological health or for an injury related to something that happened on mobilization?’”
“So if something happens, say someone gets shot or goes through a roadside bomb, obviously, there will be records of that. There will be EVAC and stuff like that,” Stall explained. “But, say someone sprains a leg or gets something in their eye and now they’re having trouble seeing, they’re pretty good about doing those LOD investigations and will provide the soldier with those documents before they leave. It’s best to file that as early as possible with the VA. Even if, say you injured your knee, and the VA rated it a zero; at least, now, that injury is in the system and that service connection is established. If say 10, 20 years down the road arthritis or something has set in, it’s possible to have that connection reevaluated.”
Veterans, or anyone who completed their enlistment no matter how long it was, should bring copies of medical records and DD-214s, military discharge papers, to their outreach center appointments.
As an example, Agent Orange exposure was a very real experience for Vietnam veterans. Only recently has the VA begun to better handle claims associated with that exposure.
“They’ve been studying Agent Orange for 40-some years now, and they’ve got a pretty good idea of what kinds of ailments are caused by that and they have some that are actually called presumptives. If you were in Vietnam at any given time and were exposed to Agent Orange, and you have one of those ailments, or cancers, or heart disease or whatever, it’s pretty much a given that it can be verified and get done. Unfortunately, many of those are terminal illnesses, and so many times, by the time we hear about it, it’s pretty bad,” Stall explained. “But, on the other hand, they don’t have to fight for (benefits) like they used to. In times past, you had to show where you were in Vietnam and to show that Agent Orange was used there, but they’ve gotten away from all that. They pretty much assume if you were in country, you were exposed.”
Schiele concluded, “I think everyone who is considered to be a veteran should take a half hour to an hour of their life and sit down with the veterans commission because you are entitled to something; that is a guarantee, if you wear this uniform. It’s a matter of finding out what you are entitled to. Everything is very professional and confidential."
| Date Taken: | 01.07.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 02.12.2015 19:18 |
| Story ID: | 154372 |
| Location: | CHEYENNE, WYOMING, US |
| Hometown: | GUERNSEY, WYOMING, US |
| Hometown: | WHEATLAND, WYOMING, US |
| Web Views: | 101 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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