I'm a wounded warrior from World War II who landed on Utah Beach during the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France. I commanded a platoon of tanks at the young age of 19. We fought all the way to the Elbe River in Germany, including the Battle of the Bulge. We defeated Germany's Nazism because we were allowed to fight the enemy without the political rules of engagement.
I was wounded near the Elbe and flown to a hospital in Nancy, France, two weeks before the war ended. Subsequently I was treated in three VA hospitals in California. My medical records, along with a million others, were destroyed by fire in the VA's record storage in St. Louis. My claims have not been processed by VA without the records. I've written letters to Congress, VA, the Department of the Army and President Barack Obama asking for a policy change so those organizations will be allowed to take the veteran's accounting of their war wounds. The letters have been a waste of time because no action has been taken. I'm 90 years young, in the ninth inning, rounded third base and heading for home plate. I had hoped to see this problem resolved before I slide into home plate.
It seems that the soldiers fight the wars, come home, are discharged and then cast aside. The promises given our fighting soldiers just aren't always being kept.