The Daily O’Collegian

Support our troops. Until they come home, that is.

At least, that seems to be the general consensus of the military and government regarding military personnel and their treatment.

According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (http://www.nchv.org), about one in three homeless men in the U.S. have, at some point, put on a uniform and served our country.

More than two-thirds served for at least three years and about a third were stationed in a war zone. Nearly one-half of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era.

The Department of Veteran’s Affairs estimates that on any given night, nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless and nearly 400,000 experience homelessness over the course of a year.

Veterans account for almost one-fourth (23 percent) of all homeless people in America, According to the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients.

Major reasons accounting for this are the lingering widespread effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse problems, compounded by a lack of reliable family and social support networks, according to the NCHV.

The Associated Press reported on an Army study that found about one in eight soldiers who have fought in Operation: Iraqi Freedom suffer from PTSD, but less than half of those seek help.

The Associated Press recently reported that an Army soldier who left the combat zone in Iraq after losing both brothers in the war and becoming an only child was denied up to $40,000 in GI benefits, asked to pay back $6,000 of his sign-up bonus and had family health care cut off to his pregnant wife.

Spc. Jason Hubbard, 33, and younger brother Marine Cpl. Jared Hubbard, 22, enlisted shortly after their brother, Cpl. Nathan Hubbard, 21, was killed in a Kirkuk Black Hawk helicopter crash, according to the Associated Press. Jared Hubbard was killed in a Ramadi roadside bombing in 2004.

After returning home from combat and discovering his wife had been cut off from much-needed health care and the military was taking away almost $50,000 worth of bonuses he had enlisted and served for, Hubbard petitioned a congressman, Rep. Devin Nunes.

“I felt as if in some ways I was being punished for leaving even though it was under these difficult circumstances,” Hubbard told The Associated Press. “The situation that happened to me is not a one-time thing. It’s going to happen to other people, and to have a law in place is going to ease their tragedy in some way.”

Nunes is joining with three other lawmakers to introduce a bill that would ensure discharged sole surviving siblings and children of soldiers killed in combat basic benefits through the military.

The Hubbard Act, introduced Apr. 16, would for the first time detail the rights of sole survivors and extend to them a number of benefits already offered to other soldiers honorably discharged from military service.

More than a billion is spent on the War in Iraq every day — more than $500 billion to date and the Army is concerned about salvaging a measly $46,000-plus whatever medical benefits cost for one soldier’s family?

He has been treated much worse than I have — I can’t even imagine losing two brothers in the war, having a spouse in dire need of medical insurance coverage being cut off and then being told to pay back the bonus a military contract promised — but I can relate to his situation on a much smaller and less serious level.

I enlisted in the Army National Guard and graduated from basic training in Missouri in December 2003, then went to AIT (specified job training) at Fort Bliss, Texas, two weeks later.

Less than two weeks after I arrived in El Paso, I had to have surgery at the William H. Beaumont Army Medical Center on a broken hip that resulted from an untreated stress fracture because of the intense physical training.

Rather than graduating from Fort Bliss as a truck driver six weeks after arriving, I was placed on medical hold on the base, still living in training barracks for more than six months while I underwent a medical evaluation and discharge.

The medical board determined that even though it was an injury received during training, I was not entitled to any disability pay.

Additionally, not only did I waste almost a year away from home and not get the $8,000 bonus I had originally signed up for, I had to pay back my training pay from the last two months I was kept at Fort Bliss on hold waiting for a discharge.

I appealed to the Veteran’s Affairs Department when I got home in August 2004 and, months later, got a 10 percent disability rating instead of a zero. I now have a permanent metal rod and screws holding my hip together, a half-foot long permanent scar, and a sporadic limp and pain that especially comes around before it’s about to rain or the weather gets colder. All I have to show for it is a $117-a-month check from the VA.

Do I feel sorry for myself? I’m not going to lie, every once in awhile the bitter self-pity comes out, but I never dwell on it. And in a way and at a price, I was saved from having to go into combat to fight a war I no longer agree with.

However, my main point is that as a whole, the military’s treatment of soldiers who are deemed to be of no use to them anymore (read: veterans) needs to be examined more closely.

There are numerous other cases in which soldiers don’t get or haven’t gotten the positive treatment they deserve for willing to serve their country so selflessly.