Back in the late 1960s, a freshly minted regular force military officer, I met a man who had just begun working for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He handled persons receiving government assistance because of their wartime service. Within a short while he was readily commenting that veterans were largely out to take the government for a free ride.
The man had no military background. I was suspicious about what he said, for from birth I had been part of a military family and grew up in a setting in which serving and former soldiers were routinely part of the background. I had never heard the attitudes he was claiming were widespread.
A couple of years after this I spent some time in hospital and shared a room for a month with a couple of war veterans being treated for ailments linked to their wartime service. Never did I hear them gloating about receiving undeserved treatment or pensions.
What my acquaintance was expounding doubtless came to him as part of his indoctrination into a departmental culture. Such was how the old hands thought: they passed their attitudes on to the newbies, who quickly picked them up as received wisdom and acted accordingly. What they had been told became what they perceived. That was 44 years ago. It is hardly news that in recent years a great many former military persons have become highly disenchanted with the treatment and attitudes they routinely encounter from what is now styled Veterans Affairs Canada. The name has changed but the outlook rolls on.
It is disturbing to find this type of attitude amongst people supposed to be directly assisting current soldiers emotionally damaged from service in Afghanistan. A military police complaints commission is now looking into the 2008 suicide of a serving soldier. A psychiatrist then serving in the military testified that he saw the soldier as not having post-traumatic stress disorder. The doctor’s testimony was “well spiced and hearty” with talk about soldiers seeking veterans’ benefits by faking medical conditions. He allowed that after the soldier’s suicide he asked some of the deceased’s comrades whether he missed something.
Undoubtedly – but what the doctor missed was that he himself had adopted a pre-existing judgmental mindset in which suspicion of the patient’s motives was uppermost. Preoccupation with the issue of cheating leads to perceiving what one expects to find. Someone with this attitude is blinkered from assessing a combat veteran’s condition dispassionately.
The commission heard from one of the soldier’s superiors who praised his combat performance, but similarly thought the man went on to seek the proverbial free ride. Yet testimony by one of the soldier’s officers noted a significant personality change after the man’s experiences in Afghanistan. What had changed a good soldier? The probable link of combat exposure to subsequent conduct was obvious.
People may, as has been suggested in the particular soldier’s case, go into the military with behaviour problems. But if their combat experiences significantly worsen that, it is a service related condition and the military must accept responsibility. Individual susceptibilities and reactions to the impact of war vary. Amongst the damaged, concern about financial security is not unreasonable, and should not be prejudged as evidence of fraud.
David Haas is a former soldier who frequently comments on military and veterans’ issues.
