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Letters

STICKING UP FOR VA

I have been reading articles complaining about Veterans Affairs medical centers for a long time now and at one time I believed every complaint I read. Then in 2000 my brother, a retired Marine, persuaded me to sign up for medical treatment with the VA in San Francisco.

As a Vietnam vet and a one-time visitor to the VA hospital during a health emergency in 1968, I vowed never to go back. My brother convinced me that the VA had improved so much that I really ought to sign up, so I did.

One year after signing up with the San Francisco VAMC, I was diagnosed with an Agent Orange-related disability and awarded 40 percent disability. Since that diagnosis and after working with the great people at the VAMC, I am in better health now than I have been in my lifetime.

I have used the emergency room and was seen and treated in a timely manner. I have seen an urgent care nurse several times and was then seen by a doctor when the UC nurse deemed it appropriate. The clerks on the desk, both employees and volunteers, are the friendliest I have encountered in my 50 years of dealing with the military and government civilian employees.

I feel bad for the employees and volunteers of the VAMCs around the country hearing and reading all the complaints about the work they do. I really believe in the VAMC and what they are trying to do for us. As for myself, I could not ask for better treatment than I already get from the VAMC at Fort Miley in San Francisco.

Air Force Senior Master Sgt. George H. Martin (ret.)

Pacifica, Calif.

GI BILL BUST

One of Eddie Murphy’s memorable punch lines is “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” Regrettably, this is the same message being sent by the Pentagon to retirement eligible service members faced with executing a new four-year re-enlistment before they can transfer the new Post-9/11 GI Bill to their dependents [“GI Bill transfers tied to 4-year commitment,” Jan. 12].

Under the same proposal, service members with only 10 years of active service would be allowed to re-enlist for four years and be eligible for the same benefits. And there would be no requirement or guarantee that they would stay until retirement.

For those who are retirement eligible, but choose not to execute a four-year re-enlistment because of immediate job opportunities, family considerations or the fact that they decide 25 years of service is enough, then the door would be slammed in their faces.

It is understandable that the Pentagon would want its senior leadership to remain on active duty for as long as legally possible, but to hold them hostage with the threat of denying them the ability to transfer their GI Bill benefits to their children unless they re-enlist one more time is akin to extortion.

For many retirement eligible service members with college-age, or soon-to-be college-age, children, the ability to transfer their GI Bill would be heaven-sent. For them, it could mean not having to seek a second or third part-time job after retirement, not having to overextend themselves with loans, not having to take out a second mortgage on their home.

It would be a way of making amends for all those times they were unable to be there — missed births, birthdays, sporting events, school plays, graduations — because of assignments, exercises or deployments. For once, their children would not have to take a back seat to military priorities.

For hundreds, maybe thousands, of retirement-eligible service members enduring one last deployment, the message from the Pentagon is crystal clear: “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?”

Apparently, not enough.

Master Gunnery Sgt. Anthony M. Yallum

Camp Foster, Okinawa

STOP THE UNIFORM MADNESS

Pump the brakes on the uniform changes. What started as a misguided effort to motivate the unmotivated by giving them a new hat (the black beret fiasco) has morphed into an all-service, coolest-clothes-on-the-first-day-of-school competition.

Army: “Did you see what the Marines have on? That digital camouflage is so awesome. I’m getting the same thing but with loads of hook pile tape.”

Air Force: “Oh yeah? Well I am going retro. Gray tiger stripes. If only Ho Chi Minh could see us now.”

Now the Navy is convinced it’s missing out on something, but it can’t quite make up its mind on how to best one-up the rest of us.

I have heard all the arguments:

“We are a new, streamlined military and require a streamlined uniform.”

“The majority of the combat we are seeing is in urban areas and they are all gray.”

“The asymmetric battlefield requires an asymmetric uniform.”

“The change will save the service members money.”

“Every soldier/sailor/airman/Marine is a warrior.” Cue the 1980s montage music.

And my personal favorite: “Army Combat Uniforms blend in — desert, jungle, Paris, everywhere.”

The Army has a fleece that bares a striking resemblance to a tube of Colgate. The Air Force has taken a page out of Elvis’ book and airmen have slipped on their blue suede shoes. The Marines, while I blame them for rolling this snowball, have a pretty decent uniform.

But why shouldn’t the folks who are out traipsing around in bad-guy country have the same set of duds? After all, the principles of camouflage are the same regardless of what recruiting office was closest to your high school. My wife and I would love to see a giant shift back to sanity (she is kind of uneasy about bad men with rifles being able to see me). Go back to the good old days, when the forests and jungles were green and brown and the desert was tan, brown and other shades of tan and brown.

Army Staff Sgt. James Emmons

Fort Benning, Ga.