I answered a member’s comment (bobbie dott) who asked what the “Win or Die” strategy of claims prosecution was. I did him/her(?) a disservice. Allow me to rephrase that.

Bobbie, the W/D strategy is a mental concept. I had a shot at repping an unpowered derby car in Seattle in 1978. If you’ve ever been to the Pike Place Market, there is a semi-steep hill as you enter the one-way street in. They used to hold the derby car races there every spring. A Medic crew usually stood by to take the ones who missed the turn to the right. Minor lacerations-and indeed stitches-were the order of the day. That year we painted it shiny black and the logo was a skull and crossbones. The crossed bones had black and white checkered flags at their tops. The name of my chariot? WIN OR DIE. That’s what you’re here for, right? You’re in this for good. No half measures. You bail out of the aircraft with the full knowledge that God sends the Right. There is one philosophy and that is Win. Failing that, you grow old and Die trying.

If you’re 11Bravo, you think like this. Okey dokey. M-60s on the flanks, riflemen in the middle. Adjust the HMGs for unobstructed enfilading fire without cross contamination of  each other. Sit back and light up a Marb (red). The gooks will be here when they catch smell of the cigarettes.

Now translate that into win or die theory. Okey dokey, email NPRC and get the med/mil recs. Call the doctor innocuously and get an appt. for the big nexus talk. Print up the Nexus Bible. Avoid the new Disability Benefits Questionnaire (DBQ) like the Plague. Write yourself a test nexus letter to sound it out phonically. Spellcheck, please? Call the records repository for all your medical records from your civilian doctors. Get any VISTA vA medical records. Read up on your disease and the secondaries. Print up juicy tidbits for your doctor of sound logic about your ills and possible causes/risks.

Get it all dialed in, then assemble it like Santa does his sleigh and send it in. Make sure you have covered everything I discussed in my book. No baking soda in lieu of baking powder. The recipe is simple but explicit. The finished product is yours, not vA’s. There will be no “What I was trying to say was…” or “You’re taking it out of context”.  Think Continuity. Enfilading fire they run into rather than at.

Enfilading fire, for all who did not shoot machine guns, is a concept whereby your flanks of a semi-circular defensive kill zone are protected by true machine guns, not assault rifles set on rock and roll. Imagine someone running from your left to your right across the street in front of you. Next, imagine someone running down the street directly towards you. If you set up you machine guns on the flanks as in the first example, the enemy runs into your bullets without you having to move the MG appreciably. In the second example, he is running directly toward you which entails aiming carefully and trying to hit a bobbing, weaving target.

With every facet of your claim protected, the vA runs into an “enfilading fire” in that it cannot get through your logic. Anything vA tries to use to base their denial on has been examined, discussed and rationally solved in your favor. This is Offensive Claims 101. They use ex parte justice-you report/we decide. You fix this by handing in your book report that you sharpened like the finest bamboo punji. Use their pet phrases from the hallowed M-21 vASpeak. For them it’s like talking in an echo chamber when they respond.  The last thing you want to do is walk in there, fill out the claim, and hand in a DBQ, bobbie. That’s suicide yet Vets do it every day.

Did you notice during prepping and barbecuing of Under Secretary for Excuses Allison Hickey at the House of Representatives this summer even she was loathe to admit it but finally acknowledged the DBQs “were a little bit defective” in that they were absent the most important block to fill in. That would be the one that requires insertion of item #3 of the immutable Golden Triangle precepts. The third leg of the legendary Caluza Gordian Knot. The third triad of the fabled Hickson requirements. Why, the prime ingredient of the Hallowed Shedden elements. Without it, your claim heads to the Group W bench. Apologies to Arlo, but this does not stand for Win.

Without the nexus, vA is allowed to opine. They are allowed to “fix it”. They call in their Ouija experts and divine the bones. The chicken entrails are read and you come up short. Aunt Allison acknowledged all that and pointed out that the DBQs were such a brilliant idea in the War on Drugs ah, Crime ah, the Backlog that she felt it incumbent upon her to get them out there for Vets pronto. Due to a planned oversight printers’s error, the nexus block was purposefully inadvertently omitted.  Full of that knowledge, she had planned all along to issue the new, reformed DBQ as soon as humanly possible. In the meantime they were simply using up the available stock of forms already printed ( a paltry million or two) so as to save money and increase efficiency for the ROs. This has a marked effect on speeding up claims because they are all easily denied.  Win-win for vA. More money for those Orlando seminars on improving your handicap.

Win Or Die does not entertain the above scenario. You go in with a seamless coat of armor. Everything is there because you provided it. Nothing is left to chance. vA does not need to retrieve anything but they will pretend this is an unholy mess that requires several years, a file cabinet’s worth of paper and an appeal or two. Read dem bones, bobbie dott. Or…

Call a VSO. It’s Just One Vet’s Opinion (J1VO).