MEMORIAL DAY 2022–I AM A ROCK

Posted on May 28, 2022 by asknod

Remember that song by Simon and Garfunkel? Well, maybe not. I reckon it depends on your age. More about that in a few. As an author/litigator, I wear two hats now. I live to write about my experiences with my clients equally as fervently as I intersperse it writing about experiences I endured fifty years ago. I attempt to capture that in the photographs you send me. I strive to teach others how to ‘read’ the Rosetta Stone of VA law and how to surmount the obstacles that are placed in our path that prevent us from attaining service connection. As a survivor of a ‘conflict’ rather than a war, I’m thankful my psyche was (and still is) strong enough to have come out the other side quasi-intact. One had to develop pretty thick skin to inure oneself to the pain, sorrow and daily loss of friends and those we served with. Hence the analogy of the blog today.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no doubt the sand rancher war(s) in both Afstan and Iraq were grueling. I also suspect the emotional toll on these warriors might be even more damaging than it was to us in our war conflict in Vietnam. Allow me to become maudlin and share what I see as the dichotomy of war then and now. First, we’ve tried this war gig several ways. World Wars I & II more or less incorporated the cohesive unit approach they used in SWA. You all came from New York or Tennessee and trained en masse. You deployed the same way. You came home the same way if you didn’t come home in a box.

Allow me to express the first emotion most all of us felt when we arrived in SEA. Shunned in a word. I’m not sure how the Squids did this. I know they had to paddle over there so maybe it was a cohesive group deployment. Boy howdy it wasn’t that way for most of us in the Army or Air Force. Each service had its emotional drawbacks and I sure don’t mean to imply one group had it worse than others except maybe for Eleven Bravos. If it wasn’t for bad luck, they wouldn’t have any luck at all. Granted, each service assignment had unique features. But the overwhelming thing I encountered in my extended travels and assignments over my two deployments was the aloofness of the many I served with. Penetrating the barrier of friendship and forming a bond with shortimers or others who preceded you was downright daunting. The reason was simple.

Nowadays, a platoon or company deploys as a cohesive unit. Most often, you went through Basic, AIT and advanced training for deployment as a ‘whole’ entity of X troops. We didn’t have that in SEA. We arrived at the replacement depot, got our boots and rifles and were flown into some godawful PSP mudpit or dusty LZ and greeted by fellow soldiers with tombstones in their eyes. You were ‘fresh meat’. You were cherries. You were FNGs. Nobody was interested in what state you came from or looking at the picture of your girlfriend. Folks laughed-but it didn’t involve you. Say hi to a stranger and they’d look at you like you were retarded. Pretty soon you, too, became devoid of emotion. Nothing could amaze you anymore. It was like Call of Duty in 3D on steroids lacking any on/off switch. About then, you actually began to look forward to each morning. Adrenaline mixed with testosterone is an amazing cocktail. Stir in some gunpowder and medals for valor and you have a dedicated soldier.

With the statistical assurance that your chances of contracting lead poisoning  in the next year were astronomical-even compared to South LA-you were shunned or, at best, tolerated until you’d been there long enough to prove you were an asset rather than a liability in a fire fight. Nobody wanted to be your BFF because the emotional pain of befriending a newbie and watching you killed a day, week or month later was distracting. Hence, we all became rocks. We further mutated into emotional islands and fenced everyone out until we felt comfortable enough to relax and let our guard down with a few proven, seasoned warriors. Some never succeeded in making that difficult transition back to normal when we came home. I seem to have some of them for clients, too. Cupcake says that about me-that I can be ‘distant’ or cold when I should be warm and outgoing. Shoot, I don’t think so but I’m sure everyone with a rip snorting good case of Bent Brain Syndrome is convinced they’re the only sane one in an ocean awash in absolute insanity around them. In a restaurant, you’ll find us all at the back in the corner booth. With our backs to a wall. No. Just kidding.

Après autorotation (successful)

 

Memorial Day is the national Olly Olly Income Free for emotions that allows you to let that shield slip for a day or two and recall things best left alone for the other 364 days of the year. Some will encourage you to get Jesus in your heart and tell the dead to bury their dead. That advice is most often proffered by someone who hasn’t ever seen a body dead-let alone someone who ate a 7.62 through and through. There’s nothing harder than trying to forget coating your hands in sulfa powder and tucking what’s left of Fred’s small intestines back in all the while telling him it actually looks better than you’d expected. Light him up a Marlboro and tell him to be patient. The dustoff is only 5 minutes out…but he only lasts three. That, too can be part of your Memorial Day… if you let it.

I’m not big on religion. I was born, baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Faith. My dogtags said as much. I could have erased that a week after I got to SEA with little or no change in the rest of my tours-or my life. I’m sure I can find a large number of my fellow servicemen I served with who share that sentiment unless they have more intestinal fortitude than I do. At first, I just couldn’t grasp how God could condone this activity. That was before I began calling him Howard. It’s painful beyond words to land at the end of the day and discover you’re not going to be talking to Ben or Tom or Jack ever again. There’s no finality or a shaking of hands and a ‘see ya’ later’ in war. There ought to be. It’s unfair. But then, maybe Memorial day is good for that- an annual Remember Ben, Tom and Jack Day. I like the gung ho groups who always buy a drink and leave it on the table in bars for _______ ‘who can’t be with us.’ Way cool. I salute you. If you want to, you can fun the waitress and say “What? You can’t see him?”

Memorial Day is a temporary reprieve where it’s okay to step away from your friends and family, get wet eyes and sigh. And sigh again. Afterwards, you can carefully close the mental picture album and put it back on the memory shelf. I strongly suggest you try to remember the laughter. That projectile puke when you all got food poisoning from the old c-rats and  your world-class hurl. That 250-yd. shot with your CAR 15 shortie that got the zipperhead with the RPG (but no medal). The yellow bathing suits we all wore at Vung Tau. Remember that laughter. Dry those memories and press them like flowers between the pages of a book. That’s what will keep you tethered to the here and now. Well, that and grandchildren. They’re kinda like Valium™ in some respects.

Multiply an Eleven Bravo by 365 days with three off for good behaviour and you are guaranteed to have the perfect storm mentioned above. How you’ve been viewing that glass (half full or half empty) may be the testimonial as to how you made it this far. But then, if we didn’t have wars, we wouldn’t need Memorial Days. Somebody might oughta explain how this works to the guys down in DC who inherited them Star Spangled eyes. Eventually, they’ll be coming for your grandchildren some day unless we change.

If you didn’t already have religion or lost it in the past, Memorial Day may give you a reason to get religion all over again. Or… maybe not if you’ve ever watched cannon balls fly. Witnessing man’s capability to inflict brutality to his fellow man will pretty much vaporize any thoughts of religion in the same sentence faster than you can say Jack Robinson. Well, excluding ‘Holy shit, Batman’ or ‘Sweet Jesus, did you see that secondary cook off?’

Happy Memorial Day to my readership.  I reckon that’s all I have to say about that.

The Few. The Proud. The Remembered.

Posted in Memorial Day | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

EXPOSED VET RADIO SHOW–5/26/2022

Posted on May 25, 2022 by asknod

Brother John flashed the one and only Bat signal in the sky heralding the desire of John and Jerrel (personal pronouns us, them, they)  for my appearance on Exposed Vet to discuss Speshull Monthly Compensation. I look forward to this show as it’s a constant learning experience. Not so much the regulations but the way VA raters attempt to thank you for your service out of one side of their mouths while shutting the proverbial SMC door in your face.

I expect the one thing that really pulls my string is that these ‘technicians’ presume to think they know how to adjudicate SMC. Considering I find errors in every last one, I must disagree. It’s primarily one of the biggest reasons I can’t take on many new clients. I spend all my waking hours trying to repair  the incorrect ratings from my existing ones. But that’s not why I called you here.

SMC, in famed NOVA attorney Robert Chisholm’s immortal words, is the ‘art of the possible’. Very little precedence has been established with respect to this higher level of compensation for a reason. VA tends to grant early on- after a suitable pitched battle of course- because the last thing they want is all this SMC R1-R2-T hooey out in the light of day. VSOs have been adamant over the decades  denying it even exists. Ask one of them. Really. Go down to your local AmVets and ask Mikey the rep about getting SMC S after you’re already at 100% P&T. They’ll look at you like you’re asking them to join the Flat Earth Society as a life member. And they’ll deny its existence in the next breath.

I’m not kidding you when I say that by using VA’s current regulations and well-constructed nexus letter, I could get more than 50% of you a SMC L for aid and attendance. Shoot. I didn’t write the regulations. I just found a way to exploit the way they are written. It isn’t FM. It’s just how you approach it.

I’d like to start with the basics- when do I qualify? What do I need? How should I prepare? All these questions exist nowhere in How-to VA playbooks. I think I know why. Nobody knows how to do this. That’s certainly not to demean attorneys or my fellow agents. It certainly isn’t meant  as idle bragging either. It’s predicated  on how many referrals I get from big name attorney outfits. Considering how lucrative a win it is doing this (SMC R1,2 etc.), I can’t conceive of a law group pissing it away to some local yokel in rural Gig Harbor Washington. I have no explanation for why I continue to win. Perseverance? The squeaky wheel syndrome? Whatever the cause, I’m on a SMC roll.

The 81mm surprise package.

Right. Tune in tomorrow night at 1900 East side and 1600 on the left Coast. Get your brewski and chips ahead of time. Mute your mic so we don’t have to listen to the dog bark or the crunch of the Fritos™. I look forward to teaching my brothers and sisters how to break the VA’s compensation bank. If you have a question, feel free to raise your hand by pressing one (1) (nung)(un) and asking it. We’ll get the Four Deuce canon cockers to pop flares on the LZ.

Here’s the map coordinates and heading. Hope to see you all there.

Via computer it’s

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/jbasser/12103571/connect/340c8691006f191c5964fefad92aada2ac6d0a95

or if you’re computer challenged, it’s

(515) 605-9764

I’m sorry for the delayed posting of this notification. I gave birth to a sizable kidney stone yesterday at 1701 hrs. I was in labor for 17 hours from 0030 Hrs that morning. It felt like a 20 cm. dilation for the entire period. I have the ultimate respect for what a ‘birth person’ goes through now. And no, we haven’t chosen a name for it yet. We’re planning a virtual baptism over the septic tank next week as I inadvertently flushed it. Hell, to give you an idea of the size, I heard  it hit the porcelain and I didn’t even have my hearing aids in. How ’bout them apples. Thank God it wasn’t twins, huh?

Posted in SMC, Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

FORT FUMBLE SEATTLE–1983 CUE JUST WAITING TO BE FOUND

Posted on May 23, 2022 by asknod

Greetings to all you CUE nuts. For those of you obsessed with trying to revise your antique denials, here’s a good example of one that just jumps up and bites you on the nose. It did entail doing a 2-minute dumpster dive into the VBMS file but not to worry. VBMS is polite. They arrange it chronologically rather than the CD version you request that resembles a game of 52-card pickup. I offer this example because it’s been sitting in my files for several years. As I was focusing on getting my client SC for his hep c, I didn’t go back to the dawn of his claims existence. Hep C wasn’t ‘invented’ until 1989, so it’s unlikely I’d find anything back in 1969 on the subject.

Anyway, Wayne was here at LZ Grambo going over a filing for 2ndys to his Hep C with me and was discussing a hip/knee filing that was denied in 1983. He said the ‘VA technicians’ couldn’t find his records- meaning his STRs (or SMRs) from service back then so they denied. He reopened it in 2007 with a lot of buddy letters and a ton of doctors’ records showing the interim history from the 1983 denial and finally won. He might  as well not have wasted the energy. This time ( the 2007 filing), they found the STRs and the NPRC sent them in to the local puzzle palace. In the leadup to the rating, an astute RVSR named Melisa spotted the STRs and noted in a VAF 21-6789 Deferred Rating Decision that if 1) the QTC clinician handed out a positive nexus to service based on the new service department records, that 2) the Waynester was in for a shit ton of retrobucks -30% back to 5/1983.

Sure enough, the QTC puke came back with a positive connection and the  rating decision granting SC stated that he was being awarded an effective date all the way back to his original claim. The problem, as always, is the semantics in VAspeak. To them, his original claim was 2/27/07. Then they inexplicably changed it to May of 2003. Then they CUE’d themselves a year later and gave him another 10% for DeLuca knee pain- but with effective date of 9/2007. Go figure. That took him to 30% and covered the wifesan. Since he was not well-versed in §3.156(c) law, he didn’t ‘see’ the error.

Loved those CAR 15 shorties.

Being quasi-inquisitive, I said hold the phone and gazed into my VBMS crystal ball. Sure as shit, there’s the finding of fact in 1983 times two of no STRs. They didn’t even trot out the old Friday the 13th of July 1973 BBQ of Veterans’ records as the excuse. Granted, that would have fallen flat as a cheese soufflé in a whorehouse because he got out in 1969. But then, I’ve had a few like the one where the Vet served from 79-83 and them back-to-the-future Delorean gomers snuck in and stuck his records into the sixth floor fire. I hate that when that happens. When you query the technicians at the NPRC, they get a bit brusque and tell you they are not up on how that time travel thing works.

Likewise, the 2007-era records say they found the STRs but no one bothered to scan them in until around 2013. Nevertheless, the PIES VAF 21-3101 says in no uncertain terms that they transshipped it all to the Seattle claims experts. Dr. Judas at the local QTC  promptly said roger on the 1968 fall from 20 feet up and the full leg cast up to the hip. Bingo- 20% (and 30% a year later on the belated CUE). It was all there-well, all there except for the May 1983 rating for 30%.

So, being a VA ambulance chaser worthy of my name, I’m filing it today. I’ve done a few §3.156(c) claims in my day but never have I seen them give me the ammo to shoot them in the foot so completely. Here’s a copy of the filing. I’d give a Benjamin Franklin just to see the look on their faces when Janesville forwards this one to them.

redacted

The VA folks in Seattle have gotten to know me on a first name basis over the last 15 years. In the last six, some of the DROs have even become a little terse with me and implied I’m an ignorant slut. I prefer to think of myself as a knowledgeable slut. My clients certainly do not agree. They’re all satisfied campers and TDIU’d/SMC’d.

The fact is VA law is like fishing with hand grenades. You literally can’t miss. They screw up virtually everything they touch. Granted, not all of it will rise to the level of CUE that you can guarantee a win with but enough does such that it makes VBMS dumpster diving lucrative enough to pursue when things quiet down and you’re bored. Last week, one of my R1 Vet’s files was lying open and it dawned on me that back when he was granted A&A  in 2017, he also had a spare 100%. Yeppers. They should have granted him the §3.350(f)(4) bump from L to M but nooooooooooooooo-they just had to lowball him. It’s not much but everyone can use a couple $14 K for some wine and women money.  On second thought, he’ll probably need it for gas all too soon. It was $5.39 for regular when I filled up Cupcake’s new Expedition this AM. New because I shot the old one twice in the engine block to prevent its departure from a crime scene. It was declared DOA shortly thereafter.

The fact is, VA uses a “SMC Calculator” that is supposed to automatically infer all the possible SMCs you can get  by analyzing your rating sheet. The problem is their SMC technician inputting the data. Somewhere, a village is missing it’s idiot. CUE. It’s what’s for dinner!

Posted in CUE, VA Agents, VA Motions for Reconsideration, VBMS Tricks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

HAPPY HOUR WITH HORS D’OEUVRES…RIGHT?

Posted on May 11, 2022 by asknod

So I got the raised planters built and the garden area rototilled for the corn. Time for a scotchski it was. Yessssssss. And right there on the counter was the le chip du jour. Cupcake’s  on a gluten-free (read fun-free) healthy tilt so everything is something other than wheat. Rice, almond flour, pecan flour, ad nauseum literally. I’d allow the almond flour crackers are remotely edible as I’m sure papyrus is too if you’re starving. What the hey. Buddy my parrot will eat them. He’s a wise 54- yr. old bird. He was born after Tet ’68 in the fall during monsoon. I trust his instinct. He won’t eat one of them store-bought peeled carrots. Turns out if you hold the bag up to your nose reeeeeal close, you too can smell the reek of Clorox™. Zesty. Brightens your teeth, too. We already went down that road with herbicides and look what it got us.

So, I’m armed and dangerous and coming into the kitchen and the chips bag is on the counter. New flavor. Rice. Well, new rice flavored cracker because I don’t recognize the bag. Bleh.

Hey. No flies on me, right? Occam’s Razor. Obviously that must be the go-to Happy Hour chip. No one in their right mind would think otherwise. They’re open so you know they aren’t past their born-on date and sketchy. Rice. It’s what’s for pre-dinner. So I have the JW Black nestled in the ice and and turn on the evening news and that cracker sure is short on salt… and dang near any other seasoning you’d expect. I took another cracker out and seconded that emotion.  The label doesn’t say ‘Danger Will Robinson. May taste like dog shit. So I take a closer gander…

What the hey? These are, hands down, absolutely not even close to Rice Crispy Treats. How could you get away with selling these to folks? I’m guessing even Pickles might not think they were up to her mediocre standards. Well, shut the front door.

Yeah. I know. Cupcake says I never read the instructions but I think this was deliberate sabotage. It’s my considered opinion that they were purchased with the full knowledge that someone would innocently put some out on a tray with some delicious aged, sliced, extra sharp white cheddar fully well expecting a eco-unfriendly rice cracker that was at least edible. But nooooooooooooo. She had to buy the dog treat brand most closely resembling the gluten-free shit.

I can’t wait until April Fool’s Day 2023. Vengeance shall be mine sayeth the nod.

Posted in Humor | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

5/7/75–ONE OF THOSE INFAMY DAYS

Posted on May 9, 2022 by asknod

Looking back on the recent “reallocation of available assets” at Kabul Airpatch last fall, those of my generation merely nod their heads in confirmation and concur there never really have been any true Mensa Generals since World War 2. They’re not permitted to think outside the box anymore. Everything is built on the OSHA premise that it takes a village to change a lightbulb. It has to be widely shared on Social Media and the number of views/likes has to be ensconced into the Clouds for eternity. 

The vision planted in our brains on 5/7/75 was the Huey hucking contests offshore at Dixie Station. Afghanistan’s ignoble retreat, however, will leave us with that indelible image  of C-17s shedding civilians from their landing gear on climb out. That’s some brutal shit for the unwary progressive viewer. Wars always seems to be such an antiseptic, faraway thing until the day the footage gets graphic. Dan Rather and others brought this into our living rooms along about 1967 and war coverage has never been the same since. And keep in mind that was a sanitized version in those days. Reality was often far different but you the American public never saw this. Life magazine didn’t even publish the really ugly stuff.

We nicknamed them Glad Bags reasoning that a body would be glad to be going home. That may sound macabre but gallows humor abounded back then. It warded off  depression… temporarily.

When working with the Veterans I represent, I’m always reminded that folks who were trained to fly IBM Selectrics™ often found themselves pressganged into Eleven Bravos. A cook I repped who was stationed at An Khe told me about a couple of times the gooks got inside the wire and ran rampant dang near all night. In October ’68 they mortared the perimeter and did a minor probe for weaknesses. They came back 12 days later in broad daylight and got the POL area- almost 14,000 barrels. He said shit was cooking off in the bomb dump for days. I’ve had Vets tell me of dark nights where they were yelling at each other not to run around so they could figure out which ones were Cowboys and which were the Indians. Sometimes war devolves down into these most basic of tactics.

My service was similar. I thought I had a cut and dried job for a year in country or the neighboring environs only to discover my government had different plans for me. I certainly never considered being fluent in French would increase my risk relative to others’. Project 404 sounded like such an innocuous gig. A little psyops with a side of interesting dining (Monkey Ball soup, raw papaya soumtom), playing dumb and eavesdropping on visiting RLAF officers  who thought they were being ohhhh soooooo clever speaking in-guess what- Français.  It turned out this was our life in reality.

Granted, there were a lot of dialects and languages afoot in Long Tieng. A lot of the AirAm crew chiefs were Filipino and spoke both Spanish and English. There were combat-seasoned Thai Army Troops available for use as fire extinguishers when the Pathet Lao advanced unexpectedly in winter monsoon. There were Hmong troops who spoke only Hmong. I picked up Pidgin Thai eventually as it was the more common of all. Dee dee mao merely turned into Pai lao lao.

The intriguing aspect of Vietnam and Afghanistan revolves around their similarities. I have vivid memories of watching Walter Cronkite that day on the evening news showing us live footage of the ‘tactical advance in a new direction’. Each one of those Huey submarines would be up to a cool $1.6 million nowadays assuming they had updated avionics. Who’d want one is another story. Rotary wing is delayed suicide. It’s never a question of if a chopper will suddenly have a mechanical misadventure at 2500 ASL but when. Orville and Wilber had it right from the beginning. Imitate the birds. It doesn’t hurt as much when you don’t drop like a rock.

We Veterans lament the tremendous loss of military hardware left on the tarmac and in warehouses in Kabul but that doesn’t even begin to hold a candle to what we left scattered across Vietnam-not to mention all the destroyed materiel. 11,846 choppers were shot down or crashed. That’s not even counting the ones that got the heave ho into the South China Sea on 5/7/75. We ‘donated’ tanks, APCs, .50 cal HMGs, M 60s and gazillions of M 16s on top of gazillions of surplus Korea M1/M2s, G3s, Thompsons and the ammo. We left crated Pilatus Porters on the flightline at Tan Son Nhut. We left a fleet of C 123s and C-7s. This absolutely dwarfs any stupidity in Afstan. We spent more on building schoolhouses in this latest war and it didn’t buy us any Taliban camaraderie whatsoever.

To invoke George Santayana’s name yet again would be pointless. Everyone knows his sentiments and they were once again vindicated last fall. The major media would have you fixate on the 13 troops that ate it  trying to supervise the withdrawal at the airpatch. But that would ignore the 2,325 who ate it over the whole deployment or the 3,519 who didn’t make it back vertical from Iraqistan. Why is it we Americans are always the firemen on the world stage? Who dreamed up this game of donating our troops to the jaws of war?

I’m sure Dunkirk would be another spot-on analogy but it wasn’t our war back then…yet. I don’t mean to dwell on the waste in materiel. I speak of the wasted lives. I can never conceive of expending one-let alone 58,434 troops on a losing cause. It’s not that Vietnam wasn’t a worthy cause. It’s the fact that we weren’t allowed to succeed. And most certainly not over the fence in Laos. A phrase carved in stone evokes my sentiments on war- ‘It’s a worthy thing to fight for a man’s freedom; it is another sight finer to fight for another man’s. But what happens when they tie one of your hands behind your back? Who ever heard of  having to request permission to return fire or to deploy nape or WP when your troops are getting overrun?

I reckon you have to draw the line somewhere when trying to play whack-a-mole with communism. The problem is you eventually run out of  compliant youthful men to do it with. Without casting shade on the opposite sex as infantrywomen, one must understand they don’t have restrooms on battlefields. You can’t just raise your hand and say “Yo. Permission to go to the loo, Sir?” It just doesn’t work that way. In the real world, men don’t need tampon dispensers in the men’s restroom. Regardless of the new pregnant man emoji, men cannot give birth or lactate. Men can’t get out of sorts once a month due to estrus. Frankly, combat is distracting enough already without throwing this added distraction into the mix.  No one can argue that women do not provide a valuable augmentation to our military forces but I wish the powers that be would recognize the glaring drawbacks to total integration. And before I get in any deeper on the other 46 genders, I’ll move on.

While I will never throw cold water on brave men (or women) of all nationalities desirous of coming to the aid of the Ukrainians- or any besieged country, I do not think we, as Americans, personally have a dog in this fight. We’ve swept up the broken glass on the European continent twice with the blood of our servicemen. Three times if you count the cold war. France went so far as to 86 NATO and boot our bases out of France. It’s high time Europe shows its backbone and owns their shitshow. This isn’t going to end well any way you look at it. Somebody’s feelings are going to get hurt. We don’t need any more Glad bags arriving at Dover airpatch any time soon. After over 20 years, the mortuary personnel have earned a vacation.

I expect the next hot spot will be Iran or a rematch between the pissed off sand ranchers and Israel but I’m hoping that will happen after my departure. I have grandchildren and corn to grow.  And that’s all I’m gonna say about May 7th, 1975. It reminds me of taking third place at the Bejing Olympics.

And, as a parting reminder, never get between a mama bear and her cubs.

 

Posted in Vietnam War history | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

EXPOSED VET RADIO SHOW THURSDAY

Posted on May 3, 2022 by asknod

This one should be called the ‘Colvin on your collar told a tale on you‘ . This claim/appeal now spans sixty five years and has outlived the Veteran. Still VA tries to squirm out of doing it locally. I get that. This is 4th and long and the Seattle Puzzle Palace ain’t going near it. They’re punting to the BVA.  If you drew the VSR GS-9 short straw and had to write this up, or were the unfortunate Coach it came back to like an errant boomerang, or anyone even remotely associated with this stinker, your chances of rising to the hierarchy of the VBA DROC team would be right up there with ice creme in Hell if you were party to cutting the paper handing out a million +. 

Why shucks. Folks would be surreptitiously  pointing over at you down in the lunch room for years saying ‘See Sherista over there. She’s the one that wrote thet RD on that Korean dude that died last year. I’d hate to be her. I heard she’s trying to transfer to VR&E she’s so bummed out.’

So they pawned off the Texas Necktie party on the VHA neurologist  (again) and said ‘You’re it.’ The problem is it’s against the law in 48 states to allow the doctor to spout law or the law dogs to spout medical opinions. That thirty pieces of silver gig for stretching the truth went out with printing press.  There’s a chasm between doctors and attorneys/judges that must be observed.  Take a gander at the VA’s 42-page version of a Monty Python  I’m a neurologist and I’m okay. I work pretty hard and opine all day skit. I don’t reckon this is going to impress the VLJ.

redact 42 page VA MO

The only problem with all that ‘weight of medical evidence” is none was provided. I’m the little old lady that pulls up to the drive-in window and yells ‘Where’s the beef?”. The HLR booth bitch looked at the ceiling, disremembered my legal points, whistled past the graveyard and cranked out the RD in 30 minutes. I’d have given my eye teeth to have seen her twisting  and squirming on Zoom. I could have submitted a 4138 from Jesus Christ swearing “What he said, dude.” and it would still have crashed and burned. This thing has resume-killer writ large all over it. The only guy oblivious to all this is that wild and crazy French VA narcissistic neurologist (the undersigned).

Look up Monzingo, there’s a great quote there that reinforces Colvin precedence. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve ever cranked out 22 pages of legal brief. I actually distilled it down from 28 pages. I didn’t want to appear verbose.

redact 10182 4.22.2022

As I pointed out in the brief, this guy found absolutely nothing related to s/p encephalopathy-not so much as a numb lip. VLJ Skaltsounis had this docketed 4 days after it hit his desk. I put “Attention: VLJ MIKE” on the FAX cover sheet. I didn’t even get a chance to ask for AOD but they gave it to us anyway. Remember the old Allison Hickey “Rocket Docket” program back in 2013-14? This one appears to be one.

Thursday’s show will begin at 1900 Hrs on the East coast and thus, because of the phenomenon of global warming, 1600 Hrs out here in God’s promised land. Really. We have no skanky rattlesnakes on this side of the cascades. No black widows, no poisonous nothing except for the Brown Recluse spider and you have to hunt high and low to find one of them. Really. No hurricanes, no tornados-zip. The only problem I see is all those new citizens up here who migrated from down south. Somebody ought to teach them what yield and merge gracefully means.

The call in number is (515) 605-9764

Dial 1 to enter the questions queue.

Or you can join us on line here:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/jbasser/12095577/connect/a72f0b5b3979b0ddcf737546ddf0e8e4a539be33

Check this one out. I bet that old boy rolled a few socks down. Would have loved to have been the Peter Pilot.

 

Posted in Exposed Veteran Radio Show | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

FROM THE DAVID KORESH MEMORIAL REGIONAL OFFICE

Posted on April 29, 2022 by asknod

Good afternoon unhappy Veteran campers. asknod here (it, they). I, of all fellers, can honestly say “I feel your pain” without having to manufacture crocodile tears like a certain 42nd President once did. I did my 28 years in the hole. We’ve hit an interesting streak of VA jurisprudence that began around say… mid-January of 2021. No political aspersions here. Just an observation. Inexplicably, the VA dice went cold. There were more deferrals for a new c&p. There were more ‘claim changed from complete to open in VBMS’ where yesterday it had said ‘Claim decision complete.’  The number and quality of the denials was, and still is, atrocious. It’s as if Homer’s monkey Mojo has been given GS-14 VA examiner privileges and turned loose with a VA Adobe 9.5 M 21-equipped cut and paste program that spews out ‘not at least as likely as not’ drivel with a direct link to Janesville.

Well, fortunately, asknod doesn’t do tinnitus and pes planus gigs so we rarely encounter a lot of that.  However, we have been getting more than our usual share of those GTFOOH denials that give you the heebyjeebies and make you wonder why you do VA law. I actually had to begin doing HLRs to fix their ratings errors sooner rather than later.

Were it me, in the setting of a big law office (which I do not have), with a JD (which I never got), I’d ask myself why in Sam Hill I wasn’t chasing real, $1.2 million dollar ambulances instead of  rickety old VA meat wagons. Of course, being an actual Veteran answers all those questions as it probably does for those who have a genuine desire to help Veterans. As we all can agree, there ain’t no money in VA law unless you hit a Lotto. There simply aren’t very many of those and if you bite into one, you can guarantee it will be a ten-year time alligator. That’s why I love them. Old CUEs? Show me. A new tranche of §3.156(c) records and a 1970 denial for everything you filed on? Come on over here and set a spell beside me and tell us all about that Bouncing Betty and how VA screwed you. Welcome to the Group W (Waiting) bench, Arlo. What took you so long to get here?  Did you take a side trip through all those Veterans Help Forums and chase down a gazillion rabbit holes?

Having been 86’d from not just one but two of the most well-read Veterans Help sites  (VBN and Hadit), I pride myself not on my litigation successes but on my dogged belief in telling the truth. Truth can be a many-splendored thing. Truth to Vet A can be a complete recital of how s/he won their claims even though no one will ever encounter the same set of circumstances. Truth to Vet B might be the frustration of asking a question and the recriminations for being a FNG and not being up on all the EED and CUE terminology. Worse, no one wants to bring you up to speed and teach you. They just want to tell you their story about how they got here. Who gives a shit? Remember the Veteran? That’s why we’re here. To help the Veteran. This isn’t about us. It’s about finding their repair order. A Veterans Help website is useless if you suppress a point of view-no matter how far-fetched it is. Worse, it’s counterproductive to hand out advice on VA claims when you have no training. Vets are going to depend on that advice and it better be spot on or you could be condemning them to another year or two in the hole. I’d feel like shit if I caused that But then I’d also probably lose my accreditation, too. A well-meaning Veteran probably never considers that aspect.

When I first set out to create a Veterans help site, my immediate urge was to create a Forum like all the others which were all the rage back in 2008. What first hit me was the “Twitter” effect. If your advice or your experience with VA was adversarial, you were not allowed to spew that observation on VBN. It was quickly erased and you were marginalized or thrown out with the baby’s bathwater if you kept it up.

Personally, I don’t have a lot of friends. Why that is doesn’t concern me. My urge, in the short time  I have left around here is to convey knowledge. I don’t have time to argue with some dolt about the semantic nuances of CUE in the setting of a truly final claim. If your claim is over a year old and buried, dang near the only way to fix it is to file a CUE. If it’s less than a year since it died, then it can be resuscitated and you keep the effective date. It might be error but it can be fixed without resorting to the arcane rules of CUE. That’s a biiiiiiiiiiiiig difference semantically and where they put the decimal point after the dollar sign. To get kicked off Hadit, I had to take that indefensible position with their resident CUE guruista. The second time was because I mentioned the unmentionable that certain doctors had skeletons in their closets. I guess it’s time to reconnoiter some new Vets sites to garner more bans.

The beauty of a blog site like this is the teaching moment and then a follow-on comments section where you can ask cogent questions without fear or recriminations. Or, I suppose, if you’re one of those Karens from one of the other sites or a unhappy TWS volunteer, you can come argue the misspelling of serve (sever). Either way, you get to talk uncensored. This ain’t a school board meeting in northern Virginia.  We don’t cut off the microphone unless you become obstreperous or resort to expletives. This is a quasi-family site. Nasty words just detract from an otherwise informative experience.  Guilt trips don’t fly. I already cornered the market on passive aggressive shit.

The last takeaway on the above subject was a comment from Cupcake. She sat down and read a representative sample of both these website forums and was struck by what  appeared to her to be the very low intelligence quotient of the moderators. The ones offering assistance in the intricacies of VA law couldn’t even choose the correct form of there, their or they’re. Thank God it takes eight keystrokes to type out ‘You know’ or we’d have to wade through that too. I don’t profess to be Mensa material but boy howdy do I know VA law. I don’t know it solely from my experiences but by thousands of you who came here with situations no one could imagine in their wildest dreams. It’s simple. VA can’t light a fart with a flame thrower let alone figure out where all that methane gas is coming from. This means your denial is more than likely illegitimate and needs to be fixed. After about 500 cases, the denials all seem to say the same thing. Fixing them just gets easier if they have a skinny play book.

In combat, you don’t want a democratic discourse amongst everyone in your Platoon on how to get your dick out of the dirt or how to flank the enemy and surround them. You want some butter bar with an ounce of situational awareness to order it. Make it so, Numbah One! You want a repair order-not a Kumbaya circle feelgood where everyone who ever suffered explosive diarrhea explains how they managed to successfully change their underwear.

I have the hardest time prying the client’s hands off the steering wheel and explaining why the windshield is far larger than the rear view mirror in the VA context. I don’t much give a rolling donut about how you got here. Seems whatever technique you were using didn’t get airborne or you wouldn’t be talking to me. It’s far easier to fix it than to spend a month reviewing the history. The time for discussing the proper effective date of claim begins when you’ve finally won.

Misty 22 is cleared in hot.

As an example, I  offer a bouquet of my recent battles so far this month. As for those trite VA phrases like “This constitutes a complete grant of all claims pending”, you have to wonder who comes up with that unicorn crap. It’s over when the asknod fat lady sings and not a moment before. It appears in this new VA unicorn world, they’ve been indulging in too much of the Devil’s lettuce. This seems to provoke a lot of denials. A new appeal (NOD 10182) arrives at the BVA every seventeen seconds Monday through Friday (except for national holidays). Think about that. The backlog for an appeal at SSA is a year. At VA, the same wait for a judge is five years. Dang good thing they hired ten more VLJs, huh? Farsightedness at the VA is a much sought out trait in the hierarchy.

Here’s a daisy. Jimbo (not his name) really wanted me to take this on after I got him R1 back in January. Looked like it had some mustard  on it so I did the dumpster dive into the c file evidence and grabbed a good Independent Medical Opinion. Personally, I never had a doubt it wouldn’t be a chicken dinner winner. The question was more a when than an if. File this one under §3.816(b)(1)(i). It’s also one of those cases where a Vet didn’t take his eyes off the rear view mirror. That’s okay. You just have to win the big banana first before you go on safari and hunt down the one that got away.

Redact Parkinsons EED to 2002

Here’s one that I began in 2017. Johnny Vet couldn’t get any traction on his Thailand AO claim. I tore it down and rebuilt it with my cookie recipe and we finally got the booth bitch at the David Koresh Memorial VARO in Whacko Texas to concede he really did get herbicide all over him. It happened while burning the classified mission papers on or near the perimeter fence from their daily 7th ABCCC missions over the Plain of Jars. Funny thing is I was down below him back in that summer of 1970 at about 200 ASL on frequency (118.9) calling in requests to him for air support for troops in contact. In fact, their call sign was well know to us- Cricket.

Johnny died of DM II complications back in April 2020 and I had a new mission to make sure they didn’t shortchange his widow. Well, sure as the sun rises, they did. Screwed him out of SMC S from fall 2016 to his passing in 2020. I couldn’t get the BVA jelly brain to grant what was due so we had to take that one up to the Court. Denis the Menace and the OGC choir folded during the Rule 33 conference and it’s finally back at Whacko Texas for the fat lady’s final act of contrition. I reckon I’ll look into A&A for this widow because she’s getting on in years. It’s only another $286 a month but what the hey? I’d do anything to irritate those pukes in Waco. They’re some kind of speshull stupid in my book. Maybe I ought to buy the DRO a one-year subscription to the The Flat Earth Society Magazine.

Redact SMC S to 2016

Life is good. I tested positive for Corona this morning. What’s amazing is it only felt like a cold all this last week. But then I don’t have IHD, DM II or weigh 458 pounds. I’ll survive. Too bad it isn’t like Chickenpox and you never get it again.

P.S.

Posted in Agent Orange, All about Veterans, BvA Decisions, Nexus Information, R1/R2, SMC, Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

PSA– BEWARE THE VA GREMLINS

Posted on April 21, 2022 by asknod

Holy Mackerel. I guess I don’t have to worry about getting sued by all these scam outfits stealing you Veterans’ money. I reckon I don’t have to go down the list and identify every last one of them either. Below is a link to the Military Times article that came in on the NOVA news feed this AM. We’ve been begging the VA to go after them for years. Apparently, someone just noticed. Amazing, huh? Nothing gets by these folks for long. This one happened in slightly less than 2 years. I’m impressed. 

https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2022/04/19/how-we-can-protect-americas-veterans-from-predatory-benefits-claims-practices/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mil-ebb

Posted in All about Veterans, Public Service Announcements, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

‘TIS THE SEASON

Posted on April 19, 2022 by asknod

About this time every year, an ever-increasingly smaller cohort of my generation think back and reflect on the consequences of war-any war. Was it worth it? Did we win? Did we kill more of them than they did of us? In the end, after it’s all over, does it matter?  In most respects, no. Fifty years later, all I miss is the camaraderie of being blood brothers united in agreement we were being led by clueless idiots. Well, that and I miss access to explosives.  I miss shaving off Semtex from Claymores with my prized survival knife and heating up my c rats. I miss the music of a Pig chewing up the jungle in front of me. I miss things I can no longer remember… and probably for a good reason. This is how a lot of Vietnam Vets live life now.

86’n the fire extinguisher for more passengers

It’s not a bad life. We have grandkids if we’re lucky. Or, like one of my close friends I’ve met since I returned, you don’t because you went through about six wives in ten years and they never hung around long enough to get knocked up. Smart they were. Yesssssssssss. Be careful. Some of them show up 50 years later and wanna play house again.

I started counting how many of us true Boots on the ground (BOTG) remained using goggle™ back in 2008. The accepted number was 850,000 of us left. I checked in again around 2012. In spite a number of funerals I’d attended, I found out we were either multiplying like rabbits or someone was bullshitting us. As my daddy once said, bullshit is nothing more than chewed grass. Ditto the number in 2016 and 2018. I figured everyone else had some killer Mojo and had managed to stay healthy. I’m batting about 3/10.

I do note, after searching again several minutes ago that the number had sunk to 610,000 in 2019. Seems they use some fancy metrics here. 1954 to 1975 might be a credible time frame but 1/9/1962 to 5/7/1975 is the more preferred yardstick in my book. And it should include all the folks that served over the fence. Using that metric might describe more closely how many true “Vietnam War” Vets with real red clay between their toes (and jungle rot) are still here today. But maybe not. There are those who need valor. They need to belong. Newsflash. By just enlisting, or, for those less fortunate, drafted, you served your country. Who could be disappointed with a NDSM?

Some immediately take offense when I pull out the tape measure. I respect everyone who signed up to serve. I mean that sincerely.  Realistically though, a much smaller number can, and should, claim true boots on the ground.  And of that number, I suspect far fewer than 610,000 are still vertical. Keep in mind that horde of lifers who command us. They’re gone-and if not, they must live in Chicago. Folks there never die. Again, who really cares at this point? Well, a few. I watched a Vet lay into another one at a VFW NRA gun raffle/dinner back in 2018. Seems he felt being in Germany was equally as dangerous as red boots and entitled him to the moniker of a genuine Vietnam War Vet. I would have inserted “era” right after War to avoid confusion. Are they counting how many times they were ‘wounded’ by VD?

I selected England as my first choice of assignment. Spain and Italy were second and third. I drew Udorn adjacent to Nong Khai and the beautiful Mekong River at first. Then some AF Intel weenie  discovered I spoke French. Laos wasn’t a whole lot different than Vietnam. You just rarely ran into guys who spoke English. Or French for that matter. Thai seemed to be the most frequent lingua franca.  Imagine blasting (90 kts.) down Route 7 heading east and broadcasting over a microphone to convince  Pathet Lao troops to surrender.  That was Tuesdays and Thursdays. They called me the Chieu Hoi Boy. Judging by the way the slopes responded with SKS fire, it had to be taken as an emphatic ‘no.’ Fuggem if they couldn’t take a joke. I’d just shoot back. After about a dozen missions, I got pissed. I had the crew chiefs take the side door off and started packing a Thumper. Sometimes you have to enunciate your philosophy of peace with an exclamation point. There’s nothing like 40 mike-mike HE for emphasis.

I’ve laughed long and hard when an ‘era’ Vet wishes he could have been there. Nobody sane would ever wish for that. I remember my pilot discussing a mission off the mike as we returned to Long Tieng one evening. His drift was that no one got medals for strafing elephants-even if you got secondary explosions off the munitions they were packing. He explained it didn’t “play well in Peoria”  when we submitted our after-action BDAs to our ‘Controlled American Source’ boss. The preferred term was camouflaged jeeps or, if you must, grey jeeps. Wars are funny. They won’t let you tell the truth. Now, no one can stand to hear the truth.

I remember the Sunday after I snagged a Swedish K for my personal firearm out of the old Jap hanger/warehouse down in Udorn. I went down to a creek nearby with a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple of our AirAm crew chiefs. We were having a gay old time taking swigs and skipping 9 mils off the water when the ominous sound of  Hueys (plural) began. Sensing something was amiss, we decided to get back inside the wire pronto. Believe it or not, the gunships lit up that stretch downstream with rockets and Pigs for five minutes. The body count, which was always the metric of success, was 8 and three POWs. Shut the front door. Were they counting monkeys? I struggle to this day to picture a monkey with his hands held high in surrender. I think that’s when I decided statistics could be fudged but is one of the fonder memories.

In fact, animals played a great part of our life up country. Not so much grey jeeps but pig  and chicken deliveries on USAID contracts. They were great  crowd pleasers when you kicked them out of the Porter from 100 feet up. Pork. It’s what’s for dinner. The chickens had a far higher survival rate from altitude. Brings a whole new meaning to DoorDash® or Grubhub© fifty years later, huh? Incomingggggg.

My attorney friend and mentor, Bob Walsh sent me this link today. He must share the same feelings I do about this time of year. It was 8 years before I found out he was an Eleven Bravo with a CIB. 173rd Airborne. Go figure. The meek among men roar the loudest when called to.

Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes
They send you down to war
And when you ask ’em, “How much should we give?”
They only answer, “More, more, more”

I told you several months ago I’d share my proprietary MacGyver information on Bottle Rockets. Remember them? What? No one shared the military art form with you? Okay stay with me. You take off one (1) of the plastique charges located above the fins of a 60mm mortar. Remember, just one-not all three. Three is right out. Set it aside. They looked like 1 ½” by 1 ½” inch chunks of plastique stitched together in packs of 5 very thin sheets. Take a c-rats can (large) and cut a piece about 4″X4″ out of the side wall metal and carefully flatten it out. Pick up a 2-foot chunk of baling wire from a mortar crate.

The one hundred metre freestyle.

Hold the PE down in the middle and fold the c-rats can in half, keeping the PE in one lower quadrant. Insert the bailing wire down the middle and fold in half one last time capturing the baling wire firmly.  About dark, sashay over to a campfire and throw it in like a spear with the wire end in first. It usually stuck and held over the flames. Eventually, it would heat up and take off . They weren’t terribly aerodynamic and they were known to cause nasty wounds. What the hey- this was good for a PH. As I say, there are a lot of things I miss.

Bell 205 First In-Last Out… Ditched at Sea 29 April 1975 alongside USS Blue Ridge LCC 19

I reckon I better shut up before I find someone who ended up wearing one of my inventions.

Posted in All about Veterans, Humor, Inspirational Veterans, Vietnam War history | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Navigating PTSD: Advice for Veterans

Posted on April 8, 2022 by cspencer02

 

Image via Unsplash

Many veterans struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, better known as PTSD. Sometimes it may seem that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately, that’s untrue. Here is some guidance on navigating your PTSD.

Don’t push away your loved ones.

As a veteran, you may have difficulty asking for help — after all, you’re used to others coming to you for help. Still, try your best not to push loved ones away. Lean on them. They may not be able to understand exactly what you’re coping with, and you don’t have to discuss your experiences right away, but try to seek the support you need.

Further, if you suffered an injury in battle and have new obstacles to overcome, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Your loved ones might be able to gauge what kind of assistance you need, but as you adapt to home life you may find other challenges. There’s no shame in asking for assistance. In fact, your family and friends will be happy to help.

Expect and be mindful of triggers.

Unfortunately, triggers are an unavoidable part of PTSD. The UK’s Mind.org details that triggers can come in several forms: words, sounds, places, smells, certain kinds of films or books, and specific dates. In the beginning, these triggers will sneak up on you. However, as time goes on, you’ll be able to predict them more easily. Try keeping a journal; after each trigger experience, wait until you’re in a healthier state of mind, and then write down what triggered you, how you responded to any techniques that helped, and ways to avoid it in the future.

If you’re the loved one of someone with PTSD, keep a similar journal. This can help you be aware of what sets them off and how to circumvent these experiences. Be patient when an outburst does happen. Your loved one will have little to no control over their reaction, so the most you can do is be there to listen and offer support and love.

Make home your solace and practice meditation.

If you’re the recipient of a purple heart and come home with severe physical or mental disabilities, your home will need modifications. Not only will this make getting around easier, it can help reduce trigger episodes; if you can reduce the frustrations of your daily life, you may avoid outbursts. There are programs to help you out, some of which even build houses specifically tailored to a single veteran’s needs.

If possible, set aside a specific room dedicated to relaxation and meditation. Arrange it with a comfortable chair and relaxing décor. Eliminate as many electronic distractions as possible. If you’re unable to dedicate an entire room, choose a space as far away from common areas as possible and set up there. When you go in to practice your meditations, let your household know so you won’t be disturbed.

Connect with other veterans.

As Bradley University points out, your local Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, offers excellent resources for therapy and other treatment. Group therapy with other veterans is a great place to start. The fact is unless they’ve been through war themselves, your loved ones just can’t understand some of the issues you’re dealing with. Speaking and bonding with other vets can be a healing experience.

The VA also offers family therapy. This can strengthen your relationships with loved ones by having a mediator guide the conversation. You don’t have to share right away, nor do you have to discuss anything you’re not ready to talk about. Simply go, listen, and speak when you know the time is right. And don’t worry if you’re scared — chances are that everyone in the room is.
It’s unfair that the brave soldiers who defend our country come home with major trauma, be it physical, mental, or both. Still, there’s hope. Keep these tips from Asknod in mind when coping with your PTSD and remember that healing takes time. Your loved ones are here to help, so let them be a part of the process.

Posted in Food for thought, Guest authors, MST, PTSD, Public Service Announcements, suicide | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment