To the Editor:

At 61 years old, a widower and recent retiree, I decided to apply for veteran’s medical services. (Good doctors with no agenda, I hoped.)

What a surprise. Yes, they are taking care of the young veterans as they should, but we are still crap in their eyes.

I got out after four years, went to college, with all the hate from our society and young people and survived it all and got a degree. I then worked, got married, had a family and worked at one or more jobs my entire working life.

My wife died, I retired and decided to try the V.A. after several poor experiences with the mainstream medical profession and its perfect numbers, tests, referrals and ever present pad of scripts, extra tests, kickbacks and good old boy networks to give me the perfect life of doctors, drugstores and long waits for appointments and visits.

Because I “succeeded” in life and have a living pension, and a home, it doesn’t count. Yes, I make and am worth too much.

I also was awarded a zero percent disability in 1972 for a botched surgery, which does not show up in V.A. records on the computers. Those records are gone. So if you didn’t save the paperwork from 40-plus years ago, they eliminated. Nice, huh?

Also, all the choices we had when we “volunteered” for overseas duty and ended up in Libya and were there when Kadafi took over didn’t count in the V.A.’s world. (He must have been using rubber bullets.)

I was on the wrong side of the world, of course, by the government’s choice, not mine.

I was excited that maybe the few of us left could finally get our due with medical service in our declining years since so many kids are having their bodies, minds and lives destroyed in the current no-win wars. Maybe we could finally get something besides being ridiculed for the no-win war we served in.

Guess again, fellow vets. We are still crap according to the wonderfully ignorant regulations on veteran’s care.

So if you managed to escape the hate and fear we were greeted with on our return, and managed to lead a “normal” productive life, and had a decent income and home, you are not eligible.

I wish I had known when I was 18 and volunteered during the draft. I could have got out, spent 40 years selling and doing drugs in Haight-Ashbury so I could qualify to get V.A. benefits.

Call congressmen, senators, governors and whoever else does not have their “service” medical benefits controlled by income and how and where they served and say thanks again, jerks. I’m so happy I served so you could get deferments and special favors due to your politics and money, or maybe you might understand our plight.

Douglas L. Belt, U.S.A.F. 1968-72, Potsdam