This is terrible. Nowhere is it more terrible than in Florida, where there is great need and little service. Florida, with 1.7 million veterans, has only one, outside St. Petersburg at Bay Pines. U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Orlando, visited the St. Petersburg VA office in September and found a backlog of 26,250 claims. Routinely, veterans are made to wait 16 months and longer for decisions on their cases.
Vets often find that it takes two years just to begin a dialogue with the office.
They are surprised to learn that all of their military records were destroyed in an infamous 1973 fire at the personnel records center in St. Louis and that new files have to be reconstructed from scratch, with veterans obliged to do most of the legwork. Delays pile on delays and are particularly frustrating for World War II vets in their 70s. About 1,000 of them die each day across the country. Mr. Bloss served with the Army's 6th Infantry Division in New Guinea and the Philippines. His outfit was shelled for 206 consecutive days.