An
Unrecognized and Uncompensated Disabled Veteran?
No one has been able to
calculate the number of wounded, certainly amounting to several
millions, whose lives were permanently scarred as a result of the war.
Physical scars, from the severest disability to disfiguring wounds, and
mental scars, accompanied these millions for the rest of their lives.
Many died as a direct result of them. Others lived in pain, discomfort,
fear or remorse...The greatest unfinished business of the Second World
War is human pain.
Martin
Gilbert, The Second World War: A complete
history, 1989, revised 1991.
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As I've worked on my Dad's story, I realized that he
was a disabled veteran, unrecognized and uncompensated.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER SYMPTOMS
Felix was first assigned to a Signal unit in the Army Service Forces
which provided support and supplies to the Army Ground and Air Forces.
He served in southern England in preparation for D-Day and in Cherbourg
and Paris after D-Day.
Those areas of England and France suffered German air attacks. Felix
made vague references to experiencing air attacks. I am compairng the
reports of German air attacks, including rocket attacks, with the dates
and places of Felix's service
His experiences as a Signalman in a front-line
combat division in the last months of the war and in the liberation of
Dachau seemed to have caused him to suffer post traumatic stress
disorder symptoms.
TUBERCULOSIS
In the 1950s he had his left lower lobe removed
because of an (then) untreatable tubercular tumor.
He was drafted in 1941. Presumably, they
screened him for tuberculosis. He served until 1945. Then in the 1950s
he was found with an untreatable tubercular tumor.
Although he worked full time
until his retirement, he never had the same stamina and strength and
always seemed to struggle to breathe.He
did make inquiries about disability for the tuberculosis but was
discouraged from pursuing it.
POST FROSTBITE RAYNAUD"S SYNDROME
SYMPTOMS
My mother reports that the skin on his feet were fragile and tender for
several years after the war.
For the rest of his life, he suffered from a
post frost bite syndrome with symptoms that resemble
Raynaud's
Syndrome. The circulation shut down in
his hands and feet whenever the weather turned slightly cold but
painless. I remember in the winter his hands up to his wrists were
cold, cyanotic with poor skin turgor.