Former Paratrooper Fighting For Disability Benefits
 "Lawyers say that there is a systemic problem and more and more injured soldiers are being shuffled off the Defense Department books to the VA."
By Kevin Maurer
The Associated Press, May 14, 2005

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- On good days, Cpl. Richard Twohig doesn't throw up or have to spend 12 to 14 hours hiding in bed with the shades drawn. The bad days come about once a week. The headaches are so bad, his knees buckle from the pain. Sometimes, his wife, Sang, has to help him into bed.

Twohig is a former Ranger and paratrooper who used to hunt, fish and play sports. He would dive under the hood of his car and make repairs or chase his 2-year-old son, Damon, or 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, around the yard.

Now, even on good days, too much noise or light brings on the headaches. Just the clanking of the weights at a fitness center on Fort Bragg makes him nauseated. His short-term memory constantly fails him, forcing him to have simple questions repeated. He has a constant ringing in his ears.

"I don't feel like a man anymore. I can't do normal stuff," Twohig said.

He is unable to work and, like many injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was counting on the Army to provide him and his family with medical benefits. But lawyers representing some of those soldiers said the Army is making it difficult.

The Army determined that Twohig was less than 30 percent disabled. In order to maintain his Defense Department benefits, he had to meet the 30 percent level.

The difference is significant: If he loses the benefits, he gets a taxable $12,000 severance payment from the Army and health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. His family has no health care coverage. If he is 30 percent disabled, though, he gets a monthly military retirement check and he and his family are eligible for health care at military hospitals.

Twohig is appealing the ruling on his disability. Civilian lawyers who handle such appeals say the odds are against him.

Those lawyers say that there is a systemic problem and more and more injured soldiers are being shuffled off the Defense Department books to the VA. The lawyers - including Mark Waple of Fayetteville, who is representing Twohig - say they are reluctant to take cases to the Army Physical Evaluation Board because they rarely win.

"I think the Army Physical Evaluation Board is broken," Waple said. "The DoD would rather buy another cruise missile than medically retire someone. Systemically, what we've seen in the last seven years, they just seem to give a zero, 10, 20 percent disability so they are no longer on the DoD payroll. It is almost like a fix is in somewhere."

Army officials say that the system treats soldiers fairly and there is no emphasis on shifting the responsibility for them to the VA.

Over the past 10 years, Waple has worked on 21 soldier disability cases. He won four. David Sheldon, a Washington lawyer, said the Army Physical Evaluation Board is the toughest one among all the service branches from which to get a fair hearing. "They have a boots-on-the-ground mentality," he said. "You are a soldier. You have to buck up and go on with your life."

Waple said usually urges young soldiers without families to just accept the Army's ruling and apply for VA benefits.

The number of cases heard by the Army Physical Evaluation Board has increased steadily since 2001. The board heard more than 14,000s case last year - up about 5,000 from 2003. Officials said the increase is because of the war in Iraq and mobilization of thousands of reservists and National Guard soldiers.

Sheldon said he believes the Defense Department doesn't have the money to continue to pay soldiers who can't fight, so it has an incentive to transfer them to the VA.

But Col. Daniel Garvey, deputy commander of the Army Physical Disability Agency, said there has been no change in the system because of war casualties.

"There is no 'push' to move soldier's off the DoD's books," Garvey said. "All administrative procedural safeguards are still in effect."

Data on the percentage of soldiers who received 30 percent disability since 1995 were not available, said Lt. Col. Kevin V. Arata, spokesman for the U.S. Army Human Resources Command.

Since the start of the war, 475 cases out of the more than 24,000 from 2003 and 2004 are considered war-related because the soldiers were medically evacuated from Iraq or Afghanistan. The majority of those 475 soldiers were awarded 30 percent disability.

Arata said the 475 cases do not include hundreds of other soldiers with medical problems related to their service in the war who were not medically evacuated.

Twohig was injured in May 2003, a few weeks after major combat ended in Iraq. He was a team sergeant in the 1st Battalion of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment. He was part of a quick reaction force - a group of soldiers on call to respond to attacks - in Baghdad when the unit received a call to help an Iraqi police station that was taking fire.

He and the rest of his men climbed on top of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and raced to the scene. The armored personnel carrier took a sharp right turn at 45 mph. Twohig was thrown off and landed on his head.

His next memory is of medics helping him on board a helicopter headed to a hospital in Baghdad. After being treated in Iraq, he was transferred to Germany a few days and then to Fort Bragg's Womack Army Medical Center. He was diagnosed with post-concussive syndrome with intractable headaches and a mood disorder with depressive symptoms.

Sang said a different man came back from Iraq.

"He wasn't there mentally, physically and emotionally," she said.

She is a certified nursing assistant, but she can't work more than three hours a day.

"It's like I don't want to leave him alone," she said.

Sang makes sure he takes his medication - four pills a day - which fights the pain and alleviates the nausea. Twohig is moody and has bouts of depression.

The 82nd Airborne Division recommended that Twohig, who is 25, be medically retired. An informal review of his records by the disability agency awarded him 20 percent disability. He requested a formal hearing before a three-man panel at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. On March 4, after more than two hours of testimony from Twohig and his mother, two board members - board President Col. James Babbitt and civilian board member Larry Grubb - said that Twohig did not present any objective information to prove that the headaches were a result of the accident, according to the transcript of the hearing.

The board ruled that his disability was 10 percent.

Twohig's mother, Marine Maj. Belinda Twohig, said what happened to him is an injustice. "It is sad to see that soldiers have to fight an uphill battle against the disability board," she said.

She is a Naval ROTC instructor at Florida A&M and sat on a Naval disability board.

"I was appalled. Being a Marine and having been in the military for 26 years, when young men and women are injured, especially in combat, they should be taken care of," she said.

Lt. Col. Nick Gnemi, the third member of Twohig's board, believes that he is entitled to 30 percent disability. He said that there is objective evidence that Twohig has headaches because of the accident, according to his minority opinion.

It is rare that there is a minority opinion in these cases, Waple said.

"The process is not arbitrary or capricious, but is run by a strict set of written rules and procedures for the review, documentation and rating of soldier's impairments," Garvey said.

Twohig said the Army told him when he joined that they would take care of him, and taking care of his family is part of that.

"I didn't expect them to mistreat me or anybody, even if I didn't go to Iraq," he said. "I think they are shafting everybody."