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BATTLE FOR BENEFITS -- Badly wounded Iraq war veteran

initially received only 10 percent disability. "I couldn't

believe that they could even bring that to me."

Sgt. Rob Costley was given a Purple Heart after he was wounded by a roadside explosion while on duty in Iraq in 2005. Draped across the sofa of his home is a blanket given to him by the American Red Cross while he was treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. (photo: JASON WHONG / Star-Gazette)

Story here... http://www.stargazettenews.com/apps/p
bcs.dll/article?AID=/20071111/NEWS01/711110324

Story below:

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-------------------------

Battle for benefits

Badly wounded Iraq war veteran from area initially received only 10 percent disability.

By Roger Neumann
rneumann@stargazette.com
Star-Gazette

Back home, many of Rob Costley's classmates from Southside High School were partying at the 10th reunion of the Class of 1995. On an isolated stretch of highway in Iraq, Costley lay seriously wounded, the victim of a roadside bomb.

It was Aug. 14, 2005.

"That was the day I got blown up," he says now.

His wounds landed him at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., two days later. He was treated there for two years, and when he was getting ready to go home this past August, the Army discharged him and gave him his disability rating: 10 percent.

That meant he was entitled to the lowest level of disability benefits. Still suffering from physical and psychological wounds, with a wife and three children at home, not knowing if he could ever work again, Costley felt insulted.

"I couldn't believe that they could even bring that to me," said the veteran of two tours in Iraq. "It was a slap in the face, basically. I went through all that: two deployments, seeing my friends killed, then I finally get hit ..."

A native of Elmira who now lives elsewhere in Chemung County (he asked that, for personal reasons, his residence not be published), Costley finally has a 100 percent disability rating, thanks in large part to the New York State Division of Veterans Affairs.

"You gotta be kidding me," Michael Lehmann, a local veterans counselor with that state office, said of the Army's handling of the matter, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' early dealings with the situation.

"They gave him a horrendous decision," he said of the Army. "It was traumatic for him when he got that decision."

Costley's experience is "a classic case" of the mishandling of claims for disability benefits for veterans of combat, Lehmann said. It's a problem that received widespread criticism during the Vietnam War, when returning wounded soldiers found they were not through fighting yet; now they had to take on the maze of medical benefits red tape.

"They're trying their best, they really are," Lehmann said of the VA. "Vietnam vets were totally ignored. The VA now is going in the opposite direction.

"They're providing care up in Bath, in the clinics in Elmira and Sayre. They're doing what they can to get these men and women in for treatment."

Vets' inquiries pile into Kuhl's office

U.S. Rep. John R. Kuhl Jr., R-Hammondsport, said the VA should do more. In a letter in March to James Nicholson, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Kuhl said his office had prepared more than 140 inquiries to the VA in the past three years on behalf of constituents from the 29th Congressional District. With about 120 inquiries since then, the number now tops 260, his staff reported.

Kuhl told Nicholson he is "deeply troubled by the fact a veteran could lose his home, automobile and life savings while waiting for the VA to process his claim."

Lehmann is the service officer at the American Legion's Bentley-Trumble Post 442 in Horseheads. In the post's November-December newsletter, he wrote that medical benefits are "one of the more complicated VA benefits to try and figure out."

It used to be easy. All a veteran had to do was "show up 'at the door'" with a copy of his separation papers to receive care at a VA medical facility, Lehmann wrote. But now, he said, the process can be difficult to navigate, and some veterans find they've been frozen out if their income is over a certain level and their condition is not service-connected.

"This enrollment system has created much confusion among many vets who always assumed that the VA would be there to provide medical care," Lehmann wrote.

He urged Chemung County veterans with questions or concerns about benefits to call him at (607) 733-2178.

The turning point: roadside blast in Iraq

Costley, now 30, joined the National Guard after high school and then, in 2003, joined the regular Army. He went to Iraq for a year that May, then was sent back in January 2005.

A truck driver with a light infantry division, Costley said he never actually hauled anything on either tour. Instead, on his second tour his unit mostly provided security for convoys in well-armed Humvees and five-ton trucks. They escorted mostly what they called TCNs -- third-country nationals, not Iraqis or Americans.

That day in August 2005, Costley, a sergeant, was the commander of the Humvee in which he and three others were riding on a highway "out in the middle of nowhere" west of Ramadi in central Iraq. He and the driver, a woman, had served together since before their first assignment in Iraq.

The vehicle was having transmission problems. When they pulled over to take on fuel from the five-gallon cans they carried, Costley got out and went around to the driver's side to check on the problem as the woman stepped down.

Directly across the highway, an IED, or improvised explosive device, was detonated. Costley recalls seeing a flash of light from the corner of his eye, and then a feeling "like being blown into a brick wall at a 100 miles an hour."

He lay there, paralyzed at first, partially on top of the driver's lifeless body, his face looking into hers and unable to turn away. It's the last thing he remembers until he woke up at Walter Reed.

Physical, psychological wounds were severe

He was told that he lay in the road for two hours, in and out of consciousness, before a medevac helicopter arrived. He was told that he was taken to one field hospital and then another, before being sent to Washington because of the seriousness of his wounds. He was told that the driver had died.

Costley gets quiet talking about her.

"He's got terrible survivor's guilt," said his wife, Shilo.

The blast shot a chunk of shrapnel through Costley -- into his right shoulder and out the left side of his neck. It fractured two vertebrae.

He bled from a gash in his head and was told later that he had a mild traumatic brain injury. Doctors said he had a lesion on his spinal cord that wouldn't heal because the spinal cord doesn't regenerate.

After about two weeks at Walter Reed, Costley became an outpatient. He went home for 30 days with Shilo, who was a nurse's aide, and their three children. Then he returned to Washington and stayed at Fisher House, a home for the families of seriously ill or injured patients.

"Basically, as soon as you can get up to walk, they discharge you so they can put somebody else in the bed," Costley said. "I still had a hole in my shoulder big enough that my wife could put her fist in there."

Even after he went to Fisher House, Costley had little strength in his arms and legs. He had no feeling in his hands. He couldn't wash or dress himself.

Army's initial disability rating only 10 percent

After the Army delivered its disability rating of 10 percent, he appealed. The Army upped the rating to 30 percent.

By then Costley had learned that he'd get a higher rating from the VA after he got out of the Army, so he accepted the Army's ruling.

The VA in Washington rated him at 50 percent.

"There were a lot of records and treatment reports they didn't even have," said Lehmann, who knew they could do better.

When Costley came home in August, Lehmann had his records transferred to the regional state Veterans Affairs office in Buffalo. There he received a 100 percent rating.

Lehmann said a 50 percent rating would have given Costley $712 a month to live on; 100 percent is worth $2,991. Any rating over 50 percent also brings benefits for dependents, and Costley said he has five children, including two by a previous marriage.

He gets free medical care now at any VA facility, and his dependents qualify for free medical insurance and educational benefits.

Costley said he has regained most of the feeling in his hands, and much of the strength in his arms and legs. But he still has a lot of pain in his neck and shoulder. He can't stand or sit for long periods, and can't do any lifting because he has limited range of motion in his left shoulder.

He has some difficulties with short-term memory and has been diagnosed with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.

Wife: 'Not the guy I gave them'

Shilo said her husband won't talk much about his war experiences. But she has noticed that loud noises bother him, especially the hunters' shots they often hear in the rural area where they live. She said he won't sleep in their bedroom anymore, preferring the couch in the living room where he's positioned between the front and back doors.

And he's changed in other ways.

"Absolutely, this is not the guy that left," she said. "This guy here wouldn't have gotten the first date with me. This is not my Rob. This is not the guy I gave them.

"He was the most laid-back, sweet, most fabulous guy I ever met in my entire life. Every friend of mine told me how lucky I was. Now he attempts to start confrontations with anyone and everyone." However, Costley said he's satisfied with the way things have worked out, although he's disappointed that his country doesn't respond quicker to the needs of those who put their lives on the line in combat.

"I'm happy with the decision (on the disability rating)," he said. "I'm just not happy with what I had to go through to get it. And all the other guys that have had to go through what I did. You have to figure out all this for yourself and fight for everything.

"You'd think the Army would have learned from Vietnam," he said. "It's kind of like they forgot."

-------------------------

Larry Scott  --

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