POWs missing benefits, vet says
By Adam Jones - The Tuscaloosa News
Retired Master Sgt. Wayne Watts, who served in World War II and was a prisoner of war, gets full disability payments from the federal government. Watts and other former POWs nationwide are trying to spread the word on how to get benefits from the Department of Veteran Affairs.
TUSCALOOSA -- Wayne Watts' feet still have scars and occasional pain from when they froze during the winter of 1945. The German soldiers keeping him imprisoned didn't heat the barracks. Because of malnutrition and poor treatment he received as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany nearly 60 years ago, Watts, 81, gets full disability payments from the federal government.
Watts and other former POWs nationwide are trying to spread the word on how to get benefits from the Department of Veteran Affairs. According to the department, about 21,000 ex-POWs are on VA rolls, but an estimated 14,000 are not getting the benefits for which they are eligible.
"In the early years, it was hard to get any disability, regardless of what was wrong," Watts said. "(POWs) have gone all these years without getting recognition they deserved, and with the difficulty with the VA, some of them gave up and quit trying."
In the years after the war, VA staff explained away medical problems with the possibility that they came from civilian life, the Bibb County native said.
In a speech in March, VA Secretary Anthony Principi announced the campaign to notify ex-POWs that 20 years of legislation means its easier to get the extra benefits not available to other veterans. About 1,900 ex-POWs from all wars last century are known to be in Alabama, according to the state VA. Nationally, nine out of 10 former POWs are veterans of WWII.
They served before Social Security numbers doubled as military identification, which makes finding them difficult. The government now classifies many ex-POW ailments as presumptive medical conditions. If an ex-POW has one or more of seven conditions that is 10 percent disabling, VA presumes it resulted from captivity.
For those imprisoned more than 30 days, 10 more conditions are considered. Many of the conditions have been added in the past few years, and in December 2003, the benefits were extended to those held as prisoner less than 30 days.
POWs are given the highest priority of all veterans, said Doug Taylor, director of customer relations at the VA Medical Center in Tuscaloosa.
"They made a lot of sacrifices that others didn't make, short of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice," he said.
Principi asked the American Ex-Prisoners of War, the national organization for POWs, to help in the effort. Watts is the organization's representative for Alabama and has worked with state chapters to spread the word on benefits.
"We're trying to get them enrolled so we can know who they are and where they are," said James Henderson, a 79-year-old World War II POW and a member of the West Alabama chapter of AXPOW. "It'd be good to have a record of them at least."
Henderson of Tuscaloosa was captured when Germans shot down a B-24 Bomber he was flying in over Vienna, Austria, in 1945. Germans took the crew and marched them and others almost three weeks to a prison camp near Munich, Germany.
After three months of captivity, U.S. tanks rolled through and liberated the captives, he said.
Watts, who wrote a book for family and friends recounting his service, was interned for three and half months at several camps in Germany.
His Army battalion surrendered after being outmanned and surrounded, he said.
Taylor said ex-POWs are extremely patriotic and usually willing to volunteer to help veterans and other ex-POWs.
Watts said he's come across four or five former POWs that weren't registered with the VA, and Henderson thinks there might be more in rural areas away from the larger VA hospitals.
Since World War I, more than 142,000 POWs, including 85 women, have returned home. About one-third, or 36,500, of America's former POWs since WWI still are living.
With the majority of POWs older than 70 and many in their 80s, finding them now is important, Principi said in March.
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