The ongoing Veterans Affairs scandal that cost Secretary Eric Shinseki his job has cast a grim light on the VA’s appalling — and, in some cases, perhaps lethal — incompetencies. It comes as no surprise to anyone with a long memory, however, that this is hardly the first time the VA has failed to uphold the nation’s “sacred trust,” recently cited by President Obama, “to all who’ve served.”
In May 1970, LIFE magazine published a devastating cover story on the frightful conditions faced by troops returning from Vietnam, and those wounded in earlier wars, who were “fated to pass into the bleak backwaters of our Veterans Administration hospitals.”
Read more.
