It
has haunted her ever since.
Burch,
who was 23 when her tour ended, worked as an operations manager for an Air
Force combat engineer unit. She aspired to be a physician. She spent her
downtime as a volunteer medic at a Kandahar trauma hospital.
"I
saw the worst of war and the best of humanity," she says.
She
came home with the service's prestigious Commendation Medal, awarded for acts
of valor or meritorious service. She also brought home a case of post-traumatic
stress, frequent migraine headaches, and bronchitis and other breathing
problems. But help has been slow in coming—both for Burch and for other
veterans, she says.
"They
need peer community support and easier access to health care and
benefits," says the 34-year-old retired Air Force staff sergeant.
"Everything moves at this bureaucratic pace."
While
many Americans may have seen the end of the forever wars as the cap on two
decades' worth of war spending, the job of Veterans Affairs has only just
begun—and will continue for decades. But some fear the antagonistic
relationship between VA and veterans will continue as advocates are forced to
fight bureaucracy to gain benefits, even as VA officials say they're ready to
move forward.
"As
we look to the future, we're not trying to build a VA that goes back to the old
normal," VA Secretary Denis McDonough recently said at the National Press
Club. "Instead, we're going to continue to do better for vets, we're going
to continue to be better for vets."
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