WWII vet finally gets medical compensation

Vorice Stephen, 88, says he put his life on the line during World War II -- being shot at and finally being taken out of the war because a bomb exploded next to him -- because it was simply “the right thing to do.”
And now, 68 years later, the Veterans Administration has finally done the right thing by compensating him for the medical treatments he has had to pay for through all those years because of his war injuries.
Stephen was in the U.S. Army and drove trucks in the south Pacific, hauling all sorts of cargo, including gasoline and ordinance, to air bases, first in Saipan, in the Mariana Islands, in the south Pacific, after it was invaded in June 1944. Then he was in Okinawa, where the Japanese desperately fought, from April to June of 1945, for the last “stepping stone” to reach Japan.
Those two battles earned Stephen two battle stars. He also was awarded the Good Conduct Medal, the American Theater Ribbon, the Asiatic Pacific Theater Ribbon and the World War II Victory Ribbon.
He remembers he was on Okinawa when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, and he remembers driving a truck and being shot at.
The truck he drove had a machine gun mounted over the right side seat, but Stephen drove the truck alone. When he knew that bullets were hitting the back of the truck he was driving, he kept on going.
While his luck held out, the luck of “a bunch of my friends” didn’t, and they died. “I didn’t complain, but I prayed the whole time I was there,” he said during an interview on November 13.
But his luck ran out when a bomb exploded near him when he was in Okinawa. He doesn’t remember much about the incident. He remembers he wanted to stay with his fellow soldiers in the 412nd Quartermaster Truck Company.
But it soon became apparent his injuries, mainly to his left ear, would require medical attention.
“I had a good company commander,” who insisted Stephen get medical treatment. He was flown to an Army hospital in Guam. He remembers the flight was so uncomfortable, he insisted on going by sea, on an aircraft carrier, when he was transferred to a Navy fleet hospital in San Francisco.
He then went to San Antonio, Texas, to undergo surgery. At some point along the way, he remembers waking up and a soldier telling him he had been close to dying.
He was sent to a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where veterans were being treated, for yet more surgery, and then was honorably discharged there as a corporal, on April 1, 1946.
Stephen returned to Ville Platte and was treated for the lingering effects of his war injuries. When he sought compensation for those treatments and for medications, he became mired in a bureaucratic maze that he believes was created when his discharge papers failed to indicate he had a combat-related injury.
For years, he was resigned to not being compensated for medical treatment. “It was a bad feeling. I thought I deserved more for what I did for my country,” he said.
But earlier this month, with the help of a friend who wants to remain anonymous, the Veterans Administration bureaucracy finally decided they had dropped the ball.
He received a large lump-sum payment that is believed to cover the costs of medical treatment he has received, and he was notified he will begin to receive disability payments December 1.
Stephen isn’t sure of what finally opened the doors that had been kept closed all these years by people he says “didn’t have an understanding,” of what they were missing.
But, coincidentally or not, he did get a birthday card from the White House recently that stated, in part, “your story is an important part of the American narrative.”