We’ve no use talking like this. You won’t know what I mean. Only, it’s been a long while since we enlisted out of this classroom. So long, I thought maybe the whole world had learned by this time. Only now they’re sending babies, and they won’t last a week! I shouldn’t have come on leave. Up at the front you’re alive or you’re dead and that’s all. You can’t fool anybody about that very long. And up there we know we’re lost and done for whether we’re dead or alive. Three years we’ve had of it, four years! And every day a year, and every night a century! And our bodies are earth, and our thoughts are clay, and we sleep and eat with death! And we’re done for because you *can’t* live that way and keep anything inside you! — All Quiet on the Western Front

The things we ask our young men and women to go through are beyond most of our imaginations.  No matter how we think it is, it can be worse.  Promises of a quick, easy, and short war are rarely true, and as we can see from recent events, planning for the war means you have to plan for what to do with those who are wounded.  If we are going to provide free homes, free healthcare, free food, free telephones, and free just-ab0ut-everything-else to people whose biggest achievement is learning to breathe through their nose without drowning, then we need to find a way to provide for those who suffer on our behalf.

Benefits to combat veterans are not welfare.  They are bought and paid for with their youth, blood, minds, and souls.