"Listening" for a promise of benefits

A long time ago I joined the US Army.

I graduated from college--Illinois State University, BA German--and was primed to go teach German in some Illinois high school.  The jobs were scarce back then, even though my friend N landed a great job that she hung with until retirement just a couple years ago.  I think I could have found a job if I had waited until August just before school started, but I'm not a good wait-er, and I really wanted to do something, go somewhere, "see the world."

So I went to visit my friendly Army recruiter.  And soon I was raising my right hand to take the "support and defend" Oath of Enlistment.  They were aware that I had German as a language, so what did my orders say when I finished basic training? They were sending me to the language school in Monterey, CA to learn Korean!  Perfectly logical.  NOT!  So I did some talking and soon was reassigned to German.  I'd be out in 8 weeks.  But. on second thought, someone else in charge of my unit decided I should be switched to Russian.  Logical?  Again, probably not, but that's what happened.  Two Russian courses and a couple "crypto" courses later, I finally got to my duty station in Augsburg, Germany, sitting with headphones on, and listening to and translating Russian radio traffic from East Germany.

Our Russian balalaika orchestra & choir at Defense Language Institute - Army extracurriculars.  I'm second from the right playing the domra.  So fun!

And now, like other people I know who did the same job in the Army, I have severe hearing loss and constant ringing in both ears, the right worse than the left.  And those "other people I know" suggested I check on my Veterans benefits to see if I can get some compensation based on the job I had.  So today we drove over to Washburn, our county seat, so I could meet with the Veteran's Services rep there.  I gave him my DD214--discharge papers, my audiology tests, and I'm officially "in the system" now.  And he gave me no promises about timelines.  Not that I expected anything else.

I'm already so grateful for the GI Bill benefits I earned from serving in the Army.  The money I received from the GI Bill paid for almost all of the classes I needed for my Masters degree in Information Media.  Sweet deal, and travels all over Europe, too!  Now if I could only hear better...and not all on my dime...

We'll see!
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Breaking news - Leann just saw our first robin this year!  And enough snow has melted that robins might even find something to eat!