We have not gone that route, and it's something that I have fought against. I know that our U.S. colleagues had that at some point. I was fortunate to treat a Vietnam vet years ago. I think the fog of war happens. In fact, in one of my slides that I use in my lectures, I show somebody seeing a child die in their arms, but then we see everybody else going on with their business. That would be the person for whom, five years later, somebody would say, “I was there and I didn't see that happen.”
We haven't gone that route. I think we certainly could easily verify somebody being in a mission. We could verify somebody being there. There is a consistency in their presentation. Can we sit and always identify whether there was a jeep accident on that date during the war? We can't. As far as I know, we haven't done that, and Veterans Affairs is diagnosis-based, not incident-based.
For Sacrifice Medals and certain types of things, we do look for more facts regarding the event itself, as to whether it was hostile enemy action. That's more of a bureaucratic awarding of medals, but it's not a care issue.
