• LIFE

America’s Appalling Veterans Affairs Scandal: The 1970 Edition

3 minute read

The ongoing Veterans Affairs scandal that cost Secretary Eric Shinseki his job has cast a grim light on the VA’s appalling—and, in some cases, perhaps lethal—incompetencies. It comes as no surprise to anyone with a long memory, however, that this is hardly the first time the VA has failed to uphold the nation’s “sacred trust,” recently cited by President Obama, “to all who’ve served.”

In May 1970, LIFE magazine published a devastating cover story on the frightful conditions faced by troops returning from Vietnam, and those wounded in earlier wars, who were “fated to pass into the bleak backwaters of our Veterans Administration hospitals.” (The Veterans Administration was transformed into the Cabinet-level Department of Veterans Affairs in 1988.)

“A man hit in Vietnam,” LIFE noted, “has twice as good a chance of surviving as he did in Korea and World War II, as support hospitals perform miraculous repairs on injuries that tend to be more devastating than ever before. But having been saved by the best field medicine in history,” one of every seven servicemen wounded in Vietnam entered the VA system—a landscape characterized by LIFE as a “medical slum.”

The VA hospital system . . . the biggest in the world . . . is disgracefully understaffed, with standards far below those of an average community hospital. Many wards remain closed for want of personnel and the rest are strained with overcrowding. . . . At Miami’s VA hospital, while sophisticated new equipment sits idle, patients may wait hours for needed blood transfusions. At the VA’s showplace hospital in Washington, D.C., a single registered nurse may minister to as many as 80 patients at a time. [Doctors in Los Angeles] describe conditions as “medieval” and “filthy.”

A five-month inquiry by a Senate subcommittee chaired by California’s Alan Cranston has documented gross inadequacies and laid the blame directly on a series of cutbacks in the VA medical budget. This sum presently amounts to roughly $1.6 billion a year, somewhat less than the cost of one month’s fighting in Vietnam.

It’s worth noting that the head of the VA at the time, a World War II veteran named Donald E. Johnson, eventually resigned under pressure from veterans’ groups and members of Congress—in 1974, long after the LIFE article appeared—but that some in Washington felt he was simply a convenient scapegoat served up to the public by the thoroughly embattled Nixon administration.

The pictures in the May 1970 LIFE article and in this gallery—powerfully illustrating the indignities faced by residents of the VA’s “medical slum”—were made by Co Rentmeester, a Dutch photojournalist (and Olympic rower, and eventual LIFE staffer) who in May 1968 was himself wounded while covering the war in Vietnam. It’s difficult, even all these years later, not to sense in Rentmeester’s photos some of the indignation he must have felt in the presence of these wounded warriors subjected to such squalor, such neglect, such astounding disrespect.


Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com



Quadriplegic Marke Dumpert, invalided out of the Marines as a lance corporal, waits helplessly to be dried in a veterans' hospital.
Caption from LIFE. "Quadriplegic Marke Dumpert, invalided out of the Marines as a lance corporal, waits helplessly to be dried in a veterans' hospital."Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
In an enema room of the Bronx VA Hospital in New York, disabled spinal injury patients wait up to four hours to be attended by a single aide, 1970.
Not published in LIFE. In an enema room of the Bronx VA Hospital in New York, disabled spinal injury patients wait up to four hours to be attended by a single aide, 1970.Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Scene from a VA hospital, The Bronx, 1970.
Not published in LIFE. Scene from a VA hospital, The Bronx, 1970.Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Marke Dumpert speaks bitterly about his treatment.
Caption from LIFE. "Marke Dumpert speaks bitterly about his treatment."Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Hospital aides strap [Dumpert] into a brace so he can stand. He is so helpless that he needs almost constant care, but the hospital cannot give it.
Caption from LIFE. "Hospital aides strap [Dumpert] into a brace so he can stand. He is so helpless that he needs almost constant care, but the hospital cannot give it."Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Injured Vietnam veteran Marke Dumpert, The Bronx, 1970.
Caption from LIFE. Injured Vietnam veteran Marke Dumpert, The Bronx, 1970.Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
In a partitionless ward of the Bronx VA Hospital a disarray of dirty linen is allowed to pile up around a quadriplegic's bed while the patient himself lies naked, unable to clothe himself after a shower.
Caption from LIFE. "In a partitionless ward of the Bronx VA Hospital a disarray of dirty linen is allowed to pile up around a quadriplegic's bed while the patient himself lies naked, unable to clothe himself after a shower."Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Bronx hospital is so full of rodents that a trap set on any given evening usually produces a mouse or rat by morning. Marine veteran Parcel Wheeler of Scranton, Pa., a paraplegic who saw combat at Ducphu, hasn't yet awakened to see the trapped mouse next to his bed.
Caption from LIFE. "The Bronx hospital is so full of rodents that a trap set on any given evening usually produces a mouse or rat by morning. Marine veteran Parcel Wheeler of Scranton, Pa., a paraplegic who saw combat at Ducphu, hasn't yet awakened to see the trapped mouse next to his bed."Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
In the paraplegic wards, a totally crippled patient must depend on a buddy who still has the use of his arms to get a sheet thrown over him.
Caption from LIFE. "In the paraplegic wards, a totally crippled patient must depend on a buddy who still has the use of his arms to get a sheet thrown over him."Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
At the Bronx VA Hospital veteran Frank Stoppiello, wounded in the Ashau Valley in Vietnam, gives a cigarette to quadriplegic Andrew Kmetz, an Army veteran, as they wait for treatment. Because of overcrowding, they must share a corner with trash cans.
Caption from LIFE. "At the Bronx VA Hospital veteran Frank Stoppiello, wounded in the Ashau Valley in Vietnam, gives a cigarette to quadriplegic Andrew Kmetz, an Army veteran, as they wait for treatment. Because of overcrowding, they must share a corner with trash cans."Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Wounded veterans in a rare light mood, 1970.
Not published in LIFE. Wounded veterans in a rare light mood at a VA hospital, 1970.Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.
LIFE magazine, May 22, 1970.LIFE Magazine

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