As the nation commemorates Veterans Day, hundreds of thousands of those who served will mark the occasion by marching on canes, walkers or with replacement devices meant to supplement lost or weakened limbs. That’s true in Charleston where the Ralph H. Johnson VA hospital fills more than 60,000 prosthetic prescriptions a year.
While Charleston doesn’t specialize in the sort of high-tech replacement limbs that most recently have been in demand for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, the VA does see its share of veterans coming in with needs that have gone unfilled or are now just beginning to materialize as aging catches up.
Nesbitt’s story is similar to many who served in Vietnam. He joined the Army out of high school in 1966 after his life had become “shooting pool and goofing off,” he admits. After boot camp, he became a forward observer for the artillery and was shipped off to Vietnam. He saw a lot of action in the Iron Triangle area about 25 miles north of Saigon.
When he left Vietnam a year later, he brought home a number of wartime ailments with him, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, exposure to Agent Orange and bouts of internal bleeding he thinks grew out of the tension of combat.
That bleeding would eventually cost him his foot.