Veterans ‘need more help’

Press, 23 October 1989, Page 1

Veterans ‘need more help’

By

TOM METCALFE

New Zealand is not doing enough for its Vietnam War veterans, says a visiting United States writer who served as a doctor with the New Zealand contingent in the war. Mr Michael Quigley, of Dallas, Texas, was in Christchurch at the week-end to attend a reunion of the contingent.

Now a travel writer whose columns are syndicated to more than 300 newspapers in the United States, Dr Quigley served for 16 years in the United States Air Force, including duty in Vietnam, where he lost his left leg and his right foot.

For a short time he was a medical consultant to the New Zealand 161 Artillery Battery in Vietnam.

Dr Quigley said yesterday that Vietnam veterans here received less recognition for their services than their fellow veterans in the United States.

Veterans disabled in combat were the worst affected.

At the week-end reunion he met a former New Zealand soldier he first met in Vietnam about 20 years ago. The man had been severely disabled in the war, but now received a pension of only $l5l. He was aged about 50, but looked 65. Luckily, the man had work that meant he could live, despite the paucity of his pension, Dr Quigley said. ' Pensions for war veterans in the United States were three to four times what they were here, he said. That was especially sad because New Zealand troops were some of the finest who served in Vietnam. "Any nation that doesn’t take good care of its veterans doesn’t deserve its military,” he said.

Many veterans could get more from the dole Jhan from their pensions.

From previous visits to New Zealand and from talks with veterans attending the reunion,

he estimated that 10 per cent of the 3600 New Zealanders who served in Vietnam now had an inadequate standard of living. Many veterans had to face family problems when they returned from the war, including marriages breaking up. Many of the veterans at the reunion had had their lives changed by the war, he said. One thing the New Zealand Government could do for its veterans was to introduce a scheme where they could buy goods at reduced rates from military bases. It was common in the United States for long-service veterans to be allowed to shop at bases where they could buy groceries, clothing and other goods. Dr Quigley was a specialist in preventive health and infectious diseases. While in Cambodia in 1972, in advance of an attack on North Vietnamese troops there, he was shot by machine-gun fire.