The Price of Service

Description

A raw account of one courageous veteran's battle against the Department of Veterans Affairs In November 1996, Virginia Kehoe was involved in a major workplace injury during a sea-going exercise on board HMAS Sydney that changed the course of her 15-year Navy career and her life, forever. This is an explosive expose of one courageous veteran's 12-year battle for legal justice against the Australian Government and the Department of Veteran Affairs. Her raw account is one of unbelievable pain, suffering and torment, but equally, one of survival, determination and persistence. Throughout her battle, 17 separate compensation claims were advanced and won, and in the case of several, beneficial precedents were established, which served to improve compensatory rights of veterans who would follow. In light of the growing awareness of the despicable treatment of so many of our injured and traumatised veterans, and increasingly insistent calls for a Royal Commission into veterans suicides and also to delve deeply into the Department of Veterans' Affairs systemic issues and failings identified in the Government's Productivity Commission Inquiry Report, this is a rare and personal insight into the unsympathetic, often denial-based approach, and unrelenting adversarial mindset of public servants and apathetic politicians. Virginia's bittersweet war of attrition to expose the truth involved countless surgical interventions, almost insurmountable compensation claims and the tragic suicides of five of her comrades. An incredibly inspiring memoir, it is written in honour of Australian service veterans and their families. But most importantly, it is written to honour veterans who have died by suicide or who have also sustained service-related injuries in the service of their country - men and women who are being invalidated, unrecognised and forgotten.