Veterans Honor Fallen Comrades, Worry Over Future : Commemoration: At holiday events honoring those killed in battle, some vets voice concern about dwindling federal aid for health care and a growing homeless population among their ranks.

Veterans Day was marked in Los Angeles with pomp and bitterness Wednesday.

While U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) dedicated a plaque at Inglewood Park Cemetery honoring the 2,266 service members still missing in Southeast Asia and while veterans in Sylmar honored missing comrades with a gunfire salute, retired soldiers at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Westwood complained that they feel the U.S. government has let them down.

As some veterans there saluted fallen comrades to the trumpeted strains of “Taps” and the roar of a warplane flyover, others complained that federal aid is dwindling and that care for homeless and psychologically injured veterans is inadequate.

A report issued last year by the National Coalition for the Homeless estimated that roughly a third of all homeless single men nationwide are veterans, and the California Homeless Coalition estimates that 20,000 homeless veterans are walking the streets of Los Angeles.

“A lot of them are so angry, they just don’t have any faith anymore in the government, in the American system,” said John Hurd, a veteran of U.S. Army campaigns in Germany, Korea and Vietnam.

Hurd said he is trying to organize a homeless veterans’ support group called United Veterans Legionnaire Corps. Many homeless veterans are bitter over efforts in places such as Studio City and Santa Monica designed to get them off the streets, he said.

“They feel that if adequate homes were provided and decent living and medication, they feel the homeless among the vets could decrease,” Hurd said.

Other veterans complained that because of reductions in VA funding, elderly veterans may have trouble getting care in their later years.

“There’s too many of us that are getting old, and we may need some hospitalization,” said Cal Eppenbach, a 72-year-old retired mechanic from Mar Vista who saw action with the 5th Army Division in Italy from 1943 to 1945.

Eppenbach said many veterans hope federal aid for them will increase after the new Congress and President-elect Bill Clinton take office in January.

“Hopefully, things will change for the better,” he said.

Other veterans said they also hope that the changing of the guard will bring more financial aid to the Veterans Administration.

“Who else is going to take care of us?” said Jose Garza, 71, an Army tank commander in Europe during World War II. “We served our country. They should help us.”

One Korean War veteran said that some veterans earn too much to qualify for some VA benefits, yet still cannot afford medical care.

“I’ve gotta be dead or poor to get service,” said Arthur E. Stuart, 63, a Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War. “When we went in the service, they didn’t tell us about our rights” to such benefits.

The Veterans Administration Medical Center, the largest VA hospital in the nation, is trying to answer such needs with ever-dwindling resources, said Bob Herron, the hospital’s assistant director.

The facility, which has 1,100 patients, has enough staff to accommodate 400 more but not enough staff, he said.

It also has programs to wean addicted veterans from alcohol and drugs and help them find jobs and housing, but it could help more people if more money were available, Herron said.

“I mean, it’s sad when I walk down the streets in Santa Monica and see some of these guys that so desperately need help and, for whatever reasons, are unable or unwilling to take it,” he said. “We could certainly stand more funding for more programs.”

As good as the VA’s psychiatric programs are, he said, they are still unable to treat all the veterans left psychologically scarred by war.

“Some of these psychiatric disabilities are very hard to treat,” Herron said. “It’s very hard for some individuals to overcome their problems, and it’s very hard for the VA or other medical centers to help them overcome their problems . . . I don’t think anyone has a real answer to how to do it.”

One Vietnam veteran who counts himself “insane because of the war” said Wednesday that those who don’t seek help won’t get it.

“You came home, but you never, ever got home,” said John, a homeless veteran who said he lived for a while in a brush-shrouded camp bordering the VA grounds in Westwood before moving a few blocks away.

John, who would not give his last name, said that after ignoring his psychological problems for 20 years, he finally sought VA help last year when he heard a public statement by Desert Storm commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf that shook him out of his distrust of the government.

“He said that this military will not be like the Vietnam military,” John said.

But he still rages at the government that he said plucked him from a Mississippi junior college and plunked him down in the Vietnamese jungle.

“I’m asking myself, after all these years, what happened?” he said.