Veteran seeks change to 'peacetime' label for 1980s combat service

It seems an obvious point: Veterans of any U.S. military branch who served in combat should be entitled to the same benefits. That, however, is not the case, according to Timothy Cookson of Strasburg. He has taken on the challenge of trying to change what he calls an inequity.

“After 1975, when the Vietnam War ended, that was considered peacetime going forward,” Cookson said. “Then when the war on terrorism started in around 1990, there was congressional action, so then it resumes being considered wartime.”

Veterans who served in the intervening years — years in which U.S. service members were deployed in combat situations from the Caribbean to Lebanon — are considered peacetime veterans, even though they were awarded medals for combat duty, Cookson said. As peacetime veterans, they are not entitled to the same benefits as those designated as having served in wartime, he said.

Cookson said those veterans are denied access to Veterans Affairs pensions for veterans in financial need, and their surviving spouses are denied survivor benefits. They also cannot receive state-level benefits available to veterans designated as wartime.

Cookson said the issue stems from Congress not including service members deployed to hotspots in Panama, Lebanon, Grenada and the Persian Gulf through the 1980s, even though they were awarded expeditionary or campaign medals for hazardous duty.

So Cookson, now retired, said he began writing to people he hopes can help correct the inequity. He said that while the period may have been deemed peacetime, service members came under intense fire and many lost their lives.

“We’re battling the same Middle Eastern terrorist organizations now as we have been since the fall of the shah of Iran,” Cookson said. “Yet it’s considered peacetime then, wartime now. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Cookson said he was attached to a Navy helicopter squadron while en route to Lebanon in 1983. Before he arrived, on Oct. 23, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden truck into a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. service members. A nearly simultaneous attack struck French forces, killing 58 French paratroopers. It was the deadliest single-day loss for the U.S. Marine Corps since 1945.

Still, Cookson said, Congress classified the period as peacetime. He added the Veterans of Foreign Wars makes no such distinction.

Cookson said he is not taking on the effort for his own benefit because he does not expect to need the benefits currently denied to veterans who served during those years.

“But I know there are plenty of guys out there who do or will need it,” he said. “There’s gotta be a lot of those Marines out there — the sailors and soldiers that were in these struggles during that time period and were involved in those conflicts. They might need that, and it’s not fair that they’re not eligible.”

Cookson said he has written the chair and ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson and the VFW National Legislative Service. His daughter, Katie Cookson, offered to set up a Change.org petition to build public support. Those who wish to sign can search for “Equal Benefits for Equal Service.”

Cookson said his efforts are self-funded.

“It’s all grassroots,” he said.

Changing the designation would require Congress to amend the law governing benefits for peacetime and wartime veterans, he said. He encouraged people to sign the petition, inform local veterans organizations such as the VFW and write to their legislative representatives.

As fliers for the effort state, “If we were ‘wartime’ enough to earn the medal, we are ‘wartime’ enough for the benefits.”