He was 17 then, an Army rifleman fighting in Korea. As his company battled for a hill, napalm was dropped. A mortar exploded near Dickerson, slamming shrapnel into his chest and delivering a concussive blow to his brain. When he opened his eyes, he was in a field hospital.

He wished later he had kept them shut.

Nearby sat a soldier, his back sheared away, his spine glistening white. Dead man walking, he thought. Then he passed out again.

He's 71 now, living in Lee's Summit. Those experiences — just a few minutes in one day — have affected Dickerson's life to this day.

In 1951, he was a naive, patriotic teenager who thought that the government he promised to serve would also help him, an injured veteran. He didn't know how difficult getting that help would be.

Decades passed before he realized that his health problems — years of pain in his chest, loss of hearing in both ears, anxiety attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder — all originated with those few moments of battle. More than half a century passed before the Department of Veterans Affairs granted him monthly disability payments.

Like Dickerson, tens of thousands of veterans have returned from war to find that they must fight their own government for the disability payments they're owed. A Knight Ridder investigation has found that injured soldiers who petition the VA for those payments often are frustrated by lengthy delays, hurt by inconsistent rulings and failed by the veterans representatives who try to help them.

The investigation was based on interviews with veterans and their families from across the country and on a review of internal VA documents and computerized databases. Many of the records were made available only after Knight Ridder sued the agency.

VA officials acknowledge problems but say the disability claim system is improving.

The VA is a mammoth agency that serves 25 million veterans with a far-flung health-care system and a separate disability and pension operation. The agency spends more than $60 billion a year, including more than $20 billion on disability compensation.

The VA makes disability payments for injuries as obvious as an amputated leg and as complex as PTSD. They include combat wounds and peacetime injuries. Payments for a single veteran range from $108 to $2,299 a month, and they're supposed to reflect lost earnings potential.

But the Knight Ridder investigation found that the VA serves neither taxpayers nor veterans well. Some veterans never get what they're due, while antiquated regulations mean that others are paid for disabilities that have little effect on their ability to hold jobs or aren't related to their military service.

For America's veterans, plus the thousands of soldiers now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the investigation identified three points where cases often go wrong: the selection of a special representative called a veterans service officer, the review by a regional VA office and the filing of an appeal.

Among Knight Ridder's findings:

• Many of the VA-accredited experts who help veterans with their cases receive minimal training and rarely are tested to ensure their competence. These veterans service officers work for nonprofit organizations such as the American Legion, as well as states and counties, but their quality is uneven, and that often means the difference between a successful claim and a botched one.

• The VA's network of 57 regional offices produces wildly inconsistent results, which means that a veteran in St. Paul, Minn., for example, is likely to receive different treatment and a more generous disability check than one from Detroit.

• Veterans face lengthy delays if they appeal the VA's decisions. The average wait is nearly three years, and many veterans wait 10 years for a final ruling. In the past decade, several thousand veterans died before their cases were resolved, according to an analysis of VA data.

“How a veteran seeking benefits gets treated should not be an accident of geography,” said George Basher, director of the New York State Division of Veterans' Affairs, one of 50 state agencies that help veterans. “Unfortunately, the current system makes that a virtual certainty.”

In interviews late last year, then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi and other VA officials admitted to many of the agency's shortcomings, but they said things have gotten better since the Bush administration took over. “This agency was under water in 2001,” Principi said. “My people have made tremendous progress.”

Principi's successor, Jim Nicholson, who was sworn in recently, had no comment.

There have been some improvements in the last three years. But when it comes to delays, backlogs and cases that need to be redone, things are no better than they were in the 1990s, Knight Ridder found, when the agency vowed to clean up its act.

Dickerson applied for help in 1990 but was denied. His military health records, officials told him then, were lost, burned in a 1973 fire in St. Louis.

There was no proof he had incurred his health problems while serving in the military.

Although the letter made him angry, he didn't know how to appeal.

But a few years ago, with outside help, Dickerson's records turned up and the VA recognized his disabilities from the war.

Dickerson is wiser now to the process.

“They delay, delay, delay. It's like they're delaying it,” he paused, “until you die.”

Navigating an application

Many veterans' cases go bad even before they file claims.

Applying for disability benefits requires veterans to navigate a labyrinth of bureaucratic rules and unforgiving deadlines. It can require the skill of an investigator and the mind of a physician.

That's why national veterans groups have for decades provided free help. About 40 veterans service organizations, such as the American Legion and Disabled American Veterans, are authorized to handle VA claims, as are many states.

But Knight Ridder found that the network of VA-accredited service officers is a patchwork of well-meaning helpers whose training and expertise vary.

Contrary to its own regulations, the VA does little to ensure that veterans receive competent representation from the service organizations.

Yet the agency prohibits vets from hiring their own lawyers until after their claims have been denied and they're generally years into the appeals process.

Two-thirds of the veterans who submit claims use service officers, and picking the right one can determine whether they get the full payment they're due, a fraction of it or nothing.

“The best advocates can be very good and lousy ones can be awful,” said Ron Abrams, the joint executive director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program, which trains service officers for the American Legion and other veterans groups.

The VA, through its national accreditation program, is supposed to ensure that all service officers are “responsible” and “qualified.” But the VA program does little more than rubber stamp names submitted by veterans groups. About 11,000 service officers are currently on the VA's roster — about 80 percent are accredited through nonprofit groups.

VA regulatory files, obtained after Knight Ridder's lawsuit, show that the agency has done little in decades to determine the adequacy of the training provided by veterans groups or to check the quality of the claims prepared by their officers. Rarely does the VA suspend or revoke a service officer's accreditation. When it does happen, it's generally the result of criminal charges rather than incompetence.

“What we do is take it on the word of the service organization that the individual has had sufficient training,” said Martin Sendek of the VA's general counsel's office.

That training, however, varies widely, according to a Knight Ridder survey of 13 of the largest veterans groups and all 50 state veterans departments. At one end of the spectrum is Disabled American Veterans, which has full-time paid national service officers and a 16-month training and testing program that's so regimented that it qualifies for 10 hours of college credit.

Groups such as American Ex-Prisoners of War and Catholic War Veterans rely largely on part-time volunteers who aren't required to complete any courses or pass any tests.

“We don't get paid, so we're not going to be that strict with these people,” said Doris Jenks, the national training director for American Ex-Prisoners of War.

VA officials bristled at suggestions that their oversight of accredited service officers is lax and said they're unaware of any systemic problems. Retired Vice Adm. Daniel Cooper, the VA's undersecretary for benefits, said the VA fixes any mistakes that service officers might make.

General counsel Tim McClain noted that veterans have extensive appeal rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, however, has repeatedly ruled that veterans are out of luck when they've been steered wrong by VA-accredited service officers.

Dickerson finally got help from then-U.S. Rep. Karen McCarthy and Ron Cherry, an accredited service officer with the Veterans of Foreign Wars national headquarters in Kansas City. Without their assistance, Dickerson said, “I'd be gettin' nothin'.”

Claims bog down

The second big problem for veterans is that claims often get bogged down in the VA's 57 regional offices, where claims are processed.

Nationwide, errors are made in 13 percent of claims, more than three times the agency's hoped-for rate of 4 percent, according to a VA quality-control database that reviews a sample of the decisions. That translates to 103,000 errors a year; in many cases they can result in either an overpayment or an underpayment of benefits.

“I don't think anybody is proud of the fact that we have” a 13 percent error rate, said Michael Walcoff, who oversees the agency's regional offices.

Errors often trigger appeals, sending thousands of veterans into a cycle of mistakes, appeals, rehearings, mistakes, appeals, rehearings. …

In some regional offices, the error rate last year was far worse — as high as 23 percent in Wilmington, Del. The low was 3 percent, in Des Moines, Iowa. The error rate for the Wichita office was 16 percent; St. Louis was 10 percent.

And such varied performances affect nearly every aspect of a veteran's experience. The percentage of all types of claims that are approved ranges from 89 percent in St. Paul to fewer than 70 percent in Jackson, Miss., and Cheyenne, Wyo., according to an annual VA survey of veterans. The Wichita and St. Louis rates were 83 percent and 84 percent.

Knight Ridder found that disability ratings, which range from zero to 100 and determine the size of a veteran's monthly check, also vary.

An analysis of 3.4 million veterans' claims shows that major mental ailments, such as PTSD and schizophrenia, are subject to bigger regional swings than major physical ailments such as bad backs and knees. For example, veterans with PTSD assigned to the Wilmington office are more than three times more likely to have the highest disability rating than their counterparts in Lincoln, Neb.

Diagnosing mental disorders is more subjective, and different parts of the country have been slow to recognize them. Different training standards also may have contributed to regional VA differences.

Because the major psychiatric disabilities on average pay more than the major physical ones, the wider swings have a dramatic impact on payments. The different ratings may help explain a mystery noticed every time the VA releases its annual report: Average disability checks vary by state.

The VA wouldn't comment on Knight Ridder's analysis but said in a statement that it's investigating regional differences, which it attributed to “extremely complex” factors. The agency “is committed to treating every veteran's claim fairly and equitably” and said it has nationwide training programs to help eliminate uneven treatment.

Dickerson, who lives in John Knox Village, learned Monday that he would receive 10 percent disability for his chest injury, on top of 30 percent disability for PTSD, which he received in July. He now gets a monthly check of $561.

He's still waiting for the VA to connect his hearing loss to the war.

“What burns me is, they see (in the records) I had a concussion,” he said about the explosion that knocked him unconscious. But he didn't complain about his hearing to his doctors in 1951.

For years, he thought the ringing in his ears was just something to be accepted as a side effect of battle. Only now is he learning the effects of the irreparable damage as his age accelerates the loss.

Appeals stymied

The final minefield is the VA appeals system, where claims often linger.

It's a problem the VA recognizes. “It takes too long. We all agree on that,” said Ron Garvin, acting chairman of the Board of Veterans' Appeals.

With the average disability payment now $7,860 a year, back-benefit awards can be substantial.

Some veterans with severe disabilities win $100,000 or more.

But if a veteran dies with his or her case under appeal, the case dies, too. In the past decade, more than 13,700 veterans died while their cases were in some stage of the appeals process, according to a Knight Ridder analysis of a VA appeals records database. (Precise estimates aren't available, but the VA said experience suggests a few thousand of them wouldn't have actively pursued their appeals.)

Even if a veteran wins a case but dies before receiving payment, his family is often out of luck. Unless the veteran had an eligible spouse or dependent child, the money stays in the U.S. Treasury.

In an October interview, then-Secretary Principi said he was “stung” when he learned a few years ago how common it is for veterans to die with their cases in limbo. While some deaths are inevitable, given the VA's older clientele, “it's not acceptable,” he said. “We need to do something about it.”

He also suggested that a recently formed commission on benefits could reconsider the legal barriers that prevent heirs other than a wife or dependent child from receiving a deceased veteran's back benefits.

The VA has admitted that its processes are too slow and too prone to errors. And veterans have told the agency that they suspect the worst: that the agency is “just stalling, waiting for them to die so the claim won't have to be paid,” veterans said in focus groups in 1995.

But the agency has repeatedly ignored recommendations to eliminate redundant steps in the process to speed things up.

One exhaustive review, completed in 1996, declared the entire claims and appeals process “cumbersome and outmoded” and in need of an overhaul.

Since then, “I think things are basically the same,” said the agency's Walcoff. “I wouldn't say that we have changed the system in any major way.”

In fact, VA data show that delays and the percentage of cases being sent back for re-hearings are basically unchanged since the agency vowed to reduce them.

Dickerson worries about the men and women fighting today — the ones unaware of what today's war could mean to their quality of life for the rest of their years.

Dickerson has learned that PTSD often grows stronger in the golden years, when aging bodies bring increased feelings of vulnerability.

Dickerson's wife, Eleanor, worries about other military spouses and families, who will be dealing intimately with the problems at home. She knows how many nights her husband has nightmares and panic attacks.

But the cycle continues, Joseph Dickerson says. The troops in Iraq are the ones who are learning now to swallow their terror.

“Those guys coming back now, the ones patrolling the streets, going in the house checks, that urban warfare, it's harder than what we did.”

Dickerson is certain of another thing, too.

Even a half century after that day on the hill when his brain learned what death smelled like, this veteran still doesn't want to close his eyes.

Sleep brings the nightmares. The gory reruns of seeing his Army buddies once more, the ones who didn't make it out of Korea.

Yes, Dickerson says, today's troops “are gonna come back worse off than I was…

“Maybe this will help them.”

The Star's Lee Hill Kavanaugh contributed to this report.

To reach Alison Young, call

1-(202) 383-6092 or send e-mail to ayoung@krwashington.com

To reach Chris Adams, send e-mail to cadams@krwashington.com