Ty Ziegal Had to Fight For His Veteran Benefits!

In Ziegel's case, he spent nearly two years recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. Once he got out of the hospital, he was unable to hold a job. He anticipated receiving a monthly VA disability check sufficient to cover his small-town lifestyle in Washington, Illinois. Instead, he got a check for far less than expected. After pressing for answers, Ziegel finally received a letter from the VA that rated his injuries: 80 percent for facial disfigurement, 60 percent for left arm amputation, a mere 10 percent for head trauma and nothing for his left lobe brain injury, right eye blindness and jaw fracture... Ziegel eventually won his battle. Still he feels for so many others he believes are getting cheated by the system. "We're feeding the war machine, but you never think of the war machine that comes home and needs, you know, feeding back home," he said. His family hopes they don't have to fight the VA again. In August, Ty Ziegel's brother, 22-year-old Zach Ziegel, was deployed to Iraq. "I want to make the VA system better because if he has to go through anything I went through, that's really going to upset me. That'll make my fuse real short and hot," Ty Ziegel said.