struggled to meet the demand for limbs with a limited number of trained prosthetic device makers and technicians. The results were troubling to soldiers who were issued these prostheses. Moreover, once discharged, veterans relied on the VA for future prostheses, follow-up care, and maintenance, repair, and replacement of artificial limbs. Veterans applied for services at a local field station but might be referred to one of the VA’s twelve amputation centers. The VA contracted with private manufacturers to provide limbs for veterans, which typically narrowed the choices available to them. The surgeon general of the army worked with the National Research Council to launch a study of artificial limbs that resulted in the establishment of a permanent National Research Council committee on the development of better prostheses in 1945, but the effort came too late to stave critique.47
In 1945, Lieutenant Sol Rael, who had received medical care and an artificial limb at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., told subcommittee members that his prosthetic was “crude and out-moded and definitely a throw-back to horse-and-buggy days.” He reported, “There was no question in my mind when I received my prosthesis that I was greatly disappointed and disillusioned in seeing what a hackneyed article it really was.”48
Veterans expressed frustration about the utility and fit of their new limbs and the process they had to go through to get assistance from the VA. After losing a limb in an explosion in northern Africa in July 1943, Robert L. Rogers was shipped home to receive treatment at Walter Reed. His leg was amputated about five inches below the knee, but once he began walking with his prosthetic, his stump opened up. After four surgeries and over a year in Walter Reed, Rogers still had constant troubles with his leg and was waiting for a new socket and a new leather foot to give him greater function. He argued that the army’s legs were improperly fitted and made of poor quality materials—materials so cheap that a limb maker had told him his leg was not worth “two hoots in hell.”49
For men like Rogers, who depended on their earnings to make ends meet, replacing an ill-fitting or low-quality limb with personal funds was out of the question. Taking time away from work to travel to the VA for repairs and to apply for a new limb had costs as well. The VA had determined that Rogers’s artificial leg should be repaired and not replaced; consequently, Rogers had to go to the VA repeatedly and wait. He had to wait for repairs. He had to wait for the VA to decide that he was eligible for a new limb. He even had to wait for new crutches. When his army-issued crutches broke, he went to the VA to request a new pair. Fortunately, Rogers was able to borrow a pair from the dispensary at his job as it took over two months for his VA crutches to arrive. All of the waiting had profound consequences for Rogers. He had difficulty working, shifting from job to job in hopes of finding something that would not set off the pain, and as a result, he struggled to make a living.50
According to Rogers, disabled veterans were tired of waiting and tired of having their situation ignored. He said that the public face of army amputation centers was a farce. When they photographed men walking and dancing, he claimed, it was after only a few steps and not “after he had walked 20 steps” or after the dance when “he has hopped … into the corner or goes hopping downstairs to get his crutches.” Just as the pain made Rogers “hate to walk,” it made him, and others like him, question the government that had sent them to battle. “These derned legs,” he cried, “I do not know what is wrong, the Government is supposed to be trying to do so much for us, and they are not doing a darned thing.”51 A DAV representative told the committee that developing better artificial limbs was necessary to pay back “an undischarged war debt.”52
The difficulties disabled soldiers and veterans faced with their prosthetic limbs were amplified in the civilian sector. When a member of the subcommittee asked Dr. Charles M. Griffith, medical director of the VA, how a civilian might fare in purchasing an artificial limb, he replied, “If he does not have a private doctor or an orthopedist to help him, God have mercy on him.”53 Griffith described the exact situation of many civilians. Representing the AFPH committee of the amputees, Agnes Schnaus, a national vice president of the organization, reported, “As it stands, anyone can set themselves up as a maker and fitter of surgical appliances and the appliance fitter can go about his business any way he sees fit.” In these circumstances, she concluded, “there is nothing to prevent the public from being sold misfit appliances.”54
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