IN WAR, it is said, there are no unwounded soldiers. Bombs that shatter bones also batter brains. Even on the periphery, war afflicts men with aching joints, ringing ears and psychological damage. Imagine, then, the human damage wrought by over a decade of battle.

America does not have to. Its wounded warriors are now seeking help in record numbers. Nearly half of its 1.6m soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have asked for disability benefits from the government. (Just 21% filed similar claims after the first Gulf war, according to estimates.) With ageing veterans of earlier conflicts also seeking more help, America’s disabled-servicemen population has increased by almost 45% since 2000.

Some of them may be reacting to a bad economy, perhaps growing shrewder in their pursuit of benefits. But disability claims are also up because of positive developments. Advances in battlefield medicine mean more wounded are surviving their wounds. Mental-health problems once dismissed are now treated seriously. And the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has expanded access to benefits for older servicemen who were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam or are suffering from Gulf-war syndrome, while easing the requirements for claiming post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Having created, by virtue of war, and recognised, by virtue of policy, more wounded veterans, America’s government might have anticipated the challenges they pose. But the system responsible for helping these men and women as they find their ways back into civilian life has been overwhelmed. Ironically, it is Eric Shinseki who oversees this broken bureaucracy. Before becoming Barack Obama’s secretary of veterans’ affairs, the former general earned the ire of George W. Bush’s cabinet by testifying that “several hundred thousand soldiers” might be needed in Iraq.

Mr Shinseki was right, but now he heads an agency that is both understaffed and ill-equipped. The VA is crumpling under a growing pile of disability claims. In some cases literally: last year the department’s inspector-general said the mounds of paperwork at one regional office threatened the building’s structure. Bureaucrats are completing more claims than ever—over 1m a year in the past three years—and almost three times as many in 2012 as in 2001. But they cannot keep pace with the growing caseload (see chart).

Compound fractures

Nearly 1m veterans are now waiting. On average it takes the VA about nine months to complete a claim. In some big cities the average delay is over 600 days. Those who appeal against a refusal usually wait two years for a resolution. Mr Obama entered the White House with a promise to fix the system, but waiting-times have increased considerably on his watch. Even the navy SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden says he is waiting for his claim to be processed. Efforts to improve training and streamline processing have shown little in the way of results. The VA now says it hopes that by 2015 it will be able to process all claims within 125 days. Yet veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have grown accustomed to rosy projections that come to naught. A grim result of this bottleneck is that in the past fiscal year over $400m in retroactive benefits was paid to family members of veterans who died waiting. One such veteran was Scott Eiswert, a National Guardsman who returned from Iraq in 2005. Tortured by nightmares of roadside bombs and fallen comrades, Eiswert took to drink. When the doctors at the VA at last found time to see him they diagnosed him with PTSD. But the VA rejected his disability claims, on the ground that his condition could not be tied to specific incidents from his service. In 2008, after learning that his unit was going back to Iraq, he took his own life. About 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are thought to suffer from PTSD, though many do not report their problems. Instead they try to dose themselves. A VA study found that veterans suffering from PTSD or depression were about four times more likely to have drug or drink problems. Too many end up in the same desperate place as Eiswert. The VA reported that, on average, 22 veterans committed suicide each day in 2010. Last year more active-duty soldiers took their own lives than were killed in combat.

In 2010 the VA eased its requirements for PTSD claims so that, as Mr Obama put it, soldiers in war zones don’t have to “take notes to keep for a claims application”. (Eiswert’s family did receive benefits in the end.) But the preponderance of invisible ailments like PTSD makes today’s disability claims more complicated and harder to sort through. Those who were injured in earlier wars typically received compensation for at most a handful of problems; today’s veterans often report ten or more issues each.

Many afflicted veterans feel isolated. “There’s just not a lot of people who understand what PTSD is like,” says Derek Coy, a former marine who waited 13 months for his claim to be approved. Volunteer groups have stepped in, organising disaster-relief missions, bike rides and protests against the VA. The camaraderie, at least, can be therapeutic.

Veterans already tormented by demons and tangled in red tape face further anxieties on the home front. Those recently returned from wars abroad have an unemployment rate 1.7 points higher than the national one. Encouraged by the first lady, Michelle Obama, some firms, including Walmart, IBM and GE, have created programmes to hire more veterans. But veterans’ advocates talk of an inability to translate war-related skills into civilian job qualifications. A soldier who drove a bulldozer in Iraq must get a certificate before doing the same job back home.

Washington’s budget-cutting is unlikely to help. Flag-waving politicians are loth to slash the VA’s funding. But overall cuts in spending will disproportionately hurt veterans, who made up 28.3% of the federal government’s new hires in 2011. The numbers had been increasing, thanks in part to an administration effort to take on ex-soldiers. Naturally, many of them joined the Pentagon, which has suffered the largest cuts of any department.

As America draws down its remaining troops in Afghanistan, the challenges facing veterans may become larger still. A bureaucratic wall separates America’s ex-soldiers from the benefits they have earned, and it is growing higher as more veterans confront it. Many of those still serving in Afghanistan will come home seeking compassion, only to find new battles in store.