Long-suffering victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shootings are finally going to receive Purple Hearts – but at least one said said he's not getting any accompanying benefits, despite the fact he still carries two bullets in his body from attacker Nidal Hasan's gun.
"I think it's almost unheard of for someone to receive the Purple Heart but not have their injuries deemed combat-related," said Shawn Manning, one of the more seriously injured victims of the shooting, to Fox News.
"I know that was not what Congress intended to have happen, but it is what currently the Army has determined is going to happen."
The Fort Hood survivors have already had to fight tooth and nail for recognition of their injuries as combat-related.
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President Obama's administration refused to label the horrific attack anything more than an act of "workplace violence," despite the mounting evidence of Hasan's ties to radical Islam and his cries of "Allahu Akbar" during the shooting.
Hasan was sentenced in death in 2013. But it took an act of Congress to force the Defense Department to reconsider the "workplace violence" tag and award the victims their just military due.
The Purple Heart ceremony is set for Friday at the same Texas military facility where Hasan committed his acts of murder and treachery.
But for Manning, the fight for full recognition of his injuries and current state of health goes on.
Manning was shot six times by Hasan, but an appeal he filed to press the Army to recognize his injuries as sustained in the line of military duty has been rejected.
Fox News reported the rejection comes by way of a narrow interpretation of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that says, according to Manning's April 6 letter from the military: "Nowhere in the act ... does it offer combat benefits for service members permanently disabled in attacks inspired or motivated by foreign terrorist organizations."
Manning said that rejection means a loss of $800 in monthly benefits for his family, as well as the loss of back pay.
On Friday on "Fox & Friends," one of his supporters – retired Army Sgt. Howard Ray, who was also injured in the Fort Hood attacks – called the rejection of Manning's benefits "stupid and arrogant."
He went on, expressing disbelief the military was "still willing to put our soldiers through [this]. Look at what we've had to endure."