In early December, my telephone messages were filled with the pained voices of veterans who felt more like prisoners than liberators, men about to be robbed of Christmas by the endless quarantine at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Wilkes-Barre.

It would mark the fourth consecutive Christmas where overreaching covid regulations kept our heroes from celebrating together.

“I’ve been in this nursing home almost seven years now and for four of them we’ve been isolated,” one said. “This is like a POW camp.”

In truth, it might be worse.

As an acting battalion commander in Iraq, I was in charge of thousands of detainees. Government policy allowed family visits and levels of respect I no longer believe our own battlefield heroes now receive from their own government.

Of the Veterans Administration Hospitals in Pennsylvania, Wilkes-Barre is known for its inflexible covid policies. Entire floors are isolated when two residents test positive — symptoms or not — for a virus that we now know has been brought under control by vaccination.

Especially galling are the recent canceled trips to the outside world.

“Guys that don’t have covid don’t have to go. But the ones that don’t have it should be able to go,” pleaded one veteran.

Along with Congressmen Matt Cartwright and Dan Meuser, I have argued with the Wilkes-Barre officials that their regimen of isolation is costing these men far more than a case of covid might inflict. This use of rules as an excuse not to think has induced another life-threatening disease: depression.

“Our mental health is breaking down,” one veteran said in his voice message. Another veteran stated, “I feel that this VA administration doesn’t care for veterans.”

On Dec. 14, veterans who had been prohibited from visiting their brothers on a separate floor as part of the in-house precautions were allowed to participate in a bus trip to a nearby Walmart if they tested negative.

If veterans can be tested and go on a bus trip to a shopping center, why can’t they be tested to participate in Christmas? We’re only talking about a handful of men, isolated from their brothers-in-arms.

As captivity goes, the Wilkes-Barre facility is clean and orderly, but different in that most prison inmates have a release date. These men, their bodies broken, the years overtaking them, are unlikely to know another home. We owe them the best one we can create.

Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity is a retired Army Reserve colonel. She was awarded the Bronze Star twice and the Legion of Merit. She became known as “the Angel of the Desert” for her humane treatment of Iraq War detainees.

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