The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has approved a claim from a veteran of the United States Civil War in one of its longest running cases to date.
Pvt. Horace Bottomsley, who served in the Chickamauga Campaign, first filed a claim in 1864 for a case of scurvy he caught the previous year, which he claims was brought on by the Union Army’s insufficient rations. According to Bottomsley, the standard diet of hardtack and grain liquor should have been supplemented by molasses and salt pork to provide essential nutrients.
VA Secretary Robert McDonald says a backlog of claims from the Mexican-American War, among other factors, may have led to “slight delays” in processing Bottomsley’s claim.
