Jon Hovde lost his left arm, left leg and two fingers of his right hand when his armored personnel carrier struck an anti-tank mine. The 20-year-old Army private was almost left for dead when a medic, checking for a pulse in the mayhem, found none in Hovde's severed arm.

It happened almost 40 years ago in South Vietnam. Hovde spent 7 1/2 months recuperating in an Army hospital before being medically retired. His initial VA disability check was $340 a month. His first prosthetic leg, he recalled, was wooden and weighed "about 30 pounds." He never saw a psychiatrist; post-traumatic stress wasn't a routine concern.

Today Hovde, 59, draws $3,600 a month in VA compensation. His prosthetics use embedded computer chips. When back and foot problems linked to his war wounds cut short a promising business career, he adapted again. The Minnesotan now gives motivational speeches nationwide.

But perhaps like many of the nation's 2.8 million veterans drawing VA disability compensation, Hovde sometimes gets upset at the wave of benefit improvements being targeted at Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Will they touch older veterans or leave them behind?

"It's like a company saying, 'You people who retired in the last five years, you get an increase. But those who have been retired longer than that, you get nothing,' " Hovde said. "How fair is that?"

While recovering from his injuries, Hovde said he was told he would get a $20,000 payment for his lost limbs. He never did. Yet the severely wounded of Iraq and Afghanistan are getting traumatic injury awards. They deserve it, but so does he, Hovde said.

"I've long believed that combat-wounded Purple Heart Award recipients ought to be able to draw full military pay, plus full VA compensation. That would add about $500 a month to my pay."

Details on the many changes being pushed are easier to pin down than answers to two other questions: who will be affected and when will the changes take effect. Next month the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission, or VDBC, will deliver more than 100 recommendations to the president and Congress. One would expand "concurrent receipt" of VA disability benefits and military retired pay to all disabled retirees, including those forced from service early for medical reasons. But who would qualify?

Congress is expected to hold multiple hearings on the VDBC recommendations starting next year. But this month, President Bush plans a more immediate and positive signal to Iraq and Afghanistan disabled veterans. He will propose legislation to implement disability compensation reforms from the report of the President's Commission on Care of America's Returning Wounded Warriors.

The White House hopes to get this package to Capitol Hill in time for inclusion in the 2008 defense authorization bill.

To comment, e-mail milupdate@aol.com; write Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA 20120-1111, or visit www.militaryupdate.com.