Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, who lost his left eye and suffered traumatic brain injuries from a rifle wound, said that after he was discharged from Walter Reed, he was given a map of the grounds and eventually found his way to outpatient quarters by wandering around and asking for directions.

Then, he says, he "sat in my room for a couple of weeks wondering when someone would contact" him about continuing treatment.

"My biggest concern is having young men and women who have had their lives shattered in service to their country ... get taken care of," Shannon said.

Annette McLeod told the committee that her husband, Cpl. Wendell McLeod, was originally sent to the wrong hospital after he was hit in the head with a steel door in Iraq and also suffered a head injury. Once at Walter Reed, she said, he suffered delays in getting outpatient tests and treatment.

Spc. Jeremy Duncan said, "The conditions in the room in my mind were just, it was unforgivable for anybody to live — it wasn't fit for anybody to live in a room like that. ...

Tierney asked him, "What did you do to try to get the room fixed?"

Duncan responded, "I contacted the building manager and informed them there was an issue with my room. They told me to put it in the system for a work order. I did that. A month went by, I asked them to do it again. He said, put it back in the system. That went on two or three times. Finally, I had my chain of command from Fort Campbell, who came and visited me ... they made some phone calls, the person over here at Walter Reed — I don't know where it went. And they still never got fixed. That's when I contacted the Washington Post."

"And after The Washington Post article was published?" Tierney asked.

Duncan replied, "I was immediately moved from that room, and the next day they were renovating the room."

Addressing war veterans on Monday, Cheney promised that the problems at Walter Reed would be fixed.

"There will be no excuses — only action," Cheney told a gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "And the federal bureaucracy will not slow that action down."

Separately, as the Bush administration tried to contain political damage from the controversy, Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson said his office would hire 100 new patient advocates, speed benefit claims and improve medical screenings for veterans at its facilities.

"Our goal is to do things that serve the veterans in the manner that they deserve the best way that we can," Nicholson said in an interview on NPR's "All Things Considered."