'I'm headed west soon, had enough, nothing left to live for.”

So, Tuesday week ago, when Able Seaman Geoffrey Douglas Attrill, RNZN 2349, calmly announced he was going to die the next day, he was true to his word. As he lived, so he died. Doug's bugle had sounded. And he passed peacefully, aged 95.

'When the good Lord tells you it's time, you're on a fast camel,” Doug told The Weekend Sun recently. He was reconciled, happily off to be with Audrey Marion, his ‘Audie', his late wife of 74 years. That was his belief – sad, but lovely; heartbreaking, but a blessing.

Doug was a scrapper – a fighter for freedom and democracy. And to the bitter end, he was a fighter for justice, what he believed was right, and what he believed was his.

His latest battle, which would also be his last, was one of entitlement, wits and doggedness. It had gone on for 20 years. Doug insisted he was owed inflation adjustment on two war pension back payments. But his insistence didn't produce a cent.

He went to war one lunchtime in January 1941. He was still fighting 77 years later when he shuffled into The Weekend Sun office. He had one hand on a cane, the other on daughter Viviene's elbow. This frail wisp of a man had a beef; he felt he had been wronged and cheated.

'Gutless wonders, crooks,” said Doug of the new enemy. 'They're beating up on a returned serviceman.”

After all, he had seen off Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini. He was a vet with seven medals – he had been shot at, shelled and bombed. He'd even swum out of a fireball that engulfed his warship. He wouldn't be bowed by a few bureaucrats in Wellington.

'We were told nothing will be too good for the boys when we came home. That's what Walter Nash told us,” said RNZN 2349. 'Well, I came home to be beaten up.

'I fought the Germans, Italians and Japanese. I fought the National government for many years. Got nowhere fast, now I am fighting the Labour government.”

He flashed his pension entitlement card which catalogues the personal cost of his war – post traumatic stress disorder – 'read bomb shock and shell shock,” said Doug. Sensorineural deafness – 'guns and explosions” he explained – tinnitus, lumbar spondylosis, or osteoarthritis of the spine, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

'I lost a lifetime of enjoyment – so why should I not be compensated for that. My war service, my service to the country, came at some considerable personal cost.”

For many years Doug got on with life – building a career, raising a family and drawing a war disablement pension of $569 a week – until the RSA did an audit of his entitlements and discovered a couple of shortfalls.

He was eventually compensated two sums, $26,934.40 and $15,802.60 – one dating back 60 years and the other 20. The sums were the nominal value of what he should have been paid – but there was no inflation adjustment.

He says inflation eroded the value of those payments and he deserved to be compensated. This irked Doug more than pesky Germans, Italians and Japanese.

'I believe I am entitled to the money,” said Doug. ”I even gave them a chance. If they'd given me $150,000, end of matter. I would have gone away – silly asses.”

Then the government awarded wrongfully convicted murderer Teina Pora $988,099 inflation adjustment on top of his $2.55 million compensation. This only fueled Doug's sense of injustice.

No, Doug hadn't been wrongfully banged up for two decades, but he had been 'shot up for the good of this country,” and 'my whole life was turned upside down and my whole quality of life was affected”.

And that's when hostilities started in earnest – a prickly, bristling, irreverent exchange of emails and letters with Prime Ministers, Ombudsmen and New Zealand Veterans' Affairs.

In one note to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs he mischievously addressed: 'You and your mean Vets Affairs.”

In another last November he might have been sensing the end when he wrote: 'Hopefully the era of deception has gone forever and justice will prevail in the knowledge that, should I die in the meantime, nothing will prevent my family from benefitting.” But they haven't.

Again to Veterans Affairs: 'Dear Madam, you will not reply to my letters simply because I am right ….”

To the office of the Ombudsman: 'I am sure that I have been subjected to a far from right and proper deal.”

To the Prime Minister on March 20 this year: 'The Ombudsman's letterhead bears the words ‘fairness for all' – well I have yet to see it.”

Again to the Prime Minister in May: 'Dear Madam, remember me, the 20 and 60-year boy? Sure you can. It isn't too late. Please pay me my just dues.”

Before she died, Doug's wife Audrey spoke up on Doug's behalf. She too went straight to the office of the Prime Minister. 'Many like him did not hesitate to serve,” she wrote Jacinda Ardern. 'I ask only now for what is their rightful due.”

The decision-makers must have rolled their eyes and shuddered whenever they saw another letter arriving from Hollister Lane in Ohauiti. 'I don't care what they think of me,” the Doug told The Weekend Sun just a fortnight before he passed. 'But I know what I think of them.”

His case was pitched and passed from desk to desk and office to office in Wellington. Always with the same outcome.

'As has been explained to Mr Attrill on a number of occasions, there are no provisions under the War Pensions Act 1954 for the payment of interest,” wrote a frustrated Judith Collins, Minister for Veterans' Affairs at the time.

'I accept Mr Attrill does not agree with this and does not accept the Office of the Ombudsman's conclusion that his complaint has been considered at length and in a reasonable manner. I regret that there is nothing further anyone can usefully add to this issue.”

Then, just a couple of months ago, the Ombudsman told Doug the matter was outside his jurisdiction and that 'it was difficult to identify a basis” on which he could be compensated.

He suggested it would be open for Doug to petition the government. 'Then it would be for parliament to decide whether to offer any compensation. I realise you will disappointed with this response.”

Angry rather than disappointed; perhaps both in equal quantities.

'Please tell me,” wrote back Doug Attrill, 'why should I have to petition the government for payment of monies which are lawfully mine?”

Then fate and time intervened. The 95-year-old had a fall recently. The body was failing and the spirit had taken a beating. 'I bet they're just waiting for me to die to bring it all to an end.” Then he chuckled and shuffled out of The Weekend Sun office. He was off to catch up with ‘Audie'.