I wrote an article a few years back (see link below) for the Camp Curtin Historical Society about the pension process. Indeed, the vets had to face an adversary every bit as formidable as a battlefield foe to get a pension, it seems. One of my ancestors fought with a Pennsylvania drafted unit and only applied for a pension after he blew off part of his hand in a mining accident many years after the war. Another ancestor died in battle and his widowed mother had to go through the same rigorous process in her old age to get a mother's pension benefit.