World War II veteran's heart-attack death caused by service THE elderly widow of a World War II veteran who died 23 years ago has finally won a war pension after a tribunal agreed his heavy smoking and heart-attack were caused by the war. Former navy seaman Kenneth Hughes died aged 63 from a heart-attack in 1990, decades after serving on HMAS Australia from July 1944 to August 1946. The ship was repeatedly hit by Japanese kamikaze attacks, killing dozens of Mr Hughes' fellow servicemen. Last week, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal awarded Joyce Hughes, from Adelaide, a widow's pension after she successfully argued her husband's heart attack was the result of war-caused smoking. She told the tribunal her husband took up smoking only in 1950 to alleviate trauma he suffered during the war and that he remained "on edge for the rest of his life." He gave up cigarettes in 1982, but the habit caused ischaemic heart disease that led to his fatal heart attack. Mrs Hughes' application for a war pension was initially rejected by the Repatriation Commission, which argued his smoking and heart-attack could not be linked to his service. But a tribunal hearing in Adelaide overturned that decision. "It is sufficient in my view that one of the elements of the hypothesis is that Mr Hughes suffered from emotional symptoms, including insomnia, tension and anxiety, which were attributable to his war service, and that Mr Hughes took up smoking at least partly in an attempt to alleviate those symptoms," the Administrative Appeal Tribunal ruled. That is sufficient in my view to establish a reasonable hypothesis of a causal connection between his death and his service. Despite the belated decision, Mrs Hughes' widow's pension will be back-dated to only May 2010. RSL state president Maj David McLachlan said other widows had successfully argued their husbands' smoking-related deaths were war-caused. "Basically if you can show that you didn't smoke before you went in then you have a strong case for arguing the smoking was caused by war," he said.