They put their lives on the line. Now they stand in line.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is a Sargasso Sea, awash in about 500,000 backlogged disability compensation claims nationally.

Earlier this year, the total number of pending cases was closer to 800,000, the majority of which — nearly 70 percent — had been floating around like so much flotsam and jetsam for more than 125 days.

That, as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown noted in a meeting Monday at the Cuyahoga County Veterans Service Commission, is “unfathomable” and “inexcusable.”