The Worst Story Ever

This story is terrible, so if you want to maintain any hope in your government or its bureaucracy, just quit reading now.

Recently we had a new South Carolina National Guard unit RIP in, and with that came a replacement of the Michigan unit’s member of the TOC team. The new guy from SC is on night shift and is mostly quiet and on the older side of forty-five. I was walking back from breakfast at the start of my day as he was coming back from his pre-bed meal at the end of his day. I got to talking to him and he told me his story. I almost wanted to cry, and for a moment stopped thinking that being an IA is the most pathetic way to tour Iraq.

This soldier had completed the required twenty years for retirement with time split between the National Guard and the active Army. A short time after his twenty were complete, he contacted the retirement records bureau to verify something or the other and they informed him that they only had records of him serving seventeen years – three years of his National Guard time were gone. Since his career had a three year gap, he would have to serve three more years if he wanted retirement benefits. They assured him that this would not be a problem because there was an SC guard unit just coming back that he could attach to and spend the rest of his career without deploying – they were from the government and were here to help.

So he did. He enlisted. And they transferred him from the unit that would not deploy to the unit that is here now. That is bad enough that, if it had happened to me, they would have to take away any live bullets I might have for their own safety, but the story gets worse. When this guy retired, he was a captain who was on the path to promotion to major. Unfortunately, the portion of records that were lost were the portion that included his promotion to captain, so for all the Army knew he had served his whole time commissioned as a first lieutenant. The military has a rule that if you do not get promoted in a certain amount of time they ask you to get out of the military to make room for those who will get promoted. “Up or out” this policy is called in an unexplainable moment of simplicity and clarity in naming. So this soldier who had retired a captain, but for whom the Army had records for first lieutenant, was past the time for promotion to captain from first lieutenant. You are correct – this does not makes sense, but since they had no record that he was promoted to captain he could not be promoted to captain so to get his retirement he had to enlist and is now a sergeant.

Every morning when we do turnover, this poor soul gets an earful from the intel section master sergeant who feels that he needs to vent his family problems on some unsuspecting solder. (n.b. the venting is most likely the source of his family problems vice the solution.) This master sergeant does not know that the man he is condescending was and should be a captain. If there is justice in this world, they will find his paperwork and one day he will get a letter setting the wrongs right. Until then he has a story worse than an IA.