The Volokh Conspiracy

What if the soldier is killed outright? Do they try to recover the bonus from his estate? I'm guessing not, and if not, under what theory do they do so in this case.

If they do attempt to get their money back from the deceased, I give them props for consistency, if not for taste.

Man o man, I can't wait to see what the people who came up with this policy do when they are put in charge of our national health care system.

As an Army officer I can only imagine that this policy was written before the recent wars. That said, any policy can look good on paper until an unintended (I'm assuming) consequence like this comes up. Under "normal" circumstances, such as a Soldier not completing the terms of his contract for reasons such as being awol, failing a school, disciplinary issues etc, the policy appears to make sense. However, under the light of special circumstances such as being wounded or discharged for reasons related to one's service, it looks like a glaringly obvious correction needs to take place.

It's time for these coddled soldiers to start bearing some of the burden that we here in the homeland have been carrying since 9/11.

Don't they realize that we are at war?

Every morning about seven o'clock
There were twenty tarriers drilling at the rock
The boss comes along and he says, "Keep still
And bear down heavy on the cast iron drill."

Chorus
And drill, ye tarriers, drill
Drill, ye tarriers, drill
For it's work all day for the sugar in you tay
Down beyond the railway
And drill, ye tarriers, drill
And blast, and fire.

The boss was a fine man down to the ground
And he married a lady six feet 'round
She baked good bread and she baked it well
But she baked it harder than the hobs of Hell.

The foreman's name was John McCann
By God, he was a blamed mean man
Last week a premature blast went off
And a mile in the air went big Jim Goff.

And when next payday came around
Jim Goff a dollar short was found
When he asked, "What for?" came this reply
"You were docked for the time you were up in the sky."

Drill Ye Tarriers Drill

Man o man, I can't wait to see what the people who came up with this policy do when they are put in charge of our national health care system.

If they're good enough to run the War on terror, they're good enough to run national health care.

This story provides more evidence to back up the assessment I made decades ago. The military is a pretty crappy job opportunity.

Altmire, D-PA, has a bill in the House.

I'm a soldier and officer, and I will NOT defend this policy. It is disgusting and repulsive, and our soldiers deserve better.

Sounds very much like it was written in some back office at the Pentagon by a REMF who has never seen and never will see combat.

I cannot describe how angry I am over this.

I bet Swede has it right. The folks in the Pentagon are acting like good bureaucrats everywhere and enforcing the rule as it's written without considering context. The appropriate response is for Congress or the SecDef or someone who has the necessary authority to add an exception that covers combat wounds and maybe training injuries as well.

Kipling was wrong, they still screw Tommy even when the Troopers on the tide.

I don't see why Congressional action is necessary for the Pentagon to waive its own contractual rights, or to change the bonus provision in new contracts. It would seem imperative to do so considering how badly the Army is doing on recruitment.

WM13- "Man o man, I can't wait to see what the people who came up with this policy do when they are put in charge of our national health care system." I'm confused... the administration who came up with this policy is in charge of our national health care system, or lack there of.

PLR--

When you're dealing with government funds, You Do Not Spend Money Without Authorization From Congress. If the law under which the military gives out bonuses specified that you have to finish your term of service and doesn't make exceptions for wounds, then the Army can't just decide on its own to "waive its own contractual rights". I don't know what the legal situation is, but I'd suspect that Pol is correct; someone forgot to check a block somewhere, so DFAS pulled his bonus. In a bureaucracy, money gets spent based on the paperwork filed--people go to jail if they don't.

It appears that this serviceman's pay records did not include the normal form from his commanding officer that he had been discharged for a service-connected disability prior to completing his enlistment. I suspect this problem rarely happens and can be corrected by getting that form into his records.

It's still a self-inflicted wound for the military though. Its normal peace-time policy of always seeking reimbursement of enlistment bonuses from early dischargees, absent evidence to the contrary (i..e., good cause appearing in the records), was not changed to the converse of a wartime policy of assuming that early discharges are due to service-connected disability absent evidence to the contrary.

Basically the Army's bureaucracy won't admit there is a war on any more than the Democrats do. OTOH, this Army policy has existed a lot longer than the Democratic Party has. The Army's pencil-pushers have assumed since about 1812 that war is something to be ignored as an unnecessary inconvenience for them.

In the old days, among the steel erectors, if you fell off a building, you got a full day's pay, even if you fell off early in the morning.

Now that the ironworkers are unionized, they do better.

This story, and the responses here, seem to me to present some problems for Libertarians.

gab: "What we know as men we are not required to forget as [lawyers]."

Eugene --

Is that a quote from someone? From whom? I can't find it with google.

Finec,
Perhaps this is the quote: "... there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men." - Felix Frankfurter, Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49 (1949)

A soldier could, say, find himself or herself torn between protecting a bonus much needed by the family or protecting a mission and fellow soldiers.

I should be cautious about speculating on the psychology of combat, but I think this is as likely as a soldier cutting off a limb to get out early. I really can't imagine a soldier putting his comrades at risk to protect his own enlistment bonus.

As I said above, it appears that the simple solution is to change the default--the soldier (or sailor or airman) gets to keep the bonus unless the CO says that discharge was not combat-related.

I'd go a step further. Someone injured because of a training accident also should not have to pay back the bonus. We expect our military to engage in dangerous training, and we should not punish servicemen who get injured in the process.

The phone number for soldiers to call was just re-run: 800-984-8523.

The Congress, as usual, seeks to complicate matters. What does service in a war zine have to do with anything.

If the discharge was due to a service related injury then surely the Army should not seek to collect.

There was a front page article in the Wall Street Journal about Walmart and an employee who had been in an accident and severely injured. She sued the party who caused her accident (not Walmart) and won an award. Walmart has claimed the bulk of it to repay medical expenses paid her through their health insurance and she is left without funds to pay for continuing care. The amounts were, as I recall ~$700K. In the case of the soldier there is at lest the possibility that a box was not checked.

This reminds me of the british charging room and board to people who were wrongfully imprisoned .