Reservists' Lost Benefits Reported

Active-Duty Status Was Dropped, GAO Finds

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of injured Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers -- including many severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have either lost or risked losing medical care and thousands of dollars in pay for months because a "convoluted" personnel system dropped them from active-duty status, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.

The report found that over a two-month period early last year, almost 34 percent of the 867 soldiers whose records it examined were removed from active duty while their requests for medical extensions were snarled in bureaucracy, leading many soldiers and their families to lose pay and benefits.

The Army does not track the numbers of injured and ill reservists suffering such gaps in pay and benefits, but with 16,000 reservists having passed through the military's "medical holdover" system since November 2003, and 3,400 there now, the total is "very possibly [in the] thousands," said Gregory D. Kutz, director of financial management and assurance at the GAO and author of the report.

Sgt. 1st Class John Allen, a weapons sergeant on a Special Forces A team, suffered brain trauma and injuries to his legs, torso and vision from a helicopter accident and grenade blast outside Kandahar, Afghanistan, in summer 2002. But it was not until Allen applied for an extension of his active-duty status in November that his "real troubles started," he testified before the House Government Reform Committee yesterday.

While coping with his injuries, Allen was dropped repeatedly from active duty, losing a total of three months of benefits and $11,924 in pay. "I was essentially forced to 'go off orders' every three months," said the former police officer from Blairstown, N.J. "[I had] no pay, no access to base, no medical coverage for my family," and his medical appointments with military doctors were repeatedly canceled.

In July 2003, Allen said he had to borrow $10,000 from his brother to pay bills. The following month, his wife went into labor prematurely but was refused treatment at the hospital in Fort Bragg, N.C., until a senior Army commander intervened.

The "broken, dysfunctional system," Allen said, "placed my family under intense and indescribable stress. In short, this by far caused the most burden on my family, my financial situation and my life in general." Allen, who wears an eye patch and walks with a cane, plans to retire this month from his reserve unit, Bravo Company of the 20th Special Forces Group.

As the number of guardsmen and reservists grew to 48 percent of the U.S. force in Iraq and Afghanistan last year, the problem with wounded soldiers has escalated.

"The numbers just exploded on us," Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, surgeon general of the Army, told the House committee. About 150,000 members of the Army National Guard and Reserve are now deployed around the world.

Lacking what it called "reliable" Army records on the program, the GAO gathered its findings in audits at 10 Army installations across the country and in case studies of 10 soldiers. The soldiers had spent 17 to 122 days off active duty. Their missed pay ran from $1,208 to $13,475.

Sgt. Joseph Perez, a military policeman with the Nevada National Guard, was wounded in the knee during a riot in a Baghdad prison compound in June 2003. Perez also saw fellow soldiers killed in mortar attacks, leading him to suffer flashbacks and nightmares. Flown back to Fort Lewis for care, he said he spent months "languishing" in a World War I barracks with insufficient heat and moldy walls.

"You feel they don't give a damn whether you get well or not," he told the committee. In February 2004, his unit was demobilized and he was removed from active-duty status, leaving his family without medical care or access to the local base. Missing a total of $3,886 in pay, he at one point had to move with his wife and three daughters into his father-in-law's basement.

"All this made me feel worthless," he said. He ended up in a mental health unit suffering with post-traumatic stress and "suicidal thoughts."

The main source of the problem, according to the GAO, Army officials and soldiers, was the obsolete Active Duty Medical Extension program, set up in July 2000 for reservists injured while on active duty or in training. The influx of wounded reservists from the Iraq war quickly overwhelmed the office, which had a staff of three people when it began receiving 25 to 30 cases for review every day in December 2003.

"The ADME program was not staffed to accommodate a large number of mobilized Reserve Component soldiers," Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel, said in a prepared statement.

Army officials testified that a program instituted in May has resolved the automatic removal of reservists from active duty. But the GAO report said the program is also inefficient and has "in some respects worsened problems."

"I'm appalled that these men and women not only have had to face the recovery from their war wounds but are simultaneously forced to navigate a confusing and seemingly uncaring system of benefits," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the committee. He called the impact of the flawed system on troops "the equivalent of financial and medical 'friendly fire.' "

By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, February 18, 2005; Page A27
© 2005 Washington Post

.