Now
this wounded soldier is being discharged from his company in Fort Hood,
Texas, without enough gas money to get home. In fact, the Army says
27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to $2,000, and confiscated
his last paycheck.
"There's people in my unit right now – one
of my team leaders [who was] over in Iraq with me, is doing everything
he can to help me .... but it's looking bleak," Loria said by telephone
from Fort Hood yesterday. "It's coming up on Christmas and I have no
way of getting home."
Loria's expected discharge yesterday
came a day after the public got a rare view of disgruntled soldiers in
Kuwait peppering Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with questions about
their lack of adequate armor in Iraq.
Like many soldiers
wounded in Iraq, Loria's injuries were caused by a roadside bombing. It
happened in February when his team from the 588th Battalion's Bravo
Company was going to help evacuate an area in Baqubah, a town 40 miles
north of Baghdad. A bomb had just ripped off another soldier's arm.
Loria's Humvee drove into an ambush.
When the second bomb
exploded, it tore Loria's left hand and forearm off, split his femur in
two and shot shrapnel through the left side of his body. Months later,
he was still recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., and just beginning to adjust to life without a hand,
when he was released back to Fort Hood.
AFTER SEVERAL MORE
MONTHS, the Army is releasing Loria. But "clearing Fort Hood," as the
troops say, takes paperwork. Lots of it.
Loria thought he'd done it all, and was getting ready to collect $4,486 in final Army pay.
Then he was hit with another bomb. The Army had another tally – of money it says Loria owed to his government.
A
Separation Pay Worksheet given to Loria showed the numbers: $2,408.33
for 10 months of family separation pay that the Army erroneously paid
Loria after he'd returned stateside, as a patient at Walter Reed;
$2,204.25 that Loria received for travel expenses from Fort Hood back
to Walter Reed for a follow-up visit, after the travel paperwork
submitted by Loria never reached the correct desk. And $310 for missing
items on his returned equipment inventory list.
"There was
stuff lost in transportation, others damaged in the accident," Loria
said of the day he lost his hand. "When it went up the chain of
command, the military denied coverage."
Including taxes, the
amount Loria owed totaled $6,255.50. The last line on the worksheet
subtracted that total from his final Army payout and found $1,768.81
"due us."
"It's nerve-racking," Loria said. "After everything
I have done, it's almost like I am being abandoned, like, you did your
job for us and now you are no use. That's how it feels."
(snip)
Christine
Loria was at the end of her rope earlier this week when she called her
wounded husband's commanders at Fort Hood, Texas, and gave them a piece
of her mind.
The Army was discharging her husband, Robert,
after he lost his arm and suffered other severe injuries in Iraq,
without even gas money to drive his car home.
"I am up here and he's there. That's 1,800 miles away," she said. "I had to call his chain of command and scream at them."
Their reaction she said, was "very mature."
"If he feels that way, why is his wife talking for him? Why doesn't he come talk to us himself?" she remembers them asking her.
"Because on some level, he still respects you," she answered. "I don't have that problem."
The part about not returning all his equipment was what gets me.
Like, maybe his boots and gloves and weapon (that he was holding in his blown-off arm).
I mean the Army bureaucracy finds a way
to put some SLACK in the system when it comes to paying contractors and
vendors. General Dynamics and Halliburton can go over budget by
millions and nobody bats an eye.
But some grunt with a missing limb gets 'expense reported' to death?
Here's an interesting follow-up:
Outrage
over Army Spc. Robert Loria's struggle to get home after losing his arm
in service for his country prompted the Army today to take action.
Responding
to pressure from Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Saugerties, and U.S. Sen.
Charles Schumer, D-NY, the Army said it would release Loria on medical
discharge beginning immediately, both men said.
The Army has also agreed to waive most of the debt against Loria and to help him file proper paperwork for the rest of it.
Aides
to Hinchey and Schumer said the Army was going to forgive the $2,408 in
excess Family Separation allowance the military erroneously paid Loria
as well as a $310 charge for equipment issued to Loria that was damaged
or lost in the attack in Iraq. And the Army was also going to help
Loria refile his travel papers to make sure he does not get saddled
with paying back advance travel money used to travel from the base at
Fort Hood, Texas, to a follow-up visit to Walter Reed Medical Center in
Washington, D.C.
"The Congressman was pleased that the Army
recognized its mistakes and has worked to fix those," said Dan Ahouse,
Hinchey's aide. "However, a man who has made such an extreme sacrifice
for his country should never have been in this situation to begin with.
This situation begs the question of how many other Spc. Lorias are
there?"
