COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
Guardsman still seeking re-up bonus due last June
Kelly Kennedy, Army Times
December 13, 2005
After
re-enlisting during his second tour in Iraq but not receiving a
promised $15,000 re-up bonus, Sgt. 1st Class Carl Latson says he
won’t re-enlist ever again.
In January, the Spanaway, Wash., soldier signed a six-year contract
that was supposed to get him a $15,000 bonus — tax-free, since he
signed up in the war zone.
But when his 13th year of service ended in March, the check never made it to the bank.
Latson’s contract contains the $15,000 bonus, but the Army said
the bonus was for regular active-duty soldiers only. Latson is in the
Active Guard and Reserve, so his bonus should have come through a
program that yields up to $60,000 in re-enlistment bonuses.
Last month, after hearing there had been a mistake, Latson hired a
lawyer. Sen. Patty Murray,D-Wash., and another member of Congress got
involved. Then, the Defense Department announced it was rushing through
a change in its bonus policy to allow Guard members who are on
full-time active duty to be eligible for re-enlistment bonuses while in
a war zone, just like other troops.
“I feel like they threw up a smoke screen,” Latson said.
“I had a congressman and my brigade commander calling me saying
we are getting our bonus. [But] when I asked when, it was, ‘I
will get back to you,’ or, ‘We don’t know how to pay
it.’.”
Latson’s lawyer, Mark Clausen of Seattle, said no one has given
him a date for the bonus, which should have been paid in June, nor has
he been told whether the Army will pay Latson’s lawyer fees.
On Nov. 18, Clausen received a letter from Col. Michael P. McCaffree,
Latson’s commander at headquarters, 81st Brigade Combat Team in
Tacoma, Wash.
“While we don’t yet have the specific instructions to
process payment of the bonus due to SFC Latson, I am assured there will
be no delay in carrying out the intent of this policy change,”
the letter says.
Latson said some soldiers in his unit immediately received their re-up
bonuses when they returned from Iraq, but others, including some under
his command, are still waiting. He knows 10 other Guard soldiers who
also did not get their bonuses; as many as 1,500 soldiers may have been
affected by a policy that denied re-up money to members of the Active
Guard and Reserve.
Latson said he gets e-mails and phone calls from those soldiers asking
him to find out when they are going to receive their bonuses. He said
some are facing financial hardship because of the late bonus.
“We should not have to fight, but I will for the future of these
soldiers,” Latson said. “Like I have told my attorney, I
want to go ahead with filing the lawsuit, and if I don’t get
anything out of it, and I have to pay my attorney fees on my own, at
least the soldiers get their bonuses.”
But now he wants to make sure they get the right bonus. In Hall’s
letter to Murray, he stated that the AGR soldiers may be entitled to
bigger bonuses.
“We did not, as reported, issue a directive ordering the Army
National Guard to cease payments of bonuses to the AGR
personnel,” Hall states in the letter. “What we did was
point out to the Army National Guard that these bonuses were being paid
under the wrong authority (Section 308b of Title 37), which is for
Selected (drilling) Reservists.”
The letter states that using the active-duty bonus for AGR soldiers
allows AGRs “a substantial advantage by authorizing bonuses up to
$60,000 with more flexibility of service commitments.”
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