The Army Giveth...

Friday 17 October 2008
1815

"PDMRA" - Yet another too-many-letter acronym for some esoteric Army concept or program. This one stands for “Post-Deployment Mobilization Respite Absence”. It’s an administrative program that the Army put in place to give soldiers with multiple deployments some extra time off after their deployments to take care of personal business and unwind. This time off is free administrative leave in addition to the regular leave earned as a part of normal service, and is intended to be taken at the end of a mobilization.

It’s a pretty well-thought-out program, although a little hard to understand at first. Basically there is a rolling five-year window, and the more months a soldier has been mobilized within that timeframe, the more administrative leave he earns for additional deployments. The first year the amount earned per month is zero, the second year is one day per month deployed, etc. At some point (not exactly two years) the number of days earned per month deployed rises to two, then three, etc.

They have an online calculator to figure out how much PDMRA leave you have coming, which makes it pretty easy. The XO of our augmentation company worked it out for the mobilized Reservists and sent me an email telling me how much I would have at the end of my second tour – 18 days. That was a nice bonus! I went ahead and figured out how much I’d have after three years, and that’s when the accelerator really kicked in – after this third tour I would have had 56 days, which is almost two years’ worth of regular leave accrual.

In the course of signing up for the tour in Qatar, I learned that this duty station does not qualify for PDMRA, but I figured that was OK. Kind of like not getting the AIP (Assignment Incentive Pay – did I ever talk about that?). That was another thing I gave up to come here. But oh, well – it’s a good deal in other ways. So no PDMRA for Qatar, but I had 18 days that I had earned in my second tour in Kuwait.

Normally you take PDMRA at the end of your tour, but sometimes people don’t get a chance. The Army had a procedure worked out for that, too. If your circumstances don’t permit you to take your PDMRA, you simply fill out a regular leave form and apply PDMRA to an earlier leave that you already took. Then you get the regular leave days reimbursed onto your LES (Leave and Earnings Statement). At first the process required a special memorandum signed by a Colonel, but they simplified the process shortly before I was scheduled to demobilize, so it was much easier to do at the unit level.

While in the process of deciding to sign up for a third tour instead of demobilizing and going home, I discussed this with our S1 (administrative section). Since I wasn’t taking leave from my old unit, but was transferring to my new unit first and taking leave from there, I didn’t really have a chance to use PDMRA as part of my original mobilization. The process outlined above would fit that scenario perfectly.

The S1 at my unit said that it was probably a bad idea to have a personnel action pending while I was in the process of transferring between units, in case things got messed up (you don’t want to screw around with pay actions if you can help it). They strongly recommended that I go ahead and transfer to my new unit and go on leave from there as planned, and then process the paperwork to recover the PDMRA when I got back. That seemed logical, so that’s what I did.

Upon my return to my new unit in Qatar, I went to the S1 to process my PDMRA. But guess what? There is a new message dated 19 September on the PDMRA policy. It is now only for soldiers who were involuntarily extended. People like me, who volunteered for additional tours, do not get it anymore.

I don’t know whether this is a change in policy or a clarification of what the policy was intended to be all along. What I do know is that a lot of people in my situation took it, and that I could have taken it before I left Kuwait.

When I left to go on leave in August I had 18 days of PDMRA coming to me, and when I came back - *poof!* - it was gone. So instead of a positive leave balance, I am now in the hole and may not have enough regular leave to go on R&R this year. In any case it’s money out of my pocket, since Reservists “sell back” unused leave at the end of a mobilization. So it cost me 18 days’ worth of base pay. :-(

The Army Giveth…and the Army Taketh Away.


Mood: Bummed
Music: Rodgau Monotones: Aetzend