Alone and Adrift in the Army

Tuesday 29 September 2009
0800

The Army does not do a very good job taking care of individually-mobilized reserve component soldiers. How do I know? Because I am one, and I am alone and adrift in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

The Army does a pretty good job of managing active-component soldiers through their assignments. It is also set up to do a pretty good job of mobilizing and demobilizing entire reserve component units. But when it comes to individual reservists who are mobilized and sent to fill augmentation positions in deployed units, the system leaves a lot to be desired.

When I was first mobilized I was pretty impressed with the thoroughness of the process. There were times when certain actions were duplicated and other times when people in various positions had incomplete or contradictory information, but on the whole it was pretty straightforward and got me overseas within a couple weeks after I reported for duty. It was after I had been deployed for awhile that I began to realize just how loose, disorganized, and dysfunctional the system for managing reserve personnel actions is for those of us serving on active duty.

The problem has many contributing causes, which probably makes it very hard to fix. First of all, there are different and incompatible systems for tracking personnel records in the Active Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard. Access to these systems is restricted, and there is not always someone (in fact there is rarely ever *anyone*) in an active component unit who has access to the Reserve System to update it properly. It’s not that the personnel people can’t get access – but they rotate in and out of their positions so fast that they either don’t have time or don’t have the training or their login id doesn’t work or it’s not their responsibility or who knows what – there’s always some reason why your records don’t get updated properly.

Much more serious than the relatively simple problem of people having access to the automated record systems is the fact that nobody really knows what they are supposed to do to take care of you. Or perhaps it might be more correct to say that everybody knows exactly what to do, but the things they “know” are often inconsistent or even directly contradictory. There is such a maze of regulations, policies, messages, and SOPs that nobody can possibly know it all, and people come and go so fast that nobody ever knows everything about their own job, much less your personal history with the unit – the person who was here when you got here is gone before you leave, and the new person may or may not know what the last one knew. The answer you get depends upon who you ask and when you ask them, so assuming you can get someone to pay attention in the first place, it comes down to deciding who to believe.

The problem manifests itself through a whole panoply of personnel actions including evaluations, awards, promotions, pay and entitlements, leave, etc. . I have had a number of them affect me and soldiers who worked with me. For example, when trying to update the various awards and service ribbons I am supposed to have (which are important when preparing for a promotion board) I was told that all the Reserve personnel actions were the responsibility of my “home unit”, and so they refused to update my records. But since I was mobilized and cross-leveled into the deployed active component unit, that unit *was* my home – my former unit didn’t even have access to my records any more, much less know what awards and ribbons I was supposed to have.

The bottom line is that as an individually-mobilized reserve soldier, you are on your own when it comes to taking care of your records and your personnel actions. Nobody cares about it as much as you do, and if you want to ensure it’s done you have to really work at it. While this is always true to a certain extent, and it’s always a good idea to have a handle on your personnel file being up to date, in this particular situation it’s really up to you alone.

I really feel for the lower-ranking soldiers who are in this situation. At least I have the experience to know what questions to ask, and enough rank to get people’s attention from time to time. What happens to a private or specialist who gets tossed into the maelstrom? I wonder how many veterans are out there with incomplete or messed-up records or missing pay and entitlements, unable to get their problems fixed, or who just gave up in disgust.

Why am I writing about this now? Well, for the past three months I have known that I had a follow on assignment to Germany (since 24 June, to be exact). Since that date, I have been going through the process of trying to get orders, and now that my tour here is almost ended I am trying to work through the process of getting out of here and over there. Needless to say, it’s messed up. You really couldn’t make up some of the things that have happened (unless perhaps you were Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller).

In order to get mobilized and come over to the Middle East, I had to be released by my home unit (Eighth Army, CONUS). I filled out the necessary forms, got the commander’s permission, and was cross-leveled to USARCENT (Third Army), mobilized, and sent over here in 2006. When I extended my original mobilization in 2007, it was relatively easy – USARCENT just cut an extension order. When I decided to extend again in 2008, they had to go through a different process to put me on a status called COADOS – Contingency Operation, Active Duty Operational Support (this used to be called COTTAD – Contingency Operation Temporary Tour of Active Duty). That was also pretty straightforward. So I am currently on COADOS orders that end in a month.

After I decided to look for a tour in Germany and was accepted for an assignment on June 24, I began the process again. But this time it is different because I am changing to a new Army Service Component Command (ASCC). I am transferring from USARCENT to USAREUR (US Army Europe). For this reason they made me fill out a new DA Form 1058-R, and said I had to have my home unit commander’s signature again. OK, no problem.

Except that when I went to get that signature, I found out that my home unit was deactivated last fall and no longer exists. This kind of thing happens, of course, but wouldn’t you think they’d notify the soldiers in the unit that their unit no longer existed? Nobody told me. So I needed a signature from the commander of a unit that no longer existed. I needed to find out who “owned” me now. I found an officer who had been in the unit. He was about to retire, but he thought that all the people who had been in the Eighth Army (CONUS) and were mobilized and cross-leveled at the time it was deactivated had been sent to a certain other reserve unit in Indiana. He gave me some potential contacts.

I contacted the unit in Indiana, and the commander told me he’d take care of me, no problem. A couple of days later, however, he got back in contact with me. There was a problem after all – unlike others from Eighth Army who had been reassigned to them, I was not assigned to their unit - they could not find me on their books. He looked me up in a reserve personnel system, and told me I was assigned to “something called the Third Army Augmentation Company at FT McPherson, Georgia”. Surprise! That’s the unit I currently belong to in the active component. What’s going on here?

A little background: When you mobilize into USARCENT (Third Army) as an individual reserve component augmentee, you are first assigned to the Augmentation Company of the Special Troops Battalion (STB). They process your paperwork and help you through the mobilization process at FT Benning. (I described this process in detail back when I first started this blog in 2006). As far as I know, the entire raison’d’etre for this unit is to take care of the reserve component soldiers in USARCENT. I don’t know exactly what they do, but they sure as hell don’t take care of me. I’ve been mobilized in USARCENT for three years and with rare exceptions I never even heard from them until fairly recently, after I started agitating my way through this process of getting orders. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the story…

I contacted the STB Augmentation Company and after some back-and-forth I found that I am in fact assigned to them. What I did not know before was that they are actually a reserve component unit themselves – they are part of an active component formation, but I guess since their mission is to take care of reserve soldiers they are a reserve unit. This made it clear why the Army just moved me over there (on paper) when my home unit was deactivated. It just would have been nice if someone would have told me about it. (Hypothetical question: what would have happened to all the personnel actions that my “home unit” was supposed to do if I hadn’t insisted they get taken care of here, and I went home and there was no unit?). Anyway, no harm no foul – I’d only lost a few days’ time figuring this out. So now I needed the signature of the Augmentation Company Commander on my 1058-R to request my orders, and I’d be in business.

GONG!

“Sorry, but we don’t sign 1058-R’s for soldiers requesting orders to other commands. You have to demobilize first and go back to your home unit.” “But you *are* my home unit.” “Sorry, that’s our policy”. So I went through some back and forth for awhile between USARCENT and USAREUR trying to figure out how to get the form signed. USAREUR couldn’t process my request for orders and send it to DA without a signature, and my unit wouldn’t sign it until I got out and went back to…them (?). It was nuts.

One suggested solution was to transfer out of the USARCENT Augmentation Company and go to the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Once in the IRR, I would be a “free agent” and could sign my own request for orders. So I initiated that process. The only problem was that the Augmentation Company said I could not do this while mobilized. I had to wait until I was demobilized to get to the IRR, which I was only doing so that I could get a signed DA Form 1058-R while mobilized since I couldn’t get them to sign it until I was demobilized…this was too much.

I filed an IG complaint. The IG (Inspector General) is an office in every major command whose job, among other things, is a sort of “complaint department” of last resort when something is messed up. So I called the IG’s office in Kuwait and told them my situation. They told me what I had to do (fill out a form, naturally), and send it in. This was on a Saturday morning.

On the following Monday I got a call – no problem, everything was signed, my request for transfer to the IRR was in process and my DA 1058-R was signed by the commander. Fill out this and that, include this to complete the packet, and my request for orders was in. It had taken six or seven weeks instead of the week or so that it should have, but at least it got done. Good thing I started early! Now to wait for orders.

There’s more.

You see, in the Army *everything* revolves around orders. Nothing is official without them, and nothing happens without them. So until my new orders come, I am on my old orders. Those orders say that my tour ends on 31 October. If my new orders don’t come by then, I am off active duty, not being paid, and certainly not authorized to be in the war zone. The normal process is that you start out-processing over here, get transported back to FT Benning a week to ten days before your orders end, and go through the demobilization process. This involves quite a bit of administrative work with finance, medical personnel, and supply. A big part of it is turning in all the equipment they issued me when I mobilized.

Here’s the thing that doesn’t make sense – my new orders are to start the day after these orders end – 1 Nov. So I will have no break in service, but remain on continuous active duty. The big question all along has been whether I have to go back to FT Benning to demobilize and then remobilize, or whether I can simply go straight from one assignment to the next. It seems to me that this would save the government a substantial amount of money in travel as well as keep me here working for a couple extra weeks before I get on the plane to Germany. But nobody really seems to know how it’s supposed to work – there are as many different answers as there are people to talk to.

I have been told everything from “You have to go back and turn everything in” to “You go straight to your next assignment and keep everything until you demobilize for the final time”, and many variations in between. It makes it hard to plan how to wrap up here and get ready to travel. Where do I send my stuff? When do I start out-processing?

If I am to send my equipment back to FT Benning, it’s really time to do it now. If I’m supposed to keep it, that would be easy, I can just ship it to Germany. Some folks have said I should turn it in here (all of it or only part of it, depending upon whom I talk to). Yesterday I spent the afternoon repacking all my issued equipment according to what kind of item it is, and whether I turn it in under various circumstances (ETS, PCS, etc). So now I have three different duffel bags, of which I will ship, keep, or turn in some combination depending upon what the final answer is.

Which gets me back to the title of this entry. I still don’t have orders, and I still don’t have answers. I am trying simultaneously to do my job here and prepare to leave, but the date, destination, and process are unknown, and there’s nobody who seems to know the answers. I am in the Army, but alone and adrift.

Mood: Stressed
Music: Bobby Horton, Homespun Songs of Vicksburg - Poor Wayfaring Soldier