and was the extra pay in Poland correct? Perhaps they are saying he was overpaid? Is Poland officially a combat zone, or a location for which extra pay is paid? If not, they are probably correcting an erroneous overpayment.
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In any case, they are doing a terrible job of explaining what happened.
Your State Veterans Affair office is your best friend. See them.
It was standard rules around 2016, that if you deployed to Poland and were getting ‘separate rations payment’....that stopped and everyone got a meal-card (eating at the mess hall or provided a meal), and roughly $3.50 a day for TDY pay. At some point, prior to 2016....the rule was that you kept your ‘separate rations payment’ and were paid $17.50 a day.
You can add it up for plan ‘A’ (Sep Rats was around $360 a month for a enlisted guy) and the TDY pay amounted to around $525, so that equals near $885. Once you passed over into new deal, it amounted to roughly $105.
My guess is that this kid was in some group that deployed and got plan ‘A’ rates, but the rule had changed and the Army came to realize for that period of time....he’d made at least $3k to $6k more.
This is one of the more significant problems in deploying and something that you really began to see increase in the 1990s, with so many deployment sites, differing rules from service to service, and constant changes going on. I saw the AF send folks to a mid-east site (early 80s) which consisted of a 5-star hotel, free meals at the hotel, free laundry services, and still paid out $110 a day TDY pay. I thought that was ridiculous.