But no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during battle, he said. No one wrote down that armor had apparently been incinerated as a biohazard.
This makes the combat loss Report of Survey even simpler. A couple telephone interviews and it's a done deal.
Give me a copy of your Purple Heart citation, sergeant, it has the date and circumstances of your injury. A phone call to the dustoff unit later, I'd find out if it was their general SOP to burn equipment that they considered biohazard. Voila! The armor is a combat loss, no pecuniary liability to the soldier.
It was part of our unit's SOP in Iraq to write off equipment that was "combat-loss, unrecoverable". Unfortunately, I signed a bunch of these. Usually something blown off a vehicle or burned/destroyed by enemy fire. If this kid went through a BAS, they cut everything off him and bagged it. We were required to send body armor and Kevlar helmets with the casualty for examination. Vests were never burned at our (BN TF) level.
Quick report of survey, and it's done...there is more to this story...
Regards,