Posted on 10/21/2013 10:39:23 PM PDT by Nachum
You can't put a price tag on surviving a deadly attack overseas, but one Fort Hood soldier knows the cost of the helmet that saved his life all too well.
"I had a couple shrapnels in my side plates and in my helmet," Army Sergeant Michael Williams said about the gear that protected him on June 13, 2011.
Now, more than two years after the day he was wounded by an improvised explosive device in Iraq, he got a "bill" for his shrapnel-pierced helmet.
"I automatically assumed that, you know, that's the gear that I got blown up in, that I almost died in, and I lost two buddies in, and I didn't think anything of it."
A few months after the blast injured his back and head, Mike says he cleared his missing gear with supply personnel, but admits he didn't continue to regularly check on his status regarding missing gear, like he should have.
Then when he went through finance to medically retire in September, he got a statement of charges.
(Excerpt) Read more at kcentv.com ...
XB3
That’s crap. The gear can’t get DX’d?
Active Duty/Retiree Ping.
It’s a lot harder than it should be. I can still recall an incident in the aftermath of the Gulf War, where I personally saw a unit of MPs industriously smashing the lenses of their issued Steiner binoculars, because it was easier to report them as damaged in the field, than to turn them in, because Supply would ding them for every item not turned in in pristine condition.
So, this guy gets blamed for losing gear someone else apparently either stole or lost, tries to be a good guy about it, and now the unit is “looking into options” about getting his money back?
I’m thinking it’s time for someone to administer a few sharp kicks up the backside to get this resolved. At the very least, give the guy a payday advance to cover his bills until the screw-up is fixed.
This is just wrong.
This is something the Army has been screwing up for a decade. This is the kind of activity that somebody should have put a stop to a long time ago.
Who stood the cost of all the helicopters pushed over the sides of aircraft carriers after we withdrew from Vietnam?
The more things change, the more they stay the same!
In my 32 years "in harness", the REMFs were always Johnny-On-The-Spot for crap like this!
Republic of Vietnam Air Force, the owner of the helicopters at the time. The better question is whether they charge a U.S. pilot the cost of his aircraft when he gets shot down. That would certainly explain the phenomenon of a captain going down with his ship........
Why did he pay it?! A memo from his CO would make it all go away. I’d think an E5 would know better.
I was thinking about our supply sergeant when I was medevaced in 1968. The medics wanted to take my steel pot and flak jacket. The helmet was dinged and scratched, the jacket torn and bloody. I held on to them, after all I was signed for them. When I left country instead of turning them in to supply I was told to give them to my replacement.
No statement of charges.
McCain would be in debtors’ prison.
Charge a pilot? Jeez, John Mc Cain wouldn’t have two nickels left to rub together!
Speaking on behalf of the folks in supply who have people sign for equipment and then hold those in file, the guy above IN THE ARTICLE says that he didn't check.
Why exactly do we think that the guys in supply knew he had missing gear when he says himself that he didn't check on it?
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