The Broken Soldier

I’m pretty jacked up.  After 16 months of this, jacked up isn’t a new state of being.  But with ADME orders, and what they mean, there’s resolution of part of that feeling: Ambivalence.  With all the shit the Army and the Guard have pulled, part of me still wanted to be part of these organizations.  I was willing to fight to stay in, even if that meant I couldn’t commission.  But no longer.

By regulation, the Army must make a retention decision within 90 days of initiating ADME orders.  Though my orders haven’t popped, they’re going to be dated 3 June 2008.  Unless they - the docs responsible for my medical board and the people at my state,  play fast and loose with retention standards and loose with the language of my contract, I really can’t be kept.  By med board or by failure to train me - resulting in a breech of contract (unless I consent to being trained in something else, which I will not do) and “discharge without board or further action (the language of my contract),” the end is the same.  I have several injuries/illnesses secondary to the initial injury, itself ratable between 10-100%, that rate around 60% each, and there’s no way the Guard can meet its contractual obligations to me.  If I had reason to believe I’d be treated fairly, I would elect to stay, but past experience gives me no reason to expect that will happen.

While my career ending this way, really before it began, is discouraging to say the least, it’s also something of a relief.  The military, or at least the Army, isn’t the military I left ten years ago.  It’s not the military my family members served in.  And while there has been some effort to remedy the problems that brought me here, it’s too little too late.  The damage is done.  The ambivalence I once felt is gone.  Gone because I know retention the right way is no longer an option.