The Army Times just published a story about the apparent inequities in how the services compare service to service and officer to enlisted when it comes to disability ratings for disability retirements. The article is weak in the presentation of it's analysis because they don't give enough data to evaluate their conclusions, though I one I do accept, and easily, is that officers fare better in the system because they are better able to represent their own interests.

When the Army health care system, optimized for dealing with generally healthy 18-27 year old males, *and* traumatic injury, finally got around to diagnosing my non-standard set of symptoms (hey, it only took them... 5 years to get it right - and then only because I kept fighting about it, in the meantime killing my career as the conditions progressed, untreated) I was finally told that I was automatically unfit for further service and I would be boarded. Boarded in Army usage is not the nautical term - except that in the end, being boarded can result in the ship of your life being taken over by others. Boarded means heading for a Medical Review Board, which will determine your fitness for further service, and make permanent (if appeal-able) decisions about what level of disability will be awarded, whether the rating will allow you to continue in service, and, if not, at what rate you will get medically retired.

It's a crap shoot. Especially if you are not otherwise qualified for retirement, as I was, which gave me more flexibility and leverage. Did I mention the process, back then, in peacetime, could take up to 18 months, during which time you are in professional limbo?

The other option is a VA disability rating. Which you can only get after you get off of active duty. Which is also a... crap shoot. And, in my case, took.... two years to get adjudicated. I will caveat that by saying that not all VA regions are the same, and mine, the Wichita, Kansas office, was widely regarded by the Veteran's Service Reps nationwide (I dealt with them in three different regions) as being the most inefficient of the lot. Recent experience of newly retired guys in my area indicate they've knocked it down to about a year.

This is my situation. I got diagnosed with a condition that is pretty much automatic retirement. The other wear and tear is annoying, but I'm still considered serviceable if unpromotable. That wouldn't be so bad, except my performance is such I keep getting put in the higher-level positions, rode hard, then put up wet, which does wonders for my morale. But those are bitter posts for another time... 8^ D

I'm told that because I'm undeployable, I'll be removed from my interesting if frustrating position as a WMD response planner, and moved into the Med Hold Company, where the local hospital types will find things for me to do, oh, like inventorying stuff, conducting AR 15-6 investigations (whee! they had a captive field grade!) and other soul-destroying projects, for up to 18 months, when they'd finally retire me. Because even with an incontrovertible slam-dunk set of conditions like I had, since I wasn't conveniently in a wheelchair or missing limbs or anything obvious, they would have to *duplicate* the testing already done as a second opinion, then swirl it all together in a Number 10 mayonnaise jar and put it on the front porch of Funk and Wagnalls to sit for a while as they pondered their collective navels (after all, the Board is an ad-hoc group with a small permanent staff - kinda like a jury) and then would tell me... okay! You retire, at 50%, and you will have to come back every five years for a re-evaluation, and if you've improved, we'll recall you to active duty to finish out your time, after which you can do a regular retirement.

Joy.

Doing that would also take me out to 21.5 years.

I had a different option. I had already dropped my retirement papers. I told them that and they said... oh, well, we'll have to pull those so we can board you.

This is where being an officer helps.

I said - "Um, no." What you'll do is just not file a freaking thing, I'll go on terminal leave in 1.5 months, and fully retire three months after that.

"No! We have to board you!"

"Why?"

"Because, well, because it's what the book says we have to do."

"Uh-huh. So? The useful point of that to the defense of Western Civilization and the US Treasury would be...?" (being completely unpromotable gives the Grey Major a certain verbal latitude with Colonels...)

"Well, if you do a regular retirement they could recall you to active duty!"

Heh.

"And there'd be a physical involved, right? One involving my medical records?"

"Oh. Well, yes."

"Good! We're agreed then, and I'll just retire and go fiddle with the VA, right, sir?"

"Excellent idea! Though I could use a field grade for that project I have in mind..."

I beat a hasty retreat and retired.

And then started my adventure with the VA. Which started on Clinton's watch and ended on Bush's.

The nightmare is truly purely 'Murican Bureaucratic. Too bad Grant Woods is dead - there's a painting in there somewhere...