At the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, in the mid-2000s, the Pentagon set up a program through the National Guard to provide cash incentives for folk to enlist or re-up. Only the program was mismanaged, enlistees were given incentives (or higher incentives) than they qualified for (so that the enlisters could meet quotas), and folk in state National Guard units went to jail or were heavily fined.
Except now the Pentagon is going after National Guardsmen who received incentives to which they weren't entitled. And going after them hard — even though they took the money and served tours of duty in good faith.
'Robert Richmond, an Army sergeant first class then living in Huntington Beach, said he reenlisted after being told he qualified for a $15,000 bonus as a special forces soldier. The money gave him “breathing room,” said Richmond, who had gone through a divorce after a deployment to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003.
In 2007, his special forces company was sent to the Iraqi town of Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad in an area known as the “Triangle of Death” because of the intense fighting. Richmond conducted hundreds of missions against insurgents over the next year. In one, a roadside bomb exploded by his vehicle, knocking him out and leaving him with permanent back and brain injuries.
He was stunned to receive a letter from California Guard headquarters in 2014 telling him to repay the $15,000 and warning he faced “debt collection action” if he failed to comply.'
This is, to put it mildly, wrong. I hope a sufficient stink is made to get the Pentagon write the whole thing off, but a lot of soldiers and vets have already gone deeply into debt to pay back some or all of the money, and have had to deal with credit issues from interest charges, wage garnishments, and tax liens.
Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war
Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.
