The Armpit of Virginia: Also Known as Ft. Lee

I feel the need to preface what I have to say here with this statement: I am grateful for the military and all they do to protect our country. I am also grateful to the people who helped John during this nightmare of bureaucracy. But I also feel the need to say that there are a number of people in the military who probably wouldn't last long in the private sector because they are lazy, stupid, power hungry gasbags. So here goes....

After a week of vague half-answers and laziness on the part of a few sergeants, John finally received some worthwhile information today. Of course, this information came after making repeated phone calls to military personnel OUTSIDE Ft. Lee - namely the Ohio National Guard organization. It seems that he finally caught the attention of someone fairly high up in the military's chain of command and that person promptly called Ft. Lee to find out what the hold up was. Turns out, there was no good reason anyone could come up with for not letting John outprocess and go home. From an outsider's point of view (outside the military anyway), it looks like this whole mess could have been prevented if a certain sergeant (or two) had pulled themselves up, dusted their lazy asses off and actually did their assigned jobs. In fact, after these phone calls were made, a certain sergeant actually threatened to keep him there longer....just because he could. (Well, now he can't because this particular case has been removed from his duties.) It seems that he was angry that someone higher up than him found out that he screwed up and was actually making him do his job. I wonder how long he would last if he had a job in the real world instead of being cushioned and protected by the military.

Anyway, John is going to (hopefully) be able to outprocess on October 25th. That doesn't mean he'll be home on that date. That's just the first available date the lieutenant could give him. Outprocessing isn't rocket science - its an appointment that involves signing a bunch of paperwork and takes about 30 minutes.  After outprocessing, a soldier is set up with a plane ticket home and that's that. Today John was told that his situation was a "discrepancy". Even the military personnel that I spoke to today through the National Guard said they had never seen this before - and it was most definitely NOT John's fault in any way, shape or form.

So that's it - that's our tax dollars at work. Ineptitude at its finest. Thanks alot, Ft. Lee.