Anja and Bert Wray, of Summerfield, No. Carolina, needed the $1,700 owed “earlier this year when the power company threatened to turn the lights off on them and their baby daughter, Sydney.”

But Wray and hundreds of other members of the N.C. National Guard have yet to be reimbursed for “expense(s) and travel money owed them by the Department of Defense,” reports the Greensboro News-Record.

N.C. National Guard officials say that at least 400 troops are owed an average of $2,000 each, for a total of at least $800,000, but the numbers may be considerably higher.


In addition to their regular pay based on rank, length of service and type of duty, National Guardsmen called to active service are entitled to be reimbursed for authorized travel and living expenses they incur while traveling on official business.


Beyond the failure to reimburse out-ol-pocket expenses and depletion of savings, the Guard has been subjected to terrible living conditions:
The financial impact on the families:

“We completely depleted our savings,” said Bert Wray, who recently took a sales position with Carolina Tractor.


Lori Vosler said her family also spent its savings in addition to amassing a large credit card debt. Her husband took a job with Carmax, a large auto dealership, and she is preparing to go back to teaching in the fall. Anja Wray is starting her own pottery business.


Both families say they could put their $1,700 expense checks to good use. …


Why the delay?

The Defense Department’s system of travel and expense reimbursements, an “inefficient, error-prone process,” was slowed tremendously by pressure exerted by the massive mobilization of National Guard units after Sept. 11, 2001, according to a federal General Accounting Office report released in March.

The GAO found in its study of eight selected Guard units (none from North Carolina) that “numerous” soldiers experienced “significant problems” due to delayed or unpaid travel reimbursements, “including debts on their personal credit cards, trouble paying their monthly bills and inability to make child support payments.”


The GAO study noted that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service was flooded with travel vouchers in the months after Sept. 11, 2001 — increasing from less than 3,200 in October 2001 to more than 50,000 in July 2003.


Whatever the cause, Lori Vosler said suffering Guard families have waited too long for their money. …


About the living conditions:

The majority of the 30th EHSB shipped to Fort Bragg to train and await deployment to Iraq. About 1,200, however, including Vosler and Wray, were shipped to Fort Stewart, Ga., because there was not enough housing at Fort Bragg for the entire brigade.


Vosler, Wray and other members of the 30th EHSB spent almost five months at Fort Stewart waiting for their orders to Iraq. The facilities were terrible, they said. The Guard troops often had to eat MRE’s, or military field rations, rather than prepared-from-scratch mess hall meals eaten by Regular Army troops, they said.


N.C. National Guard Sgt. Sidney Baker, who served with Vosler and Wray, said living conditions for the Guard at Fort Stewart were “extremely inadequate so far as sanitation and cleanliness were concerned.”


“I’ve seen nicer conditions at shelter homes,” he said. “The Guard is treated like the bastard child in the military.”


Full article.