Support Our Troops---Then Send Them the Bill

This is one of the stories that you really can't believe, so I'm putting it up here to see what the reaction is. If I want to bring the troops home, I'm not supporting them according to the government. So what the fuck is this?


(via the Charleston Gazette):

The last time 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.

A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook's right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.

But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries. He turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was informed there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle.

He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks, perhaps months.

Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday.

"I last saw the [body armor] when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter," Rebrook said. "They took it off me and burned it."

I'm really hoping the publicity about this gets this poor kid his money back. I mean, we can flush big bucks down the Halliburton cess pool, but we've gotta squeeze this guy for $700?