He lost an arm in Iraq; the Army wants money
Spc. Robert Loria is stuck at Fort Hood, Texas
By Dianna Cahn
Times Herald-Record
[email protected]
Middletown He lost his arm serving his country in Iraq.
Now this wounded soldier is being discharged from his company in
Fort Hood, Texas, without enough gas money to get home. In fact,
the Army says 27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to
$2,000, and confiscated his last paycheck.
"There's people in my unit right now one of my team leaders [who
was] over in Iraq with me, is doing everything he can to help me
.... but it's looking bleak," Loria said by telephone from Fort
Hood yesterday. "It's coming up on Christmas and I have no way of
getting home."
Loria's expected discharge yesterday came a day after the public
got a rare view of disgruntled soldiers in Kuwait peppering Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with questions about their lack of
adequate armor in Iraq.
Like many soldiers wounded in Iraq, Loria's injuries were caused by
a roadside bombing. It happened in February when his team from the
588th Battalion's Bravo Company was going to help evacuate an area
in Baqubah, a town 40 miles north of Baghdad. A bomb had just
ripped off another soldier's arm. Loria's Humvee drove into an
ambush.
When the second bomb exploded, it tore Loria's left hand and
forearm off, split his femur in two and shot shrapnel through the
left side of his body. Months later, he was still recuperating at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and just
beginning to adjust to life without a hand, when he was released
back to Fort Hood.
AFTER SEVERAL MORE MONTHS, the Army is releasing Loria. But
"clearing Fort Hood," as the troops say, takes paperwork. Lots of
it.
Loria thought he'd done it all, and was getting ready to collect
$4,486 in final Army pay.
Then he was hit with another bomb. The Army had another tally of
money it says Loria owed to his government.
A Separation Pay Worksheet given to Loria showed the numbers:
$2,408.33 for 10 months of family separation pay that the Army
erroneously paid Loria after he'd returned stateside, as a patient
at Walter Reed; $2,204.25 that Loria received for travel expenses
from Fort Hood back to Walter Reed for a follow-up visit, after the
travel paperwork submitted by Loria never reached the correct desk.
And $310 for missing items on his returned equipment inventory
list.
"There was stuff lost in transportation, others damaged in the
accident," Loria said of the day he lost his hand. "When it went up
the chain of command, the military denied coverage."
Including taxes, the amount Loria owed totaled $6,255.50. The last
line on the worksheet subtracted that total from his final Army
payout and found $1,768.81 "due us."
"It's nerve-racking," Loria said. "After everything I have done,
it's almost like I am being abandoned, like, you did your job for
us and now you are no use. That's how it feels."
AT HOME in Middletown, yesterday, Loria's wife, Christine, was
beside herself.
"They want us to sacrifice more," she said, her voice quavering.
"My husband has already sacrificed more than he should have
to."
For weeks now, Christine has been telling her 3-year-old son,
Jonathan, that Robbie, who is not his birth father, will be coming
home any day now.
But the Army has delayed Loria's release at least five times
already, she said, leaving a little boy confused and angry.
"Rob was supposed to be here on Saturday," she said. "Now
[Jonathan] is mad at me. How do you explain something you yourself
don't understand?"
Christine said the Department of Veterans Affairs has been helpful
in giving Loria guidance about how to get his life back on track,
offering vocation rehabilitation to "teach them to go back out in
the world with the limitations they have."
But the Army brass has been unreceptive, she said.
The Lorias also contacted the offices of U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton,
D-N.Y., and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Saugerties. Hinchey's office
responded.
"There's enough to go on here to call the Army on it and see if it
can get worked out," said Hinchey aide Dan Ahouse. "We are
expressing to the Pentagon that based on what we see here, we don't
see that Mr. Loria is being treated the way we think our veterans
returning from Iraq should be treated."
Army officials at Fort Hood could not be reached for comment
yesterday.
"I don't want this to happen to another family," Christine Loria
said. "Him being blown up was supposed to be the worst thing, but
it wasn't. That the military doesn't care was the worst."
The end of her rope
Christine Loria was at the end of her rope earlier this
week when she called her wounded husband's commanders at Fort Hood,
Texas, and gave them a piece of her mind.
The Army was discharging her husband, Robert, after he lost his arm
and suffered other severe injuries in Iraq, without even gas money
to drive his car home.
"I am up here and he's there. That's 1,800 miles away," she said.
"I had to call his chain of command and scream at them."
Their reaction she said, was "very mature."
"If he feels that way, why is his wife talking for him? Why doesn't
he come talk to us himself?" she remembers them asking her.
"Because on some level, he still respects you," she answered. "I
don't have that problem."
