I hope nobody minds if I tell our story. First allow me to say that I am not somone who complains about what my roll as a military wife would be & has been. I understood what marrying a soldier meant for me, I knew what I might be called upon to do & endure & I was/am ready, willing & able to step up & do my part. We will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary on October 7 of this year (this is a second marriage for both of us, I was married for 24 years to my first husband). Yes, I married my husband after 9/11/2001, we starte dating in March, 2001. I am boring you with these details so you know that I definitely did not go into this marriage blindly, Bishop had already done one 12 month tour in Iraq/Kuwait while stationed in Virginia, where we met, he was then transferred to Ft Stewart, GA & I came with him. I would go anywhere he went/goes whether we ever married or not, however, as you know, he did ask me to marry him & I was thrilled to become his wife, so 2 1/2 months before he left for his 2nd TDY to Iraq, I became an Army wife, by then, my husband had already served 17 years in the Army & was due to retire in Sept, 2007. This did not happen of course, due to stop loss. He went back to Iraq for his 3rd tour, this time for a 15 month tour ( I should say that with Desert Storm, he really has had more time in Iraq, but let’s just deal with the recent deployments, the one that we have been together on. Neither of us complained, this was somethingg he had to do & keeping the homefires lit & taking care of things here was something I had to do, nothing was going to change it & having a crappy attitude about it would serve no good purpose. I have such great pride in him for the years of service he has given to this country & when asked (as I often am) why did I choose to marry a soldier, especially at the time I did, the answer is always so easy. I married a man I love who also happened to be a soldier & no matter how many months or years we had to be apart due to his military career & obligations, it is all worth it just to have that man in my life for one second. I will tell you something else about the kind of soldier my husband was & the kind of man he is now that he is finally retired as of March 1, 2009. When he was stop lossed, he was given the chance to stay here in the states & be the NCOIC of Rear D. He declined, saying that there was no way he would allow his soldiers (almost all had been stop lossed) to deploy & not be right there beside them. Talk about a proud moment in a wife’s life, that was way up there on my list of proudest moments.

Now that I have really bored you with all of those facts, I will get to the subject at hand. I had never heard of stop loss until the day he told me it had happened to him (or should I say us, because in a very real sense, I was stop lossed too), but he explained what it ws, what it meant for us & we got on with our lives. He deployed again & I did the same thing I had done on previous deployments, supported him & the rest of our troops, kept the house going, paid the bills, etc & waited anxiously for my phone to ring. Then I heard about the proposed bill for stop loss pay & thought, this is good, it will really help us out financially. Did we ask for extra money or have anything to do with this proposal? Certainly not, but neither are we dumb enough to turn it down when offered, especially with the state of the economy now. See, being stop lossed affected us in more ways than just being separated forover a year again. Being stop lossed meant, as it turned out, that my husband would retire right smack-dab in the middle of the heat of a recession, when there would literally be less jobs than people needing to find one & the ones available paid just a few dollars over minimum wage & added to that, my health really started getting bad, I had a triple bypass on Christmas day 2008, got pneumonia while in the hospital & then, just one short week after being released, I went into kidney failure. I have been living with Lupus for years now, was diagnosed in late 1994/early 1995. And yet, we consider ourselves 2 of the lucky ones because, as small as it is, he does get a retirement check each month. Yes, even though the retirement check & the pay from what job he could find is much less than what he was making while in the army & even though the docs have declare me disabled & we have no idea if I will be approved for disability benefits, we do realize that things could be worse. But, the promise of this stop loss pay has made it possible for us not to stress out as much about money, or the lack thereof. It has turned the light at the end of the tunnel back on (due to financial circumstances, the light at the end of our tunnel had been turned off)& we feel like we can breathe a bit again. I DO feel like my husband deserves this pay, I think of it as overtime pay. In my career as a surgical technologist, if I worked my 40 hours a week plus another 10, then I was paid double time for those extra 10 hours, I earned that extra money & I can’t help but feel that after nearly 22 years of service, several combat awards & not one complaint about having to do any of it, my husband has earned this extra money.
I am sorry this post is so long & thank you for allowing me to post this
I also want to thank all of those that have served our great country, this includes the families who hold down the fort during these long deployments, your sacrifices do not go unnoticed.

Reese Bishop

It is law now. Read the link and stay tuned.

Thanks to CJ for allowing me to post this on here.

Thanks!

a good read to educate yourself about stop loss.

it is on the money.

to summarize, the DOD is not “required” to find you…The law says basically you have one year to get the money.

They will probably go to your last known address.

Hopefully people will get the word out.

I served my stop loss time after my 8 yr MSO as well. Did my Reserve unit need me?

HELL NO…I was an NCO and they just promoted shizbag SPC’s to SGT to get more money on deployment.

I call on CJ to get the word out after this becomes law, which it most certainly will…this benefit racks up there with VA benefits.

CJ, will you get the word out to veterans?

I am one of the ones that served 8 years ACTIVE duty before getting STOP-LOSSED. You really can’t describe what it feels like to give 8 years of your life to protect your country and then be told that you are not allowed to leave after your term is up.

My seperation date was 30SEP01, Close to 9/11 I interviewed with a company and was offered my dream job. Unbelievable salary, great benefits, this was the job that I worked VERY hard get. I had planned on getting out and starting a new job, and even getting married.

9/11 happened and I was STOP-LOSSED. All of a sudden my plans gone. I was held in for an extra year, in that time I lost the position, the company could hold it for a year, and I received orders to deploy. On top of all that, DFAS screwed up my pay and I wound up not getting paid for several of the months I was STOP-LOSSED.

Since I was the NCOIC, the command had already backfilled my position with a replacement. You ask what I did for those extra months? Pretty much nothing but watch my life go down the tubes.

No amount of money can give me my opportunities back. And 8 years of a great military career was capped off by one stupid policy. My situation was more of an inconvenience, there are others who lost their lives or were injured because of it.

I realize that the initial post was not directed at people like me, but new guys that have only served half of their active duty service commitment. Who cares? They had the guts to leave their family and friends and join the military. That decision alone takes more guts than half of the people in this country have. I applaud you and thank you from the bottom of my heart for putting your lives on the line to protect our freedom.

Your tired of the Soldiers that are whining? Well, I’m tired of people whining about benefits the military receives. I dont think they get paid enough for what they do. If I could donate my share of the “tour bonuses” I would. And maybe I will, but so far I haven’t seen a dime.

The appropriation begins on page 25.

It is only good for active duty time. Reserve component members will not receive credited time for the 90 days they HAD to serve before their stop loss induced ETS (stop loss RC members have to do an additional 90 days inactive reserve time after a stop loss mobilization)…kind of crappy, but ah well.

You can get 500 per month for any 1 day per month on stop loss on active duty.

Deceased members (God rest their soul) will receive the entitlement, through their designated representative.

I am getting $7000 before taxes. I will net about 5 G’s.

Your discharge must have been honorable. In other words, and OTH or General will not cut it.

Good luck…

Do what I have done for almost every week since I first heard about the Stop Loss payment program….search for news snippets all the time using a google search…

I’m sure DFAS and the Army will come up with a way (program) to get it to us…it took approx six months for the Army to get Stop Loss money to the soldiers who are on their pay rolls…so don’t count on it any earlier…

They need a policy first on how to find people and how to pay them,….if you are still in, then that wont be a problem, but if one is out…then that may be a problem…also people of deceased service members might also need to be found…also, my former state of Mi, where I earned the time to count for this program, doesn’t tax military income, but the sate I am in now, does…

I would keep your eyes open for when the program is ready for disbursement…

Also and most importantly, have a copy of discharge orders handy (my discharge order says I was held past my obligation due to no fault of my own (in other words, stop lossed). Find your DD214 as well.

I’m glad I begged (didn’t have too, it was already policy, but NG retards at FT Dix…anyway) my DD214 to say that I was held for 374 days past my contractual obligation…

Now is a good time to get that paperwork ready, and if you dont have it…locate it.

Knowing the Gov….they will only fund this for a year or two to find people….just a hunch…don’t wait.