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He lost an arm in Iraq; the Army wants money ?
Spc. Robert Loria is stuck at Fort Hood, Texas
Dianna Cahn
Times Herald-Record


LIVE CHAT: Join reporter Dianna Cahn and Christine Loria, wife of Spc. Robert Loria today at 6:30
for a live chat.

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."

Dianna Cahn

Who to call to help

Outraged about Army Spc. Robert Loria's plight? Speak
your mind. Below are contact numbers for federal
legislators and defense officials.
U.S. Senate: Hillary Clinton: 202-224-4451; Charles
Schumer: 212-486-4430 email
U.S. House of Representatives: Maurice Hinchey:
845-344-3211; Sue Kelly: 845-897-5200
Secretary of Defense: Donald Rumsfeld: 703-692-7100
Fort Hood: Major General James D. Thurman:
254-288-2255 or Fort Hood operator at 254-287-1110;
Public Information Officer Jim Whitmeyer: 254-287-0103

[redleg2]

I guess the Army wants an arm AND a leg.

[BillM]

Two of the biggest problems are at the top of the list.


U.S. Senate: Hillary Clinton: 202-224-4451;
Charles Schumer: 212-486-4430 email

Like they will really care!