Stop-loss orders tie hands of Army soldiers

Washington Post

Chief Warrant Officer Ronald Eagle, an expert on enemy targeting, served 20 years in the military — 10 years of active duty in the Air Force, another 10 in the West Virginia National Guard. Then he decided enough was enough. He owned a promising new aircraft-maintenance business, and it needed his attention. His retirement date was set for February.

Members of the 2nd Battalion, 103rd Armored Division of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard await transportation from Berwick, Pa., to Fort Indiantown Gap and then on to Iraq. At right, Spc. Jeffery Banks embraces his wife, Jennifer. Associated Press

Staff Sgt. Peter G. Costas, an interrogator in an intelligence unit, joined the Army Reserve in 1991, extended his enlistment in 1999 and then re-upped for three years in 2000. Costas, a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Texas, was due to retire from the Reserve in May.

According to their contracts, expectations and desires, all three soldiers should have been civilians by now. But Fontaine and Costas are serving in Iraq, and Eagle has just been deployed. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 — the payroll computer's way of saying, "Who knows?"

The three are among thousands of soldiers forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.

"It reflects the fact that the military is too small, which nobody wants to admit," said Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a leading military sociologist.

To the Pentagon, stop-loss orders are a finger in the dike — a tool to halt the hemorrhage of personnel, and maximize cohesion and experience, for units in the field in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Through a series of stop-loss orders, the Army has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and Reserve members who were eligible to leave the service last year. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were briefly blocked from retiring or departing the military at some point last year.

The Army is expected to announce more stop-loss orders affecting troops in Iraq. It is not known how many troops would be affected.

Army Sgt. Earnest Lowe of the 276th Engineer Battalion says goodbye to his daughter, Whitney, before deploying from Virginia. Associated Press

"Our goal is, we want to have units that are stabilized all the way down from the lowest squad up through the headquarters elements," said Brig. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, director of enlisted personnel management in the Army's Human Resources Command. "Stop-loss allows us to do that. When a unit deploys, it deploys, trains and does its missions with the same soldiers."

In a recent profile of an Army infantry battalion deployed in Kuwait and on its way to Iraq, the commander, Lt. Col. Karl Reed, told the Army Times he could have lost a quarter of his unit in the coming year had it not been for the stop-loss order. "And that means a new 25 percent," Reed said. "I would have had to train them and prepare them to go on the line. Given where we are, it will be a 24-hour combat operation; therefore it's very difficult to bring new folks in and integrate them."

To many of the soldiers whose retirements and departures are on ice, however, stop-loss is an inconvenience, a hardship and, in some cases, a personal disaster. Some are resigned to fulfilling what they consider their patriotic duty. Others are livid, insisting they have fallen victim to a policy that amounts to an unannounced, unheralded draft.

"I'm furious. I'm aggravated. I feel violated. I feel used," said Eagle, 42, who has just shipped to Iraq with his field artillery unit for what is likely to be a yearlong tour of duty. He had voluntarily postponed his retirement at his commander's request early last year and then suddenly found himself stuck in the service under a stop-loss order during the fall.

Eagle said he fears his fledgling business in West Virginia may not survive his absence. His unexpected extension in the Army will slash his annual income by about $45,000, he said. And some members of his family, including his recently widowed sister, whose three teenage sons are close to Eagle, are bitterly opposed to his leaving.

"An enlistment contract has two parties, yet only the government is allowed to violate the contract; I am not," said Costas, 42, who signed an e-mail from Iraq last month "Chained in Iraq," which reflects that he and his fellow reservists remained in Baghdad after the active-duty unit into which they were transferred last spring went home. He has now been told that he will be home in late June, more than a year after his contractual departure date.

Other soldiers retained by the Army under stop-loss are more resigned than irate, but no less demoralized by what some have come to regard as their involuntary servitude.

"Unfortunately, I signed the dotted line saying I'm going to serve my country," said Fontaine, 27, who said he spent "20 or 30 days" fruitlessly researching legal ways that he could quit the Army when his contractual departure date came up in February. "All I can do is suck it up and take it till I can get out."

The military's interest in halting the depletion of its ranks predates the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. American GIs in World War II were under orders to serve until the fighting was finished, plus six months.

Congress approved the authority for what became known as stop-loss orders after the Vietnam War, responding to concerns that the military had been hamstrung by the out-rotations of seasoned combat soldiers in Indochina. But the authority was not used until the buildup to the Persian Gulf War in 1990 when Dick Cheney, then the secretary of defense, allowed the military services to bar most retirements and prolong enlistments indefinitely.

A flurry of stop-loss orders was issued after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, intensifying as the nation prepared for war in Iraq early last year. Some of the orders have applied to soldiers, sailors and airmen in specific skill categories — military police, for example, and ordnance-control specialists, have been in particular demand in Iraq.

The proliferation of stop-loss orders has bred confusion and resentment even as it has helped preserve what the military calls "unit cohesion." In the past two years, the Army has announced 11 stop-loss orders — an average of one every nine or 10 weeks.

Frequently, the military response to griping about stop-loss is bluntly unsympathetic.

"We're all soldiers. We go where we're told," said Maj. Steve Stover, an Army spokesman. "Fair has nothing to do with it."