Soldier now fighting the Pentagon...
wounded California Guard soldier served four combat tours. Now he's fighting the Pentagon
Each month, she writes “blood money” on the $100 check — the token amount the McLains pay on the $30,000 debt they deny owing — that she sends to the Pentagon. “Shame on you. Extortion,” she writes on the envelope.
The Pentagon cashes each check.
Facing a groundswell of public outrage, the Pentagon scrambled this week to temporarily suspend its demands for thousands of California Guard soldiers to repay enlistment bonuses and other incentives they were given to go to war.
But McLain and other soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan may still be required to repay their bonuses, one of several apparent exceptions in the proposed Pentagon solution.
Two weeks before McLain left to fight in Afghanistan in early 2013 — his fourth combat tour in a decade — the National Guard garnished his entire $3,496 monthly paycheck for the enlistment bonuses it claimed he was improperly given five years earlier.
“I had nothing,” the 55-year-old retired special forces soldier recalled Thursday about leaving his wife and two stepdaughters without his salary while he went back to war. “They took every nickel.”
McLain managed to get the wage garnishment lifted, but his troubles were just beginning.
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