Army answer for WTU problem, take in less wounded

Army thins warrior transition entrance rules

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Aug 9, 2008 8:05:01 EDT

When Army generals recently appeared before Congress to testify about staffing problems at the service’s Warrior Transition Units, they laid out several new changes to fix those problems.

But they left out a key part of the plan: It lowers staffing needs at the WTUs by freezing out thousands of wounded soldiers.

“The Army issued a Fragmentary Order on July 1, 2008, refining the entry criteria for WTUs,” Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, Army surgeon general, wrote on a medical command Web site. “Two base requirements: six months’ expected rehabilitative care and the need for complex medical management.”

But the scandal that erupted last year over mismanagement at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., showed that leaving soldiers in their own units as they go through the medical retirement process can cause problems in two ways:

• The process is delayed by line-unit personnel who don’t know how to handle medical retirement paperwork.

• First sergeants are stuck with nondeployable soldiers in deployable slots, creating an adversarial relationship between soldiers and their commands.

A recent case at Fort Lewis, Wash., shows how this can happen. A month ago, a soldier told Army Times his company has several soldiers being medically retired. He said his first sergeant told them they had better keep their noses clean or he would process them out on Article 15s because he needs deployable soldiers in their slots.

Meanwhile, the soldier said he has been assigned staff duty during times when he had out-processing briefings or medical appointments, and was told if he misses the duty, he’ll be in trouble. Then he was told he already had orders to go to the WTU — good news because he’d had to fight to get paperwork written up and signed.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/army_disabled_080908w/