- MIDDLETOWN - He lost his
arm serving his country in Iraq.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- After several more months, the Army is releasing Loria.
But "clearing Fort Hood," as the troops say, takes paperwork.
Lots of it.
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- Loria thought he'd done it all, and was getting ready
to collect $4,486 in final Army pay.
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- Then he was hit with another bomb. The Army had another
tally - of money it says Loria owed to his government.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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."
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- "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."
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- At home in Middletown, yesterday, Loria's wife, Christine,
was beside herself.
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- "They want us to sacrifice more," she said,
her voice quavering. "My husband has already sacrificed more than
he should have to."
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- 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.
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- But the Army has delayed Loria's release at least
five times already, she said, leaving a little boy confused and angry.
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- "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?"
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- 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."
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- But the Army brass has been unreceptive, she said.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- Army officials at Fort Hood could not be reached for
comment yesterday.
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- "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."
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- The End Of Her Rope
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- Their reaction she said, was "very mature."
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- "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.
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- "Because on some level, he still respects you,"
she answered. "I don't have that problem."
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- Who To Call For Help
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- 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
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- http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/12/10/abandon1.htm
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