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Letters

Why wait on pay?

I have been in the Navy for almost 12 years and just picked up chief last year. When I found out that I made chief, I was ecstatic. But my joy is a little tainted by something that’s been bothering me since making it.

Why must I wait an entire year to get paid for chief? It just doesn’t seem right. Here I am, wearing the uniform and performing the duties of a chief petty officer for nearly a year while still getting paid as an E-6.

I work at a Marine Corps base, and it seems that almost every day that I go through the front gate, I get asked the same question: Why does my ID card say CPO/E-6? So I find myself explaining the same story every day.

In the Marine Corps, when you make gunnery sergeant, your leave and earning statement reflects the change in paygrade by the next statement.

The reason I’m not getting paid for nearly a year after pinning on the gold anchors is because I was the second-most junior guy in my rating to make it. It almost seems like a punishment to make it early, because then you are one of the last ones to get paid.

RPC (SW/SCW) Patrick Mondragon

San Diego

Disappointed by rules

When the information came out about being able to transfer benefits to your spouse in the new GI Bill, my husband and I figured, just once, the military was actually looking out for the families [“Approved: GI Bill transfers,” May 11].

We planned to have me start school in the fall, while my husband is in Japan, so I would be finished in time to get everything together for our next duty station at the end of 2011. Then I found out they want my husband to have six years of active duty under his belt before he can transfer a dime to me, and we only have 2½ years in.

By the time this contract is over we will have been in for five years, and that would still not be enough.

There has to be a better way than this. Transferability is the major selling point on getting all these kids to take the new GI Bill, so why mess with the one thing that these guys care about?

Ashley Graham

Lynnwood, Wash.

Better evals, not boards

When the master chief petty officer of the Navy thinks we need to convene a “trim the fat” chiefs’ continuation board, then obviously there are too many chiefs on active duty in certain ratings and the personnel managers are not doing their jobs [“Career risk for chiefs,” April 20].

If a CPO is substandard, it shouldn’t take a continuation board [to remove him]; rather, it should be a matter of marking “not recommended for promotion/re-enlistment” on two successive evaluations, and release is automatic.

Lt. j.g. Stephen McNally (ret.)

Wetumpka, Ala.

Witness to sacrifice

We, as a nation, need to see the cost of these conflicts that were so easily gotten into and so devastatingly hard to extract from [“Unwelcome access,” Back Talk, April 20]. We need to see the caskets and recount their sacrifices simply because many Americans still do not grasp the sacrifices made on their behalf. Please remember that we were told after the attack on Sept. 11 to “go shopping.”

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Joseph Fernandez states that “the Defense Department releases the names of the fallen once their families have been informed. Additionally, several media outlets, including Navy Times, maintain casualty lists and comprehensive Web pages that show photos of the dead along with other biographical information. That should be sufficient.”

Wrong. Today’s headline is tomorrow’s forgotten story. Although Iraq and Afghanistan are still news stories, we are only getting less than five minutes of information on the evening news. The economy has taken front and center.

He also states that “those who do not know anyone in the military, who have not been personally affected by these wars, have no right to vicariously participate in the anguish of a family who has.”

Wrong again. How do you think the protest against the Vietnam War grew? Part of that was seeing the war coming to your living room, to see what is really involved and not take the Pentagon’s word for it.

I dare say that the citizens of this nation have a responsibility to see these things. This is a way we can stop some politician from getting us involved in something that we do not have a need to get involved in.

Coast Guard CWO2 Nicholas Pusloskie (ret.)

Topeka, Kan.

Limit access to stores

While I applaud the efforts of Rep. Dan Burton, who wants to open up all military stores to anyone receiving disability payments, he needs to rethink this [“More access to military stores?” Fast Track, April 27].

Those who are rated 100 percent disabled already have this privilege. Doing this will open up a lot of hard feelings among those of us who did 20 years or more. I think it should be just for those with 50 percent disability and above.

BMCM (SW) T.C. Oneyear (ret.)

Elizabeth City, N.C.

Uniform rollout folly

Sailors in Naval District Washington and across the fleet want the Navy Working Uniform now. They don’t want to wait for the rollout — they want to go out of their way to get it. So why not allow them to travel out of the area to purchase the uniform?

I did. I went to Norfolk, Va., on Jan. 15 to get the uniform so that I could show it to my chain of command and inform them that I would be happy to show off the uniform, wear it properly and abide by the new standards and instruct the sailors in my command on how to wear it. I was willing to follow the guidelines to the letter. I even spoke with uniform matters to get the information and literature on how to wear it.

I did all I can do as a proactive leading petty officer, but I was stopped by my chain of command. I hung the uniform up in my office so that my junior personnel who were transferring to Norfolk could see what the uniform looked like before they left. I was told to take it down; my chief was tired of looking at it.

When the service uniform first came out, my chief told me that I could wear the uniform as long as I did it properly and professionally, and as I introduced it to my juniors, it would be up to me to make sure they were wearing it correctly or I would be held accountable. I took this challenge, and my entire division is the first division in my command to be 100 percent in the new service uniform.

I tried to be proactive with the NWU, and I was stopped before I started. What makes the NWU so different than the SU? The Navy has approved a new uniform; the sailors in NDW want to wear it.

IS1 (SW/AW) Grant Miles

Fredericksburg Va.