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Soldier pays for armor
Army demanded $700 from city man who was wounded
By Eric Eyre
Staff writer
02/07/06 "Charleston
Gazette" -- -- The last time 1st Lt.
William “Eddie” Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a
stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.
A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to
stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off
his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.
But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body
armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.
He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries. He
turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was
informed there was no record that the body armor had been
stripped from him in battle.
He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for
weeks, perhaps months.
Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and
returned home to Charleston last Friday.
“I last saw the [body armor] when it was pulled off my bleeding
body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter,” Rebrook said.
“They took it off me and burned it.”
But no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during
battle, he said. No one wrote down that armor had apparently
been incinerated as a biohazard.
Rebrook’s mother, Beckie Drumheler, said she was saddened — and
angry — when she learned that the Army discharged her son with a
$700 bill. Soldiers who serve their country, those who put their
lives on the line, deserve better, she said.
“It’s outrageous, ridiculous and unconscionable,” Drumheler
said. “I wanted to stand on a street corner and yell through a
megaphone about this.”
Rebrook was standing in the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle
when the roadside bomb exploded Jan. 11, 2005. The explosion
fractured his arm and severed an artery. A Black Hawk helicopter
airlifted him to a combat support hospital in Baghdad.
He was later flown to a hospital in Germany for surgery, then on
to Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington, D.C., for
more surgeries. Doctors operated on his arm seven times in all.
But Rebrook’s right arm never recovered completely. He still has
range of motion problems. He still has pain when he turns over
to sleep at night.
Even with the injury, Rebrook said he didn’t want to leave the
Army. He said the “medical separation” discharge was the Army’s
decision, not his.
So after eight months at Fort Hood, he gathered up his gear and
started the “long process” to leave the Army for good.
Things went smoothly until officers asked him for his “OTV,” his
“outer tactical vest,” or body armor, which was missing. A
battalion supply officer had failed to document the loss of the
vest in Iraq.
“They said that I owed them $700,” Rebrook said. “It was like
‘thank you for your service, now here’s the bill for $700.’ I
had to pay for it if I wanted to get on with my life.”
In the past, the Army allowed to soldiers to write memos,
explaining the loss and destruction of gear, Rebrook said.
But a new policy required a “report of survey” from the field
that documented the loss.
Rebrook said he knows other soldiers who also have been forced
to pay for equipment destroyed in battle.
“It’s a combat loss,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a cost passed on
to the soldier. If a soldier’s stuff is hit by enemy fire, he
shouldn’t have to pay for it.”
Rebrook said he tried to get a battalion commander to sign a
waiver on the battle armor, but the officer declined. Rebrook
was told he’d have to supply statements from witnesses to verify
the body armor was taken from him and burned.
“There’s a complete lack of empathy from senior officers who
don’t know what it’s like to be a combat soldier on the ground,”
Rebrook said. “There’s a whole lot of people who don’t want to
help you. They’re more concerned with process than product.”
Rebrook, who graduated with honors from the U.S. Military
Academy in West Point, N.Y., spent more than four years on
active duty. He served six months in Iraq.
Now, Rebrook is sending out résumés, trying to find a job. He
plans to return to college to take a couple of pre-med classes
and apply to medical school. He wants to be a doctor someday.
“From being an infantryman, I know what it’s like to hurt
people,” Rebrook said. “But now I’d like to help people.”
© Copyright 1996-2006 The Charleston Gazette
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