Back Asswards

I just read the latest Army Times, and the weekly magazine always reaffirms my belief that the Army is more than a little screwed up. The latest "issue" is recruiting, because for all of the recruiting shortages this summer, the goals were met for October. Still, the one thing the Army DIDN''T do then was target prior service recruits. They've finally decided to do that, now offering huge bonuses and retained rank to fomer soldiers. N would have fallen into this category!! We didn't receive any bonus, and he gave up one rank when coming back in, a $300/month pay cut. So, in addition to fighting tooth and nail to get back in, getting no re-enlistment bonus while new recruits were getting record amounts of money, and not getting choice of duty station (another common "perk" for soldiers re-enlisting, our "choices" were Alaska, Korea*, or Kansas) we've lost approximately $1800 to date (N's RE-promotion should happen next month). Sometimes I really want to throttle everyone in the Dept. of the Army.

*Korea is a hardship tour, the kids and I cannot accompany. N already served there for 1 year, it wasn't tops on our list.