Now that I'm finally getting settled into our new house, Rich and I decided we would send for his belongings that are in the Army's storage in California so I could have the house all ready for him when he comes home. I called them on Monday to have it all shipped and the woman I spoke to in the transportation office told me I'd have to fax them a letter of intent, a copy of his orders, the moving orders and my power of attorney. So I sent all of that to her and waited.
Tuesday morning I got a call from a man in the transportation office who told me I didn't have the right to have our things delivered until Rich gets his separation orders from the Army, which won't be until October. On top of that, he said Rich's deployment orders only allowed him to store up to 400 lbs, not his entire household, and we weren't entitled to household storage at all. I explained to this ass-hat that my husband had been out of the Army for 2 1/2 years on a medical discharge, was on disability for that injury, had been in the IRR since and got called back and deployed 4 months before it was up and he would have been out for good. The Army sent us to the Air Force base in LA because it was the closest base to us to do the processing. Rich had orders to allow us to store our household goods,so they told us to store everything because we couldn't afford our California house on his Army pay and I was moving home until we had a permanent post where we could get housing. They told us that it would either be sent to our on-post house when we moved in, or in the case that he was deployed and I was not eligible for on-post housing, they would send it to our civilian address. The guy said his old orders didn't matter any more because he had newer ones, even though the initial orders were the ones that allowed us to store everything. I explained the logical fallacy in his argument and also that there had clearly been a mistake in the deployment orders, that the original storage order had been left out. I told him to talk to a superior and get back to me with a solution or I would. He very quickly said he'd call back and got off the phone.
Think this is all going to work out logically? Oh no. This morning is when it all blew up. The lady who called me at 9am this morning, the transportation liaison for the entire east coast (guess I really did scare the little office peon), said that not only was she not going to send our belongings but that we didn't have a right to store our property at all because we were married. She said because we made the application for the storage before we we're married but our things were stored afterword, there might be a fine line we can tread but that they may charge us for the storage and shipping of our things. I repeated what I had told the guy from the day before and that the transportation people said nothing about the fact that we got married after we made the moving application being a problem, but only that we had to move Rich's car at our own expense. They even had a copy of our marriage license in order to process my power of attorney that I had to show the movers. We did everything they told us to do and have suffered a $40,000 hardship this year because of Rich being called back and I told her if it took me calling a senator to get this fixed I would do it. If there was an error on their end it had nothing to do with us and we have the right to ship and store our things now anyway because of his deployment, but also because of the fact that by calling him back they made us homeless for 4 months while we waited for their decision on where we would be. She said she'd call me back next week after she looked into it.
I promptly called Rich's 1st Sgt and the FRG at Camp Blandon, where his unit is based out of, and got them working on it. Then I faxed all of my paperwork to my aunt Lisa, who was head of the FRG at Fort Benning for 8 years, to take to her contacts.
I swear to god we are not paying for this storage and shipping. They may not care what I have to say because I'm "just his wife", but I will bring down the wrath of god and the United States government on them if they don't get this fixed. Mark my words. I am so pissed off that they're treating us this way after all they've already done. I'm fighting this tooth and nail and we will win in the end. My next course of action will be to let them know I will call the "Channel 2 Works for You" people and the last thing the Army wants right now is for the world to know how badly they're treating soldiers and their families in an unpopular war. They're playing the scare tactics game with the wrong soldier's wife. I don't lose. Ever. I will call the news. I will get a senator on it. I will go to congress. I'll make them wish they'd never called him back. I'm ready for a fight and I will bring it right to their doorsteps. They've already taken my husband away from me for a year but by god I will not let them make us victims. Its mama bear time. So sleep well my little cub because the forest is about to get noisy.
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