Thinking About Days Served

There’s been a big fuss this last month about the post 9/11 GI Bill from veterans across the country.  Many of us jumped on the opportunity the moment it became available which was August 1st.   All veterans have a right to the GI Bill just for having enlisted in the military but a special educational benefit was enacted for those who served in response to the attacks on 9/11.

Long story short, there’s a lot more money available for those who decide to change their educational benefits to the post 9/11 GI Bill.

Many of us who served in response to 9/11 are Reserve or National Guard soldiers so a sliding scale of benefits needed to be calculated based on how long deployments are for those people.  The theory being a person who served for 6 months shouldn’t get the same amount of benefits as someone who served for 24 months.  It makes complete sense to me.

I got my Post 9/11 GI Bill confirmation paperwork from the Department of Veterans Affairs yesterday.  The most important thing about this paperwork is how they calculated the exact amount of benefits I should receive under the new GI Bill law.

And here it is in black and white in the middle of the page:

The reality of how much time I had given in response to the 9/11 attacks hasn’t ever been so blunt to me before. Of course I knew the dates of my deployment and still have the memory of the time I was away from home but never had I really looked at that total number of days.

Five hundred and twenty one days.

Away from home.  Away from family.  Away from the comforts that we take for granted.  Simply away.

30 days plus another 30 days plus another 30 days plus another 30 days …. on and on and on up to 521 days.

But something that’s more shocking is that my total service only qualifies for 60% of the post 9/11 GI Bill benefits.  That means that there are people out there who had to do almost TWICE as much time as I did to qualify for 100% of the benefits.

Madness.

I honestly don’t think any other country has the burden of sending their young citizens overseas on deployments for as long or as often as the United States.  It’s a burden not only to the soldiers  but also the families and friends who must endure such massive amounts of time away from their loved ones.  Such is the life of Americans.

P.S.  I was only one month away from the 70% threshold of benefits.  bummer.

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