My Army friend, Master Sgt. Mike Preston, having served 22 years, has finally retired. The retirement process took seven months. Some of it was useful. For example, career soldiers may benefit from post-service job counseling. But oh, the bureaucratic hell Preston endured.
“Trying to get out, I went to three separate places,” Preston said. “Each place, someone said, ‘I can’t help you now. But mine will be the last signature you need.’”
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Preston thought his retirement paperwork was done. He was told, “Here’s your provisional DD214 [the separation-from-service paper]. Go to the retirement brief tomorrow. It’s only once a month.”
“Once a month?” said Preston. “Would’ve been good to know this months ago.”
“The new system won’t let you take your house hunting leave days at the end,” the civilian said at the brief. “You must front-load it. The entire system is running against Army regs.”
Ostensibly for efficiency, all of the retirement forms are now online. None of them have the same name as before, and nobody knows which is which. Preston had already sent in one electronic form, but it was rejected as the wrong form. He was told the correct one was third on the drop menu list. But form three on Preston’s drop list didn’t match form three on the reviewer’s list.
The old paper system for terminal leave and separation involved a single form and signatures from a supervisor and commander. The new “more efficient” system requires three forms.
In the past, a soldier tracked down the commander for a quick signature. The new “efficient” system required Preston to sign the form digitally and send it to the S1 admin officer. S1 would sign and send it on to the first sergeant. First sergeant signs and sends it back to S1. S1 to the brigade S1. Brigade S1 to the brigade sergeant major. SGM back to brigade S1. Brigade S1 to the brigade XO. XO back to S1. S1 to the brigade commander.
This process took two weeks, with Preston forced to physically go to each person’s office to remind him about signing. But the brigade commander was away on leave. Preston needed the signatures fast.
No problem! Get the deputy brigade commander’s signature after first uploading the temporary change of command orders.
Next day, the leave form was still not signed because the temporary command orders hadn’t been signed. Preston had to get the deputy brigade commander to unsign the leave form so the temporary command form could be reattached because a temporary command form can’t be attached to a previously signed form.
The S1 could unsign the leave form so the temporary command form could be attached. But by then, the deputy commander was out for the day. The next day, the brigade commander had returned. They had to unattach the temporary command orders, and most of the process had to be restarted.
Each of these steps required a full day or more, and all the while, Preston’s clock was ticking toward his hard deadline for separation. Pushing back the retirement date would require even more paperwork with higher-level signatures. So Preston kept working through many other steps, including the base out-processing form, the URL for which was hidden in the fine print of his written orders. I couldn’t describe the whole retirement bureaucratic process even with an entire glorious issue of the Washington Examiner dedicated to the subject.
“Were these systems created to serve us or do we serve the system? It is destroying soldiers’ lives. It pisses people off, drives them to drink, and compounds problems,” Preston said. After an infuriating, unnecessarily complex process, he is, at last, completely free of the Army. I thank him for his service and his friendship, and I wish him joy in his retirement. “People say it’s harder than ever to find someone qualified to go into the Army,” said Master Sgt. Mike Preston (retired). “But it’s even harder to find someone qualified to get you out.”
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Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.