Army owes reservists better

Orlando Sentinel: The Pentagon has a special obligation to take good care of its citizen-soldiers who are injured or fall ill after answering their country's call to military service.
But 4,000 Army Reserve and National Guard troops are now stuck at Army bases, waiting months to complete medical treatment from an understaffed, overburdened system. There are 634 of these "medical holdovers" at Fort Stewart, Ga., where many of Florida's reservists and Guard members were mobilized before shipping out to Iraq.
For these citizen-soldiers, the long-term separation from their homes, families and jobs as they await the care they need to recover has created serious personal and financial hardships. Their plight is a scandal that cries out for action from the Pentagon.
Until just recently, most of the injured and ill Guard and Reserve troops at Fort Stewart were housed in concrete barracks without air conditioning or indoor plumbing. The Army moved them last week to better lodging in nearby hotels or at other bases after news reports about their plight led to complaints from Congress.
Failure to act
But the hardship for holdovers at Fort Stewart might have been alleviated or avoided earlier. The Army never acted on a September request from medical staff at Fort Stewart to add 18 care providers to speed up the processing of holdovers.
The root of the problem at Fort Stewart and other bases is an Army system dating from World War II that requires injured or ill soldiers to be sent back to the base from which they were mobilized. There they are treated and monitored until a decision can be made on whether they will be able to return to service. The system has been overwhelmed by the large numbers of Army Reserve and National Guard troops activated for duty around the world -- 121,000 at current count.
An Army official said the Pentagon is now considering alternative policies to shorten the wait for holdovers. Changes need to be made soon, before the situation gets worse.