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Whenever I get the retiree magazine, I go through the list of people who have recently retired to look for people I know. I have noticed that there seems to be a lot of E3's listed and they appear to be mostly females - about 80% in the most recent list. Are females being medically retired in disproportionate numbers within the first 2 years? Is this a trend in the other services as well?
Posted in these groups: 
Retirement
Medical
Retirement Medical
Posted >1 y ago
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I am one of those females who was discharged early. I was married to someone I thought would be able to support my career, and he couldn't. We had a one-year old son when I got to my duty station, and it proved to be a very difficult situation.
I had no choice but to divorce, and retain custody of my son, as my ex-husband was mentally unbalanced. My son and I were alone, eight hundred miles away from any family, and we were gearing up for the first deployment to Iraq. Of course, my son couldn't go to the field with me, so I could not provide a revised Family Care Plan. Command offered me an Hardship discharge and I had no choice but to take it. The alternative was to send him to his "father" and that was not an option for me.
And along with single parenthood cases, like mine, there are pregnancy cases, as well. I think these issues make up the bulk of early female discharges in every branch.
I had no choice but to divorce, and retain custody of my son, as my ex-husband was mentally unbalanced. My son and I were alone, eight hundred miles away from any family, and we were gearing up for the first deployment to Iraq. Of course, my son couldn't go to the field with me, so I could not provide a revised Family Care Plan. Command offered me an Hardship discharge and I had no choice but to take it. The alternative was to send him to his "father" and that was not an option for me.
And along with single parenthood cases, like mine, there are pregnancy cases, as well. I think these issues make up the bulk of early female discharges in every branch.
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MCPO (Join to see)
Jon, the other services have had High Year Tenure in effect for centuries, so the chances of an E-3 retiring is extraordinarily rare. And, actually, unless things have changed in the last several years, you can't retire from the Army as an E-5... you CAN serve 19 years, 364 days, but not hit 20 years.
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Cpl Glynis Sakowicz
Actually, I was near those statistics, but I had a LOT more time in. My injury was spinal, and though I can walk, I couldn't run or do sit ups, and since the problem was not one I was going to recover from, I was offered retirement, and I took it, because staying in would mean that I was a terminal rank, and that just depressed me even more than leaving the Corps.
I am thinking that these statistics probably involve serious accidents or injuries that will require YEARS of recovery or no recovery at all, thus making it highly improbable that they would ever be totally capable of supporting themselves again. Just my view on it.
I am thinking that these statistics probably involve serious accidents or injuries that will require YEARS of recovery or no recovery at all, thus making it highly improbable that they would ever be totally capable of supporting themselves again. Just my view on it.
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SGT James LeFebvre
MCPO (Join to see) Actually, Master Chief, you can retire as an E5 in the Army. Buddy of mine at Ft Gordon finished up his 20 and retired as a SGT.
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MCPO (Join to see)
SGT James LeFebvre, when did they change the high-performance tenure rules?
EDITED TO ADD: When I left the Army in 1992, E-5's still could only do 19 years, 364 days... and I saw two guys leave without retirement because of it. Over my time in the Army, I saw about 15 E-5's forced out prior to 20 because of High Year Tenure. Granted, the last time I knew about this or saw it was in 1992, so I may well be WAY out of date!!!
EDITED TO ADD: When I left the Army in 1992, E-5's still could only do 19 years, 364 days... and I saw two guys leave without retirement because of it. Over my time in the Army, I saw about 15 E-5's forced out prior to 20 because of High Year Tenure. Granted, the last time I knew about this or saw it was in 1992, so I may well be WAY out of date!!!
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My dad was retroactively retired as an E3. The cancer that he got was directly linked to asbestos that he inhaled while working for the Navy.
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CPO Jon Campbell
SSG (Join to see) that is both a good thing to hear and a bad thing that he got cancer. My father died of a rare form of cancer. I suspected it was related to the time he spent in the Pacific during the Korean War. I asked his oncologist if he knew what caused the type of cancer he had, but the doctor said that there wasn't any known cause. The waiting room was filled with WWII and Korean War vets who had all served in the Pacific. I think nuke testing and contamination would be a fairly good guess at the cause.
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Very good observation and I love how you applied analytical skills to the data and came up with statistics.
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CPO Jon Campbell
Thanks, my wife thought I was working on some lottery scheme when she saw all my scribbled numbers and notes everywhere. I put it all in a chart so it's a little easier to see. You can see that the retirements at grades E4-E9 are basically consistent with male-to-female ratios, but at the E1-E3 grades, something else is going on.
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SPC (Join to see)
When I hanging around WTU with my then girlfriend and mother of my child there were a lot of women being medically discharged for mental issues, her included for bipolar, and almost all of them younger.
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