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Friday, July 09, 2004

Oops! He's still in the Inactive Reserve!

A friend of mine sent me this link about an Army Reservist that is getting recalled to active duty after resigning from the Reserves. He's caught in one of those little known rules about joining up -- the Inactive Ready Reserve.

When I joined, I accepted a four year active duty commitment followed by a four year commitment to the Inactive Ready Reserve. The IRR is designed to maintain a cadre of folks with recent military experience who can be recalled if the existing active duty and reserve folks need augmenting. In other words, if war breaks out, they get the active duty folks busy, then they call up the active reserves, and then, when that runs out, they activate folks -- like this dude in North Carolina -- that are in the inactive ready reserve, figuring that they are easier to get up to speed because of their recent military experience.

This guy is claiming "They never told me!", but of course that isn't an excuse. I dont' know how the Army does it, but when I resigned my commission, the standard letter one writes had a paragraph in there where you have to either accept or refuse a commission in the Inactive Ready Reserve. Having served 12 years, I could turn down the commissionn in the IRR, but you are given a commission in the IRR when you get out if you don't actively refuse it as I did. (When I got out, my Commanding Officer said "You know, if you refuse the IRR commission, you could get drafted as an Army Private". I responded, "Sir, if they want to draft a forty year old guy, I'll gladly go defend Kansas against the invaders."

In any event, poor ol' Todd Parrish is out of luck. The Army is totally in the right here, and he's going back.

posted by Nick at 09:09 | [Permalink] (0) comments

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