One For The Books - Combat Pay For Only A Selected Few While POW/MIA!

[HARDCORE]

I had heard something while at the Update for the families of POW/MIAs here in San Diego (24 September) that struck me as being wrong and absolutely unfair! ?And this came directly from former POWs of all services.?

It seems that ?Captured Army Personnel in North Korea (and elsewhere too I assume?)?, were denied the combat pay end ($45) of their pay after but three months in captivity! Naturally, the regular end ($$) of their paycheck was either held for them until after repatriation or sent home as an allotment. These men have never been repaid this lost combat pay money, at least to my knowledge!!

However, several Marines that I talked with, and this has been partially verified, tell me that their (Marine) combat pay continued on while they were held as captives?

I am taking nothing away from any armed service, but it seems to me that this is unfair, unjust, and downright un-American! Add to this (again) that these Army POWs were never recompensed for this lost revenue, and the inequity grows ever more pathetic!

I firmly believe that the Captive Marines should have been paid combat pay while POWs, as everyday of enemy captivity is in fact a day in combat, fighting a murderous enemy in most cases! However, I can only assume that some military powers that be feel that the blood and suffering of one service is superior or more precious than the sacrifices of another? ?This just is not so - just ask the men who were there!? No special treatment was given to any captive man or woman who proudly wore any of our uniforms, tattered and soiled though they may have been!!

I call upon our political and military leaders to rectify this long-standing and grievous wrong! Not by demanding any combat pay back from POW Marines, but rather by paying this long-overdue combat pay to the members of other services who starved, were beaten, and suffered in a million different ways while being brutalized in captivity.

These captured men (and women too), after all, were not on a vacation. Their lives were pure Hell, and they knew not from day to day if they would ever see their families or home again (Many did not)!!

A former POW friend of mine, an honorable member of this site, spent some 37 months as a prisoner of the North Korean Communists! He too later learned that he only received three months combat pay during that period!

Did he (and thousands of other POWs) cease to be a human being after three months in captivity? Were they of any less value in their own little wars against their vicious captors as were their comrades who remained free to fight another day - ?I THINK NOT!!?

These captive men?s only weapons were their courage, their resistance, and their love of country and their comrades, but these were still American and soldiers to the core - of this, have no doubts!!

These captive Army (and other services) men and woman are no less deserving of equal treatment, and it makes me sad that anyone (especially those in power) would believe otherwise!!

I would have posed this question during the open forum section of the MIA/POW Family Update. Unfortunately, the affair was running overtime and a few questioners were even more verbose than I, if that is possible?

As such, I humbly bowed to the time restrictions and the requests of the Washington crowd that was in attendance, and shut the hell up (A near first for me)!

VERITAS (Truth)

[39mto39g]

I think, sometimes thats bad, That In Korea Combat pay was give out according to MOS, If a Truck driver got captured he got no combat pay, He got, I think again, Hazardous duty pay. But then, I joined the Army so what do I know.

Ron

[HARDCORE]

39 M et al-

The particular gent that I am referrring to was Combat Infantry (24th Division), replete with the CIB, and a Purple Heart for a wound received prior to captivity, among others!!

VERITAS