Military Lawyers Assist With Conflicts at Home

The story told by Chaplain Ivan Fuller aboard the Roosevelt has an all-too-familiar ring to it: Young soldiers off to war receive Dear John letters from home.

“They get a letter from their wife and she says, ‘Harry and I have decided we love each other more than we love you.’ ”

Such is the fortune of war.

Marriages and relationships have been the victim of war since soldiers first began marching off to battle. And there are often bitter twists to such small dramas.

Witness the soldier who recently found out that not only had his wife left him but that she had also spent everything in the bank and borrowed money in his name before bidding adieu. Or the wife who sold the car. Or the house.

At times like these, American GIs, often confused and feeling helpless because of the vast distance between here and home, seek help to stave off financial ruin.

And more often than not, that need for assistance leads to the military lawyers in the judge advocate general’s office. Indeed, it is domestic problems, and even something as simple as learning how to handle a checking account, that take up a good deal of the lawyers’ time in this war with Iraq.

There are things not so mundane as well. Such as brokering settlements to Saudi citizens when American soldiers are involved in accidents.

So far, the war has produced only a handful of what might be considered serious crimes, and much of that is attributed to having Saudi Arabia, with its strict rules regarding sex and drink, as the staging area.

True, there was the soldier who used a large steel tent stake to settle a score recently. But there have been no murders.

In the Army units, which make up roughly half the troops in Saudi Arabia, charges serious enough to warrant court-martial are few, including such infractions as theft, false statements, willful disobedience, absence without leave and failure to secure a weapon.

As of Saturday, the Army had only 19 cases subject to court-martial.

“That would be unheard of in the United States,” said Lt. Col. William Winter of the military justice division. “It’s just extraordinary.”

Other lawyers in the judge advocate general’s office deal with issues such as prisoners of war and multimillion-dollar contracts. By and large, the issues are much more mundane than that, but no less important to the soldier who is faced with problems that in his mind are overwhelming.

Maj. Larry Daniels, a Maryland District Court judge when not in his Army Reserve uniform, is one of the lawyers who handles a great many of the problems that fall under the broad category of “legal assistance.” He said it has not been uncommon for a reservist to break the news to a spouse that he is being kept in Saudi Arabia for another 90 days only to receive a letter that the extension “was more than he or she had bargained for.”

“It’s a sad commentary on our culture and society,” Daniels said.

The cases run the gamut. A soldier has won custody of his child in a divorce proceeding. But then he must turn around and return custody to the mother because he has been shipped to Saudi Arabia. He comes to the lawyers looking for answers that are not there.

A 2-year-old child has swallowed a bottle of aspirin and the mother, stationed in Riyadh, has her emergency leave home expedited by the judge advocate general’s office. A psychologist has determined that the youngster was suffering from clinical depression because her mother was gone.

“The child had given up on the mother as if she had died,” Daniels said.

An angry soldier shows up to complain that his landlord back in El Paso won’t repair a splintered door. In different circumstances, the problem could be fixed with the swipe of sandpaper, but absence exacerbates the frustration.

“That’s one of the byproducts of being here,” Daniels said. “People feel absolutely powerless to do something 8,000 miles away. The real problem is that his wife has a problem and that he can’t do anything about it.”

The problems go on: A reservist takes a pay cut when he goes on active duty, but the ex-wife doesn’t want to hear about it when the child support payment is due. A young soldier wants to make out a will because his top sergeant has told him that if he is killed by chemical weapons, he will be buried in a mass grave. Untrue as that story is, it has spread far and wide.

“It’s the kind of thing guys talk about. Bad news travels like lightning,” Daniels said.

As the months have gone by, circumstance has dictated some of the events that concern soldiers. The line was out the door and down the stairs the day before the fighting began, with every soldier wanting to make out a will.

Tax time is here and soldiers are deluging the lawyers, trying to quickly fill out their income tax forms and send them in so they can receive a refund. The Internal Revenue Service has extended the filing deadline for soldiers in the Persian Gulf, but Daniels saw a certain irony in that.

“You’ll notice the IRS hasn’t offered to pay them any interest on their money,” he said.

Daniels also said that things had changed since the Vietnam War, simply because communication was so much better. The fax machine has simplified what would have once been a nightmare of paperwork and deadlines for something like signing contracts--even in the field.

“We’re in a new age now,” he said. “You can fax something from here to the mainland in a matter of seconds.”