Reply #22: A less-than-honorable discharge is a pain in the ass to do [View All]

[jmowreader]

There are five classes of discharge: honorable, general, under other than honorable conditions, bad conduct and dishonorable.

A general discharge requires you to put the troop under a bar to reenlistment, a wait of six months, reevaluation after the six months to see if the performance deficiencies have been corrected, then a complete medical examination including psych evaluation must be conducted before you submit a packet that weighs about five pounds to the first special court-martial convening authority in the chain of command. At that point all you can do is hope the commander can be an asshole when necessary, because he can do one of three things--give him the general you asked for, give him an honorable that's marked "not eligible to reenlist" or throw the whole packet back in your lap and tell you to fix the soldier. (However, if I was going to try getting someone a general discharge, the captain, the colonel and I would be in very close contact all through the procedure to make sure he got the general.)

Under Other than Honorable Conditions discharges require a few nonjudicial punishments. This one's tricky to do because most commanders don't like to fuck up a guy's future the way this discharge does unless it's absolutely necessary. I know how to do one but never actually had to. This is another lengthy process.

Bad Conduct and Dishonorable discharges are very quick, but they're issued as sentences at courts-martial.

I could get rid of a guy in a week if I wanted to and would settle for an honorable with no reenlistment eligibility. Here's what you do: When your guy needs to be thrown out and he's doing some shit that proves him unfit for service--bad hygiene, personal equipment not ready for combat, whatever--you write the Magic Counseling Statement. It says that if the unacceptable conduct does not cease, proceedings would be started to expeditiously discharge him. Wait a couple of days and if he's still doing the thing he was doing, write a second counseling statement saying the proceedings are being started to EDP him. After that, assuming your colonel will go along with you, 72 hours is all it takes to get him sent home.