By: E&P Staff It may have been a case of financial insult added to injury. Now an article in the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette has sparked a fundraising appeal on a popular political blog.
The newspaper reported today that a local man, 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV, had recently paid a bill for $700 for lost body armor he used in Iraq -- which was purportedly pulled off his body after he suffered severe wounds in a roadside bombing one year ago. The last time he saw the body armor "he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered," the article explained.
Rebrook, 25, left the Army for good because of his injuries. Apparently there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle, he said. He "scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday," the Gazette related.
His mother, Beckie Drumheler, "said she was saddened -- and angry -- when she learned that the Army discharged her son with a $700 bill. Soldiers who serve their country, those who put their lives on the line, deserve better, she said. 'It's outrageous, ridiculous and unconscionable,' Drumheler said. 'I wanted to stand on a street corner and yell through a megaphone about this.'"
Rebrook, who graduated with honors from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., spent more than four years on active duty. He served six months in Iraq, according to the newspaper. The story, by reporter Eric Eyre, does not include confirmation or comment from the military.
When John Aravosis, creator of the Americablog site, read this story, he immediately put up an appeal for funds at his site, at:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/"We liberal folk may disagree with the Bush administration over the reasons for going to war and over how they're fighting this war," he declared, "but one thing you'd expect no disagreement over would be the treatment of our soldiers. They fight for their country and they deserve some respect in return. And that means not charging them for their body armor because someone blew them up on the battlefield."
Aravosis later reported receiving $4400 in donations from 187 people in the first two hours.
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