MILITARY: Don't try to compare

Amber Orr wrote one more piece of drivel that fatuously compares military retirement benefits with those enjoyed by teachers. I guess to her managing kids who "throw chairs, bite, kick, punch, cuss" is just like fighting al Qaeda and warrants similar compensation. Here is a clue, Amber: If you want those military benefits, join up and have fun in Iraq or Afghanistan away from your family for a year at a time. The first time you hear a bullet going close to your head or a mortar hitting around you, you may miss those unruly urchins you cannot control in your classroom.

Amber, you have no clue what military benefits even are. The "quality medical benefits for life" means when you retire you pay a part of your medical bills or get a gap insurance policy out of your own pocket. At age 65, the military retiree goes on Medicare with Tricare insurance as a back-up. If the spouse is under 65, he/she pays for a supplemental insurance policy or pays for a part of the medical bill. Retirees get no dental benefits. By the way, military members pay income tax, Social Security tax and Medicare.

Military housing is "free" only if on-base housing is available. Usually it is not, especially overseas. When I was stationed in Italy and Spain as a mid-grade officer, my housing allowance got me a flat with no central heat or air-conditioning and no water to speak of in the summer. No English-language TV and one military radio station were the norm. The small flat was a step up from the one room with a shared bath I had as an Army officer in Germany in the ‘60s or the shared quonset hut in the Philippines. In 22.5 years of military service, I had 14 duty stations, four overseas. Do teachers and their families face the complex challenges of moving every two to three years?

Navy vessels deploy for at least six months. If the member has a family, the spouse, usually a wife, sits home alone with the kids. While at sea, the military member works long hours under conditions teachers never experience in jobs that are often dangerous. Your overtime claims are laughably easy compared to any fleet sailor at sea. They don't get to go home at the end of the day. I am not even going to go into Marine or Army service life. Contemplate two wars in Iraq and one ongoing in Afghanistan over the last 20 years or so.

When you have no union and you have to obey orders from your principal or face a loss of pay or incarceration, write again. When you ever do anything as a teacher as demanding or dangerous as working on a carrier flight deck, you may have a point. When you go home from "work" to stark military housing in a desert, maybe someone will listen to you.

When your unruly students start trying to kill you by planting bombs next to the road on your route to work, even I will support nice benefits for you. Until then, give up this downright silly and insulting comparison that denigrates military service and only shows your complete ignorance of the reality of military life.

THOMAS LAWRENCE

Captain, Judge Advocate Generals Corps

U.S. Navy (Retired)

Hayden