WWII overseas bars question

[coolhandluke]

What would be the correct number of overseas bars for a WWII Army veteran that served in the PTO for 1 year, 11 months, and 18 days?

 

Should it be 3 or 4 bars?

[patches]

Three, the one bar is for 6 months service. 6+6=12 = 1 Year for the two bars, then there's the additional 6 months he had, for the three bars in total, the extra 5 months and 18 days do not go towards a fourth bar.

 

 

That's the official regs, but because it's so close, it's always within the realm of possibility that a soldier just adds another bar for the heck of it.

[coolhandluke]

Thank you very much Patches.

 

This was the length of my Great-Grandfather's overseas service and I have always been curious as to the answer. I was not sure if service time was ever "rounded up" in events like this.

[Martinjmpr]

Patches: I'm not sure that's correct. I believe that for overseas bars any part of the month counts as a month for service stripe purposes so a soldier with 1 year, 11 months and at least 1 day of the 12th month would qualify for 4 OSBs.

 

I don't have the reg in front of me but I'm pretty sure that's how it read when I was in. Don't know if it ever changed.

 

To illustrate the point, a soldier who arrives in the combat zone on January 31st and leaves on June 1st is authorized 1 OSB even though he actually only served 4 months and 2 days in the combat zone. However, his service covers 6 calendar months (January through June) so he's authorized the OSB.

 

I'm not 100% sure of this but I believe it is correct. To me this would make sense because it's the same way the Army calculates Hazardous Duty or Hostile Fire pay. That is, a soldier who is in the combat zone for 1 day in any calendar month is entitled to HFP/HDP for the entire month. Ditto for Combat Zone Tax Exclusion (CZTE.)

 

I saw this practice in action when we deployed to The Balkans in 1997. We were garrisoned in Hungary, which did not qualify for HDP or CZTE. However, crossing the Drava River into Croatia would qualify a soldier for HDP and CZTE for the entire calendar month. Since I was in a line platoon (Military Police) we typically went into Croatia at least once a week if not more, depending on whether we were on garrison duty or convoy escort duty, so it wasn't an issue for us. But we noticed the Headquarters types would always seem to need to go visit our one platoon in Croatia right about the end of the month, and somehow they didn't make it back until the 1st or 2nd of the next month, so they qualified for HDP and CZTE for two months with just a two day trip!

[Martinjmpr]

OK, I just checked the latest version of AR-670-1. I was partially right and partially wrong.

 

Coolhandluke: As long as your grandfather's time was continuous and not broken up, he is authorized 4 overseas bars because the month in which he arrived and departed are counted as a whole month.

 

Ref: AR-670-1, 21-29 (a) (17): The months of arrival to, and departure from the areas of operations during the periods indicated in paragraphs 21-29a(1) through (14) are counted as whole months only when the period of each deployment is over 6 months.

 

That also corrects my first example above: The soldier described would not rate an OSB because his deployment was less than 6 months. However, if the soldier arrived in the combat zone on January 31st and departed on December 1st he would qualify for 2 OSBs because his deployment was over 6 months and therefore the first and last months are counted as whole months even though his actual overseas service was just over 10 months.

[Martinjmpr]

I should point out that the example I gave in the post immediately above is pretty close to what actually happened to me. I was deployed to Kuwait (which was considered a combat zone in 2004) and arrived on 1/30/2004. Our unit departed on 12/11/2004. I was awarded 2 OSBs for the deployment.

[atb]

But, was that the regulation way of adding up overseas time for WW2?

[Martinjmpr]

But, was that the regulation way of adding up overseas time for WW2?

 

I think it was. If you look at the current AR they actually have a separate paragraph on WWII which is rather long and convoluted but the short answer is that for an unbroken overseas period as described by the OP, 4 bars would be correct. For periods of < 6 months, days are counted, not months.