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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

By Lauren Katzenberg

editor, at war

Dear reader,

On Sept. 11, At War hosted an event in Los Angeles to discuss the lasting effects of bad-paper discharges, or forced separations for service members under less than fully honorable conditions that result from the military's interpretation of misconduct or poor performance.

More than 600,000 service members have been discharged with bad paper since 2000, and hundreds of thousands of veterans from past generations were separated for offenses that often stemmed from PTSD, traumatic brain injury or military sexual assault. In other cases, service members who were found engaging in homosexual acts were kicked out of the services before the repeal of the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy in 2011.

Bad-paper discharges are also a result of racial discrimination. In the 1960s and '70s, black service members were administratively separated or court-martialed in disproportionate numbers, according to government studies. They continue to face forced separation at significant rates, according to Protect Our Defenders, which found that from 2006 to 2015, black service members were 1.29 times to 2.61 times as likely as white service members to have disciplinary action taken against them.

What happens once service members receive bad paper? For many, it's a permanent mark on their record that immediately denies them access to certain benefits, like V.A. health care, subsidized education, many government jobs and home loans. Over the course of a veteran's life, bad paper also can lead to higher rates of unemployment, mental-health problems and suicide.

I have witnessed the consequences of bad paper firsthand. My husband, Kristofer Goldsmith, was kicked out of the Army in 2007 with a general discharge, after he tried to kill himself the night before he was supposed to leave for his second tour in Iraq. The Army said he did it to get out of deployment. Over the next 12 years, Kris became a policy advocate for veterans with bad paper. He has written three pieces of legislation addressing this issue that have passed in Washington. He has been invited to the White House to talk to the country's leaders about discharge reform. And he has a law firm in New York representing his upgrade case pro bono. Still, his discharge-upgrade request has been denied three times by the Army discharge review board, and he has been waiting more than three years for a response to his latest appeal.

Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

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Kris's case isn't unusual. This week, my colleague Michael Wilson wrote about Needham Mayes, a Korean War-era veteran who was court-martialed and kicked out of the Army in July 1955 after a bar fight. Despite a discharge that could've ruined his life, Mayes put himself through college and graduate school and became a social worker — working at organizations that fought drug abuse and promoted mental-health awareness. Today, Mayes, who is 85, is nearing the end of his life and seeking a discharge upgrade so that he may receive a veterans burial.

The acting secretary of the Army, Ryan D. McCarthy, has the authority to upgrade his discharge after it was denied in 2017. Mayes's lawyers filed a new application last Friday, hoping for a positive response before it's too late.

"I am a rehabilitated man," Mayes wrote in 2017, "and I hope to have the right to be buried in a national cemetery with my comrades in arms."

— Lauren

Lauren Katzenberg is the editor of The New York Times's At War channel.

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