You may have ultimately no choice but to accept whatever your chain of command decides, but I recommend you use all legal methods to “fight” the chapter 14 administrative discharge. My problem is I’m not a lawyer and I don’t have the reg (AR-635-200, Chapter 14) in front of me; however, it’s on-line, plus the JAG will have a paper copy you can sit down and read.

It may cost you financially, not in terms of legal fees but in terms of having to pay a fine to the ROK court. I don’t have any idea if you can afford it or not; I take it you have a wife back home, don’t know about any kids.

If all you did was push back, or take a swing at a cop after they pushed you, without using a weapon of any sort — and your military record is otherwise clear of prior offenses — I (emphasis on “I”) don’t think you deserve to be administratively chaptered out. However that’s just one man’s opinion; I have some experience with this type of thing as a former company commander, but from 20 years ago.

Your major serious problem is that if the Korean courts put you in jail for any length of time, that’s “bad time” for which you are not eligible to be paid, also (at the Army’s option I think) it gets tacked on to the end of your current enlistment obligation. Most of the time, in this situation (ie a soldier in civilian jail for a civilian offense) this “tacking-on” doesn’t happen, because the military just goes ahead with an administrative discharge.

So with a family you can find yourself in a real financial bind (no pay coming in). Unless you have some savings. Or maybe your wife is working and can carry the load, or maybe others in your family can help out.

However, if you can use your accumulated leave time to serve any “short” Korean jail sentence, the time won’t be counted as “bad time” (ie you go on leave to serve any short-term jail sentence, and you still get paid as normal during leave). Depends on whether you have any accumulated or not; I don’t know if the chain of command will oreven can allow you “advanced” leave to do this, don’t recall if it’s allowed by the leave reg, there are normal limits on how much “in the hole” you can go on leave.

So the problem with this is that anything much more than 60 days is not practical, depending upon how much leave time you have accumulated at this point, and how much time you have left in your current “hitch”; there are fairly strict regulatory limits put on how much “advance” leave you can take, especially if the chain of command initiates a “bar to re-enlistment” for you.

The vast majority of the time soldiers in this kind of serious trouble just say “the hell with it” and accept whatever happens. My instinctive advice is that if you’re a “good soldier” except for this incident, try to pay any fine to the Korean court, ask the court to forego any jail time, or at least keep it only to a very short period of a few weeks. Use your leave to serve it (if you can), then fight the chapter and try to serve out at least the remaining time on your enlistment and get a “normal” honorable discharge.

If you think you might want to do what I advise, sit down and talk it over first with some senior NCO’s that you trust. Preferably your platoon sergeant and first sergeant, if they’re not sympathetic consider asking to see the Bn or Bde Sergeant Major.

It may not seem this way now, but I think that in 10 or 20 years you’ll regret it, if you just allow the Army to chapter you out, especially if you get a general or OTH. Though your chances for re-enlistment may be gone, depending on how much time you have left in your current enlistment and how this comes out in terms of any jail time served.

And of course maybe you were planning on getting out anyway at the end of your enlistment, even before this happened.

If you decide you have to accept the chapter, I think you should at least go into a board hearing and fight for an honorable discharge. I don’t think you deserve an OTH or a general, assuming you have no prior offenses and your military record is a good one before this incident; again, though, that’s just one man’s opinion, one who doesn’t know you.

I’m impressed though that you came up on the board here and tried to defend yourself in a literate way, though as the others have said it may not be the best thing to do legally. Good luck.

I’m a lawyer — although not your lawyer — and I have to second the advice you’re getting right now from joshua (also not your lawyer, but a former JAG) and other posters. STOP POSTING HERE AND ELSEWHERE! Stop talking to people in the barracks! To the extent your statements may credibly be attributed to you they become evidence. You have the right to remain silent — use it!

You’re in real fight, soldier. When you’re getting mauled by a bear, your best chance of survival is not to fight back. It’s to play dead: Curl up in a fetal position, protect your important bits, and wait for the bear to finish with you. (The best course, of course, is to avoid the bear altogether — but it’s too late for that once you’re under attack.)

For the love of God, and your own sake, ZIP IT and seek counsel from Trial Defense Service or a private lawyer. To my way of thinking, private lawyer is a waste (and I’m one of the private lawyers) — TDS counsel take great pride in fighting for their clients’ rights and contrary to your expectations, TDS counsel have no fear of reprisals from “the system”. Servicemembers often don’t believe it, but it’s 100% — maybe 110% — true; this is because we lawyers have employment possibilities Military judge advocates, when assigned as defense counsel, are rewarded for sticking it to the command. “A Few Good Men” is a joke in many respects, but it accurately portrays the commitment military defense lawyers have to their clients. So don’t waste your money. Joshua, that’s right, isn’t it?

I understand that you want to defend your name. However, I would still advise against it.

When we talk about what happened that night, it is gossip.

When you talk about what happened that night, it is evidence.

By the way I am commenting about the incident here because you all are Gossiping about me and I want my voice heard. I all ready said I was guilty because I know I can’t win and I should have never hit a police officer even thought I stand behind my reason of defense I just want to get back home to my Family So leave me a lone and let me just live my life.

There’s no “bait”; Joshua answered the question. I haven’t been to Korea so I don’t know the notorious “Itaewon”, though I recognize the name from reading it many times on this and a few other Korean blogs.

Sometimes even in connection with incidents NOT involving US GI’s? Maybe that’s just my faulty memory, like I said I’ve never been to Korea.

“…Frankly, I am worried that the hundreds of thousands of soldiers returning to the U.S. from Iraq will bring home with them the attitude that they are above civilian authority…”

Huh? Thousands of young Americans have an “attitude” towards civilian authority already — but usually, they are ones who’ve never joined the military or left the country.

Do you personally know any Iraq vets? Your “worry” certainly doesn’t jive with the attitudes of the ones I’ve met, around the Army and USAF bases in San Antonio, also elsewhere in the country where I have had occasion to travel.

Are you going by some old stereotype of crazed Vietnam vets? To the extent that was ever even a “true” one (I think serious stats won’t bear it out either).

It is true that the US Army was seriously degraded in discipline in the latter stage of the Vietnam war. The “replacement by individual” personnel assignment procedure (still used for USFK) bears a lot of the blame for that, IMO; significantly, that’s not the way we’re doing business in Iraq/Afghanistan (battalions and brigades rotate in and out as units).

We still rotate troops into ROK for individual one year tours; I see where Cdr USFK in his 10 Jan news conference spent some time emphasizing how he wants to change that, by making all tours “accompanied” ones (so guys like Duprey can be accompanied by their families).

I concur this would be a big help (not that Cdr USFK needs my approval). Failing that, if it’s necessary to station US troops in ROK, in the future they should rotate in as battalions/brigades, yearly for a month or so (along the lines of Exercise “Team Spirit”).

To train with ROK for a while and then return back to Hawaii or CONUS to be with their families.

I think as some have already mentioned, silence is golden at this juncture. I hope this misadventure does not mortally wound your chances in life. It is a sad happenstance no matter who is right or wrong. Keep your cards close to your chest and ask family to spring for a good lawyer.

I see you admit that you set in motion the events that led you to this state of affairs (earlier you claimed the the cops were out to get a GI). That is a good start. What impressed me about that guy that was charged with raping the 67 year old woman was how he apologized for hurting the woman, her family, the Army and America’s reputation. I am no lawyer, but in my experience, apologizing for the harm done to others goes a lot further in Korea than complaining about the harm done to one’s own self.