Incident to Service

[Nevilledog]

For more than 70 years, an obscure legal doctrine has prevented active-duty service members from suing the federal government for wrongful injury or death occurring outside of combat. Jurists left and right have long lamented the decision and begged for Congress to act. So why is justice that's available to every American civilian still being denied those who serve our nation?

https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2022/12/1/incident-to-service

In 2018, 21-year-old Dez Del Barba had put his plan for the rest of his life in motion. A senior at Sonoma State University, Dez had set his sights on becoming an officer in the United States Army. Already, he had been accepted into Officer Candidate School and was on his way to completing the necessary prerequisite of basic training. To get a jump on basic, Dez enlisted in the Army National Guard and obtained a leave from Sonoma State for a semester of his senior year. After basic, he would finish his degree in business management while serving in the National Guard; then, upon graduation, he would immediately transition to Army active duty and the path to becoming an officer.

Mark and Kamni had ample reason to believe their only son would thrive in the Army. They were a military family. Kamni had served in the active-duty Army National Guard for 23 years, including a deployment to Iraq in 2010. Her sister is an Army lieutenant colonel. Mark’s father was a Marine. Seated on the couch next to her husband in their living room, Kamni talked about how her parents immigrated from India when she was a child and how grateful she is to this country. “That was a big part of what inspired me to enlist,” she said. Mark and Kamni accepted that one day Dez might be deployed to combat-risk zones. “But,” Kamni told me, “we never thought the Army would do to our son what they did to our son.”

Dez began basic at Fort Benning, Georgia, in January 2019. According to the Army’s own investigation of what later happened, he did well during his first five weeks. “[Private First Class] Del Barba was motivated and always willing to train. We never had any issues from him,” one drill sergeant wrote in his sworn statement. (Most names in the report are redacted.) “Was a hard worker,” another drill sergeant wrote. “Always pushing members of his team….”

On February 2, only a few weeks after he left for basic, Mark and Kamni received a letter from Dez. He wrote that one of his fellow trainees died of a heart attack, leaving behind a baby and a pregnant wife. Kamni chalked it up to unavoidable tragedy. The Del Barbas next heard from Dez on February 3, a phone call on Super Bowl Sunday. Mark thought his son’s voice sounded hoarse and asked him if everything was okay. Yeah, Dez said, just there’s a lot of screaming and yelling. “Made sense,” Mark told me. “You’re in basic training, there’s yelling.” Kamni added, “We did tell him to go to the doctor.”

*snip*