A WWII Vet Was Docked Pay for Escaping His German Captors | Hacker News Reader

A WWII Vet Was Docked Pay for Escaping His German Captors

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125 pointssmacktoward62 comments

The members of the merchant navy were the most ill-treated group of service people in Britain during the war. These were the seamen who crewed the cargo ships transporting food, munitions and fuel across the Atlantic, and e.g. to Murmansk in Northern Russia, etc. Their casaulty rates were higher than any branch of the armed forces except bomber command. As civilians, on shore leave it was common for them to be abused for not being in uniform. After the war they were given no recognition and did not have any official representation at commemorations. But one of the most unfair aspects of their treatment was the fact that the day their ship was sunk was the day their pay stopped.

Putting it all in perspective: If you lived through the 1940s at all you won the freaking lottery.

When more than half the population wins it it's a bad lottery.

Times may have sucked but you don't need to exaggerate by an order of magnitude.

50 million dead attributed to that war.

Yes that is a lot but it is no where near 1/2 of the worlds population.

The world population in 1940 was about 2.3 billion, so WWII killed around 2% of everyone alive. Compare with the An Lushan Rebellion, which killed somewhere between 13-36 million people at a time when the world population was only about 200-300 million, killing 4-18% of everyone alive.

The 36 million is most likely untrue though, we're probably closer to the 13 million one (which would still be twice as much as WWII when it comes to % of global population)

Rather depends on where you were living at the time, doesn't it?

My paternal grandfather was a B-25 navigator/bombardier. His plane was shot down over the Battle of the Bulge, and he spent the rest of the war in a PoW camp. The quality of the treatment (and particularly the nutrition) he received during his imprisonment compromised his health, and he died during my father's childhood.

I have no idea if he received this benefit, or if he even knew about it. Dad's dead (motorcycle accident); I'll have to reach out to my aunt to see if she knows. It's more the curiosity than the money. If he hadn't received it, and survivors can claim it, I'd just donate it to some veteran's organization, anyway.

The thing about benefits (and receiving them) is that the more people that file for them, the more paperwork it creates, and the more time until the people that deserve the benefits receive them. People applying for benefits that "do not deserve them" are partially the cause of the "delay" part of the old VA mantra "delay and deny until they die". I'm not saying it's right, or that it should be one way or another. I'm just explaining how the VA universe works.

If you make the time for carrying it all out, please blog about it and post it back to HN. Should be very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

  They tried again, and in April 1944, pulled off the same stunt, ducking their captors on an unguarded forced march. 
  This time, Ramotnik and his brother-in-arms got away. A few days later, they heard the news: The Allies had won.

Surely they mean April 1945 if "a few days later" they heard the Allies had won.

Yeah, probably a typo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_in_Europe_Day

13$ in 1944 adjusted for inflations would be 180.38$ in 2017. Still a small payment for the DoD.

How about the 73 years interest? :-)

With the somewhat generous annual interest of 6%, it would be around $1000. Not exactly back breaking for the DoD (or the VA, for that matter, whatever department has this issue on their table).

You're off by a factor of ten. Assuming monthly compounding:

(1 + .06/12)^(12 * (2017-1944)) = 78.97

78.97 * 180 = 14214

However the final amount is highly sensitive to interest rate assumed, for different interest rates:

.02 774.13

.04 3,321.26

.06 14,214.86

.08 60,692.55

.10 258,514.77

.12 1,098,489.57

However it's unlikely that the money would have been invested anyways.

You are wrongly calculating with $180 instead of $13. The $180 figure is $13 adjusted by inflation.

While true using 6% during periods where inflation was > 6% is a poor interest rate. IMO, inflation +4% is reasonable.

Can't include both interest and inflation. It's one or the other, not both.

You can certainly include both interest and inflation.

How so?

I'm not a mathematician by any means, but I would think that (interest rate) - (rate of inflation) = (effective interest rate)

You've just defined the real interest rate, as opposed to the nominal rate

Say you put £100 in the bank 50 years ago.

Compound interest tells us how much money we have. If we assume an improbably static 2% every year, today we have ~£270 in our account.

Inflation doesn't work on top of that because £270 is what it's already worth today. Inflation tells us what our original £100 is worth in terms of buying power.

If a loaf of bread cost £0.10 in 1967 but costs £1.50 today, we can say over 50 years there has been 150% inflation. These sorts of price index comparisons allow us to compare worth back then.

Or in reverse, you can see this in very real terms. You could look at your £270 and see that would only buy you 180 loaves of bread. In 1967, your £100 would have garnered 1000 loaves. Interest has not kept up with inflation. You have lost money —in this example— by "saving" it.

On a shorter timescale, RPI and CPI allow central banks to see inflation and —to a point— alter their base rates to help influence the balance of savers-vs-spenders, lessening the popular disposable cash, and lessening inflation.

That's the theory, anyway.

Though obviously I skwonked the percentage increase there. The inflation in that tiny bread example was 1400%

no, it's double counting. Assume he had objected at the time and the money was put away during his appeal. It would accumulate interest until the appeal was settled, it doesn't accumulate inflation. Inflation is the measure of how each dollars buying power lessens over time.

No you can't the compounding interest would be one the money actually in the bank at each point in time not what it is nominally worth adjusting for changes in purchasing power. For example if I deposited money today and earned 5% interest what happens to the values of that money due to inflation doesn't matter (baring some intervention).

He might have spent the money in ways that later benefited him - even if he bought a house that was 13$ more expensive, given the housing boom during his lifetime in many locations he would have made more than a 6% return. You're never going to be able to really figure that what-if game anyhow... I think interest is an appropriate simplification (certainly more appropriate than inflation).

Plus all the other cases that would now have to be granted based on precedent.

All those other cases of escaped prisoners of war?

From WW2? Probably quite a few.

That were captured and escaped? In which pay actually was docked? In which they can remember and document this? That are still alive today?

That can't be more than a handful.

If they're not alive today, I believe their families will get the money. The Baby Boomers came to be immediately after WW2, so that will be quite the collection of families waiting for their money.

OT: A bit of fun:

In 1626, Manhattan was supposedly bought for equivalent of $24 (in beads). If invested at 5% Annual interest, compounded monthly, it would now be worth around $7 billion (assuming my online calculator is working correctly).

So our man should bequeath his $13 + interest and ensure the terms of the will state the the capital + interest is maintained for at least 400 years and someone will be able to inherit a nice tidy sum!

Four hundred years from now, if humans even still exist and we're still under a scarcity based economy, those billions of dollars will likely not be worth much.

Should make a nice nest to put your bottlecaps in.

Not to mention the number of heirs one might expect to divide the inheritance amongst. Might just end up a pittance per person after all.

Expanding on this tangent, it was closer to $300 in goods (as well as indefinite food and lodging for anyone in the tribe and a tacit assumption of military aid). Assuming just the tangible assets were invested in the most obvious way at the time, (dutch east india company being the most notable publicly traded company.) the dividend rate averaged 18% until 1796. If you compound with 18% for the first 170 years then 5% after, it would be more than enough to buy back Manhattan at it's current property value!

Having done a few years for uncle slam, this doesn't surprise me much. Still, would love to read the regulation justifying the docked pay. HNers seem a pretty well-read bunch, but you might want to read Catch-22 between TED talks.

Unrelated but that site was unreadable for me on mobile, repeatedly redirected me to ad pages that tried to look like Facebook. What's up with that?

To be honest, bigger injustices happened during the war. I honestly cannot find it within myself to care about one man's $13.

I honestly find it interesting. After all- it depicts how completely alien and far-away the idea of war is to this generation. Everyone in this discussion has lost money due to a contractor or buisness partner not paying, but nobody in the room can imagine the real world atrocities of WW2 or WW1.

Imagine, if LA was besieged and starved for 3 years like St.Petersburg was. This generation cant even imagine how it is to run hungry- for a day. That people can scrap tapestry from the wall, eat there pets, burn there furniture - and finally eat other people, all that, is so far away by now- it does not even appear in war and horror movies.

you don't even have to besiege LA. just close I-5. done.

Why now?

I doubt he's suddenly pursuing this himself. Neither this article nor the source it cites documents any action he's taking. In fact, the source even says he had to dig through piles of documents during the interview to find the details of the specific mission on which he was captured. That sounds more like someone heard about the story and approached him to do an interview, adding a Click-Baity headline.

If you are captured by the enemy and held in prison, your pay is docked? It is probably my ignorance of the military payment structure, but what the reasoning is behind this?

It sounded like if you are captured you are paid a dollar a day until you are released or can escape - but can't collect pay while "running away". It seemed unclear whether that was in lieu of normal pay or in addition to it.

I imagine it was worded this way so someone couldn't just be "escaping" for an unknown length of time and just disappear - removes the incentive to not return right away. Still, I'm not how anyone would be able to prove or disprove which day he escaped in the first place - not like his captors gave him a receipt - so the whole thing is pretty goofy.

I think your comment's parent was asking about what happens to your regular military pay, during your time as a PoW. That's what I read, anyway.

You keep getting it (at a different rate), you also keep getting it when you are declared MIA. You only stop getting paid when you are declared dead (or discharged), the former awards survivor benefits to your next of kin and or dependents.

http://myarmybenefits.us.army.mil/Home/Benefit_Library/Feder...

It would make for a good Monty Python skit. A calm German officer behind a desk giving "escape receipt" to a giddy British soldier.

Hogan's Heroes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan%27s_Heroes

It'd fit well - they kept trying to escape, and it'd have been easy enough to have a plot where they talk the camp commander into giving them a "fake" receipt in return for a favour, only for them to actually escape (and of course get caught again).

POWs got additional money after the war, on top of their normal pay (somewhat adjusted for the specific conditions they were held in, and with the money taken from captured Axis assets). So no, your pay isn't docked while you are imprisoned.

This. They're not paying him his "putting up with the Nazis" benefit for the days he was on the run. They probably consider escaping captivity to be equivalent to normal combat operations and pay as such.

Oh. That actually makes sense.

It kind of seems like the whole story is silly now...

It's worse than that. From the article he was being docked $1 for each day he was on the run.

He would have been paid if he had not escaped.

It was probably different back then, but now you are paid for each pay period plus some hazard pay and additionally, you receive automatic timely promotions (on a schedule specific t each rank) up to a certain point (you cannot enter a POW camp a Captain and leave as a General for instance).

This is why Bowe Bergdahl is in a big pickle if he is found guilty: he will lose 5 years of pay and return to his original low rank (he is now a Sergeant, I think he was a Private 1st Cl or Specialist) as well as be discharged as something other than "honorable".

> This is why Bowe Bergdahl is in a big pickle if he is found guilty: he will lose 5 years of pay and return to his original low rank (he is now a Sergeant, I think he was a Private 1st Cl or Specialist) as well as be discharged as something other than "honorable".

I rather thought Bergdahl was in a “big pickle” because the charges against him both carry long prison terms (one potentially a life sentence).

Unrelated but: that's how you should design your mobile website sharing plugin if you must do it. Small size, light color, 0 distractions.

I agree, though the fact I had to go back and check the article to find it might mean it's a bit too subtle.

Though an annoying pop up on pressing the back button to leave (on an android phone with chrome)

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