The Coalition of the Swilling

So it wasn't the fact that they were Polish and Romanian women that was the first clue?

I always resented, and still don't agree with the policy of paying people more because they have active breeding programs.

It seemed that single Marines stood more duty and worked later than married Marines and got paid less for it.

It is anathema to the American tradition of pay for merit.

Mike,

That is the price of an all volunteer force that attempts to retain the personnel it trains. You have to help pay for the family (a little bit anyway) if you expect the service member to keep coming back for more.

We wouldn't worry about paying more for personnel with dependents if we paid everyone a better salary in the first place. Don't even start me up on the erosion of benefits....

As for single troops working more - it's true when it comes to the "hey you" tasks that plague barracks dwellers but younger service members have always had that to deal with - it comes with the uniform.

I've heard of service members marrying other service members for the financial reward alone but this current trend, if it is one, is not just fraud, it may fall into the very unsavory and highly punishable category of human trafficking. Whether it is or not, these sailors will get investigated and that will be examined. Not a good day for the Navy and I'm sure there are a lot of nervous people in that branch as well as others.

Geesh, those girls should have just gone to Mexico and walked over like everyone else.

A WARM SWILL Welcome, tfhr!

Erosion of benefits...that would be one of the longest posts/comment strings on record.

When I was a second lieutenant, two lance corporals got married just so they could move off base, purely a business transaction. But then the guy came and complained to me that she was a lesbian and he didn't like coming home to her in bed with another woman, who also worked for me.

I chose to ignore their Peyton Place mess and told him he got what he deserved. I had a long talk with the woman and told her to watch herself because if anyone who cared found out she was sleeping with women she could get in big trouble.

They divorced shortly thereafter.

But I also remember standing duty on Christmas because I was single, getting more watches because I was single, etc. I stayed an extra day deployed because the married people went home first, etc. All petty things and not really worth complaining about, but I resented getting paid less for it.

We had a bunch of the "contract" marriages floating around. In one of them, the wife died in a motorcycle accident and had neglected to change her life insurance from the by law thing they had the single people do to her parents or siblings. Shortly after the funeral, the grieving widower showed up to work in a new vette.