About 100,000 War Vets Owed Stop-Loss Cash Payments

Aug. 4, 2010— -- A U.S. senator wants to know why more than 100,000 servicemen and women never received thousands of dollars they are owed by the Pentagon after being forced to extend their military tours during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote to the Pentagon Tuesday wanting to know what the military has done to alert the service members that they are eligible for the money. As many as 145,000 men and women, most of them from the Army, were subjected to involuntary extensions of their military obligations starting in 2001 because the Pentagon imposed "stop loss" orders.

Lautenberg initiated legislation that required the Pentagon provide extra compensation to stop-lossed service members. A bill eventually passed last year.

But in the nine months since the special one-year, retroactive, stop-loss compensation program went into effect in October 2009, less than 20 percent of the eligible service members have received the pay, according to Lautenberg, citing Department of Defense figures.

The average amount owed each soldier or service member is between $3,000 and $4,000, according to the Stars and Stripes newspaper which first reported the stop-loss pay lag last month.

"I am concerned that more than 100,000 service members who qualify for these payments may never receive them," Lautenberg said in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by ABCNews.com, Lautenberg requested detailed information on the Department of Defense's efforts to reach those who are owed stop-loss pay.

Under the program, service members from all military branches who were individually stop-lossed -- and not part of an entire unit stop-lossed -- between September 2001 and September 2008 can claim $500 for every month they were kept beyond the end of their term of service.

The retroactive compensation program, created by Congress via the War Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, and funded with more than $500 million, ends on Oct. 21.

Around 50,000 total claims have been filed, many of them coming in the past few weeks, according to the Army.

Armed forces members stop-lossed after September 2008 are automatically given the extra pay.

"It's been difficult to track many of these individuals down," said Major Roy Whitley, project manager for the Army's special retroactive stop-loss pay program. "We're talking about a group of young individuals who are finished with their military service and who tend to move around a lot."

"Who knows for sure why more of them have not put in for it, but we're certainly doing everything we can," Whitley said.