An Air Force reservist who fought a two-year battle for reinstatement after seeking religious and medical exemptions to the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate has a glum outlook on armed services recruitment numbers.
Brandi King, who only learned she had been promoted to full colonel in April after Just the News asked the Air Force Reserve Command for her status last week, told “Just the News, No Noise” Tuesday she would be “unbelievably shocked” if anyone connected to her “decides to sign up” for military service, knowing how she was treated.
King was involuntarily transferred into the Non-Participating Individual Ready Reserve last year, meaning she no longer had an active status in the Reserve and couldn’t participate in drills or receive orders, pay or retirement. She had to fully pay her own life insurance premiums as well.
She agrees with mandate critics that the military’s sudden reversal, inviting discharged servicemembers to come back, is related to plunging recruitment numbers that followed the vaccine mandate.
“I don’t see how we could have gone through such persecution and alienation and then automatically, one day wake up” to be invited back, and even promoted, unless it’s “at least correlated to the lack of ability to recruit and retain retain,” King said.
She hopes her return will be “indicative of many people having another opportunity and a second chance to go in and serve should they decide to do so.”
But many separated members with the “utmost morals” have seen “people serving an institution instead of the Constitution” and are “probably potentially not going to want to reenter service to the institution” based on how “certain senior leaders” behaved in the past two years, she said.
King expects that former servicemembers will have to litigate to get back pay, but hopes the military will “just take the initiative” to pay them rather than “mandate a board of corrections for military records for every individual service member.”
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