Evening star., 1943-04-14
Army Attains Current
Basis on Applications
For Pay AI|otments
5000, 900 Now Receiving
Monthly Allowances;
Men Blamed for Delay
By MIRIAM OTTENBERG.

With more than 100000 rela-
tives of service men, mainly wives
and children, now receiving month
ly allowances, the War Department. IS
Office of Dependency Benefits is
now current in its operations and
geared to take on the added load
expected with the drafting of IA
thers, army officials said today.
"'Ve're out from under the avail
anche of initial requests and we
can now take ciSe of them cur
rently," said Col. Harold N. Gilbert
of the ODB.
The soldiers themselves, Col. Gil
bert added, were partly responsible
for former delays in the first check
being received by dependents.
"As soon as the law was passed" :"
he said, the soldiers were asked
to indicate whether they wanted to
apply for the family allowance when
it was possible to do so. On the
basis of this declaration of inten-
ton, and because the law was retro
active, the Army started deducting
the soldiers contribution to avoid
his owing the Government for pos
sibly four or five months all at
one time.
Applications Never Filed.
"Then the soldier, knowing the
deduction was going on and having
declared his intention to contribute,
assumed that was all there was to
1t and never filed an application
1t takes anywhere from five weeks
to nearly two months before the
dependents receive their first check,
however, although the actual pro-
cessing of an application with all
the necessary information takes only
10 days, Col. Gilbert said.
If a soldier is inducted on April 5,
for instance, and applies immedi-
ately, the payment starts accruing
May l, but the dependent receives
no check until the end of May.
''People feel that if a soldier applies
today" said Col Gilbert, "the family
will get check at the end of the
month. But the soldier has no pay
due him."
Relief Agencies Fill in.
In the interim, Army Emergency
Relief or the Red Gross has to step
In to pay medical bills and even
food and rent. An Army Emergency
Relief liaison officer is attached to
the ODB headquarters in Newark
and gets the letters which indicate
hardship is involved because of a
dependents failure to receive a
check.
These letters have now dropped
from an average of 600 to rs a
day, Army Emergency Relief said.
One official noted a distinct i'm
provement since January, when we
were getting thousands of letters
a day"
The Red Cross also reported fewer
cases of dependents waiting for
their checks than they had several
months ago, though in March, it
was said, a sampling of Red Cross
chapters in one region showed that
two-thirds of the relief cases han
died by the chapters were of this
type.
2,454,744 Applications Filed.
Both Col. Gilbert and Army Emer-
gency Relief spokesmen agreed that
the majority of dependents to whom
checks are now being sent are
wives and children. Among the
other relatives, mothers are the most
frequent recipients.
Were all conscious of the human
element and are doing everything
we can to gear our operations to
that" Col. Gilbert said.
AS of the first of this month, Col.
Gilbert reported, ODB had received
a total of 2,454,744 family allowance
applications, of which 2,189,552
had been approved and payments
started; 49,041 were Implications,
where the soldier and his family
had both applied; 17,947 were COM
pletely disapproved; 148,S58 were
temporarily disapproved because of
insufficient evidence of dependency,
and 49,346 were being processed.
The new cases were described as
-four days work"
Since the start of its operations
last summer, ODB had processed
and mailed out 12,372.377 checks
to more than 100000 dependents.