rapid fire
Benefits Brief
KNOWING ABOUT YOUR MILITARY BENEFITS AND ENTITLEMENTS — or at least knowing where to start looking for the appropriate information — provides great relief to servicemembers as well as their spouses. However, getting the discussion started can be difficult. Most folks prefer to talk about anything besides their eventual demise.
How can you prepare? Regarding military benefits and entitlements, start by gathering documents, including: retirement orders, military service records (DD-214), notice of eligibility for retired pay (NOE), marriage licenses, divorce decrees, trusts, living wills, Retiree Account statements (RAS), Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuity information, VA disability rating, and other financial data. With this in hand, work through MOAA’s Personal Affairs Action Guide. It provides fillable forms in print and online. (With the online version, you can save completed forms or print them for your personal files.) While completing the workbook, or afterward, talk with your spouse about the workbook’s contents and location. Being prepared doesn’t do any good if you keep it a secret!
Once you’ve had the conversation, you’re on the right path. But remember, you’ve begun working on a living document that changes based on your situation in life. As your children grow up or beneficiaries die, you’ll want to update your document. At a minimum, review your documents every five years or as circumstances require. MOAA’s Personal Affairs Action Guide is available free of charge to Premium and Life Members. Find it at
www.moaa.org/infoexchange.
— Cmdr. Katherine O’Neill Tracy, USN (Ret), is a deputy director in MOAA’s Transition Center
In Review
Hidden Warbirds: The Epic Stories of Finding, Recovering & Rebuilding WWII’s Lost Aircraft. By Nicholas A. Veronico. Zenith Press, 2013. $30. ISBN 978-0-7603-4409-5.
Fans of World War II aircraft will love this unique book by aviation enthusiast Nicholas Veronico, who tells how wrecked World War II military aircraft are found, recovered, and restored by museums and private collectors.
Veronico has written extensively about military aviation, but this book is distinctive for its special subject and depth about an often-ignored segment of aviation history. Nearly 100 aircraft are presented here: fighters and bombers, from German Heinkels and Focke-Wulfs and Japanese Zeros and Bettys to British Spitfires and Hurricanes, American Corsairs and Black Widows, and Russian Sturmoviks.
Veronico explains how these forgotten aircraft are discovered in swamps and jungles, on mountains, under the sea, and encased in ice. He also tells colorful stories of individual aircraft like the B-17 Swamp Ghost and the P-38 Glacier Girl and the incredibly expensive efforts to preserve history.
Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945. By Rana Mitter. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. $30. ISBN 978-0-618-89425-3.
Often minimized by historians, China’s complex and notable involvement in World War II receives well-deserved treatment in author Rana Mitter’s history of China’s savage war with Japan.
Mitter’s lucid narrative describes China’s maltreatment by Japan as early as 1931, blowing up into Japan’s brutal war of aggression in 1937 and costing tens of millions of casualties as well as refugees, horrific famine, and the destruction of China’s industrial, economic, and social structure.
Best are his portrayals of the shrewd and mercurial Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, patient and calculating Communist leader Mao Tse-tung, traitorous collaborator Wang Ching-wei, and the contentious rivalries of American advisors Gens. Joseph Stilwell and Claire Chennault.
— William D. Bushnell
28 MILITARY OFFICER FEBRUARY 2014
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