Ronald Schow as a captain during his 2004 deployment to Iraq. (Photo provided by Ronald Schow)

When the Army selected Ronald Schow for an early promotion to lieutenant colonel in 2011, service officials realized they made a mistake five years earlier.

Schow’s previous promotion to major had never been submitted to the Senate for confirmation, as required by law. His name had been left off the list that the Army sent to Congress in October 2006. Yet, the Army still sent Schow a promotion order that he and his unit believed to be accurate, and he was pinned with a major’s golden oak leaf on the chest of his uniform.

Eventually, the Army decided to revoke the rank and return Schow to a captain — the rank at which he retired in 2017 after years of trying to rectify the error.

After exhausting all administrative options to gain a major’s retirement pay, Schow filed a lawsuit last year in Federal Claims Court to get $180,000 in back pay and retirement pay that he would have received if he had retired as a major.

However, he said he’s not able to sue for negligence that led to lost earnings from not being promoted to lieutenant colonel because of the limitations service members have in suing the military. A Supreme Court decision known as the Feres Doctrine blocks troops from suing for anything that occurred to them in the military that is related to their service.

“It was terrible. Everyone thought this was an administrative issue, but it turned out to be a legal issue. There’s no precedent for demoting an officer without kicking [him or her] out of the Army,” said Schow, who lives in Indiana and is representing himself in court. “Not only did we lose money during the years where I got demoted, we lost money during the years where I should have been promoted. And to be honest, it’s affected my post-retirement prospects.”

The loss of promotions isn’t easily definable in a cover letter, and Schow said he doesn’t intentionally bring it up to employers. He said he never wants to appear disgruntled.

A judge last month ruled the lawsuit could move forward despite a Justice Department attempt to have it thrown out because of the amount of time that has passed since it began. The court’s decision on the lawsuit is expected early next year.

The Army labeled the seven years that Schow spent as a major as a de facto status, meaning in practice he was a major. This allowed him to keep the pay and benefits that he earned during that time based on a century-old Supreme Court ruling.

Schow argued in court documents that the Supreme Court ruling should also require the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, known as DFAS, to use his time as a major to calculate his retirement pay. It’s known as the high-36 retirement rule, which uses the three highest-earning years of base pay to calculate retirement. The Army requested the agency do so when it submitted information for Schow’s retirement, though the service has no authority over the decision.

DFAS refused to consider the rank.

“The salary you’re allowed to retain for your de facto service as a major is not to be included in the calculation of your retired pay base,” the agency wrote in a March 2018 denial of Schow’s original claim. “While the Army’s de facto status determination allowed you to keep the pay you had received, you are not legally entitled to that pay.”

DFAS declined to comment on Schow’s case, citing the pending litigation.

Matt Freeman, a former Army attorney, has been helping Schow with his legal paperwork at no cost because he said he loves an underdog story.

“I’ve honestly never come across anything in my career, really my life, where somebody just got put in a bad place. I cannot get any traction, and Ron can’t get any traction, for people to do something for him,” Freeman said. “The fact that no one really tried to find a good way for Ron to be promoted, it’s pathetic.”

The Army did not respond to a request for comment on Schow’s situation or on the frequency at which similar mistakes occur.

How it happened

The circumstances that led to officials separating Schow’s name from the other promotable captains in 2006 began two years prior in Iraq.

Schow was an infantry company commander in the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment out of Fort Lewis, Wash. He and his soldiers fought their way from Fallujah to Mosul, enduring some of the most dangerous and demanding fighting of the war. The unit was at Forward Operating Base Marez on Dec. 21, 2004, when a man wearing an explosive vest under an Iraqi security uniform detonated his bomb in the dining facility, killing 14 soldiers, four civilian contractors and four Iraqi soldiers. Another 72 people were injured.

Two days later, Schow’s company hit a roadside bomb that destroyed his Stryker armored vehicle. Schow’s gunner lost both his legs in the blast. Schow took the gunner’s bloody boot and used it to slap an Iraqi man who the unit believed was behind the bomb.

“This momentary lapse of judgment occurred shortly after the incident, and the detainee was not harmed. Other than this incident, there were no prior lapses in judgment, and none after the incident as well,” then-Col. Robert Brown, Schow’s brigade commander at the time of the incident, wrote in a 2006 letter of support for promoting Schow.

Schow was reprimanded for the incident, and the Army selected him for promotion to major soon after.

A 2012 administrative investigation into Schow’s promotion stated any promotable officer with a detainee incident on their record had to be separated from the list for the Army secretary’s individual review and approval. This was done to ensure that officers with legally objectionable actions in their past were not promoted, according to the report.

Schow and one other captain were singled out that cycle and ultimately approved for promotion by the secretary, according to the investigation. However, the two names never made it back onto the list sent to the Senate for confirmation.

The other captain’s name, and most other names besides Schow’s, were redacted from the report that Schow received through an open records request.

The administrative investigation revealed a longtime civil servant was hospitalized during the promotion cycle, and a relatively new civilian employee mishandled the paperwork. Instead of a date for Senate confirmation, Schow’s orders stated “N/A.”

In early 2007, the hospitalized employee returned to work at Human Resources Command and noticed the mistake, according to the investigation. A group of personnel in the command and the Directorate of Military Personnel Management decided since the officers had already been promoted, revoking the orders would not be in the best interest of the service.

“This would cause embarrassment to the officers, their families, the [secretary of the Army] and the Army,” an employee told investigators. “The easy and right way to do this was to submit a separate scroll to the Senate for confirmation. … This was not done, and this is where the major breakdown occurred.”

The investigation determined human error caused the mistake rather than a systemic issue.

“As the [Army secretary] had approved them, both should have their names forwarded to the Senate for confirmation, and neither should be informed of the administrative oversight,” the report stated in its conclusion.

But that didn’t happen.

Rank revoked

Schow, who transferred from infantry to acquisitions at about the time that he became a major, said he learned of the mistake and the subsequent investigation in November 2012 when his commander inquired why Schow’s promotion to lieutenant colonel didn’t go through. Schow got the news in the hospital where he was recovering from appendix surgery.

Initially, the Army said it would allow Schow to keep his rank while it sought a solution. But after five months, the service reversed course.

Ronald Schow with then-Brig. Gen. Brian Cummings at his retirement ceremony in October 2017. The Army made a clerical error when promoting Schow to major in 2006 and revoked his rank, forcing him to retire as a captain. (Photo provided by Ronald Schow)

Retired Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, who was Schow’s commander at Fort Belvoir, Va., at the time, had the unfortunate job of informing Schow of the demotion, which occurred April 26, 2013. He told Schow to wear civilian clothes to work so he didn’t have to put on a lesser rank in front of others.

“You deserve all the dignity,” Cummings said he told Schow that day. “You did all the right things to fix this, and you can’t do anything about your situation. You should not be looked down upon by your peers.”

Schow remained a captain while the Army reworked and returned his promotion paperwork to the Senate Armed Services Committee for confirmation to major. He said he was told by his commanders that the detainee infraction was the deal-breaker for senators, but he’s not certain he believes it. He also said he’ll never know how much liability the Army accepted for the mistake.

“Ultimately, what the promotion without Senate confirmation meant is that the Army was in violation of Article 2 of the Constitution,” Schow said, referencing the requirement for the Senate to confirm certain officer promotions. “No one knew what to do with it. And as organizations do, they protected themselves. They try to minimize their risk while still doing whatever they were supposed to do. I think a lot of the lengthy timelines you see are a byproduct of that.”

Cummings disagreed. He said he wasn’t in the meetings personally, but he knows Army leaders were going over to the Senate and trying to convince them to confirm Schow.

“We must always hold our soldiers accountable, and when we do so we must be sure to apply actions with reasonable consequences. In Ron’s case, his initial punishment was appropriate, and he accepted his punishment respectfully,” Cummings said. “In the years that followed when the administrative mistake had been discovered, he wasn’t given the grace he so well deserved.”

After the Senate’s legislative session closed in 2016, Schow said the Army could have resubmitted him for confirmation, but he was exhausted. He retired in October 2017 as a captain.

In a memo explaining Schow’s promotion history for retirement pay, the Army called on DFAS to consider the de facto rank that it used to allow Schow to keep his seven years’ worth of major’s pay and entitlements.

“The only time the high 36 is not used is if the member was reduced in grade for punitive actions (conduct). That circumstance does not apply to Capt. Schow’s case,” the memo read.

DFAS disagreed.

Schow submitted his first request to DFAS to adjust his retirement pay in February 2018, according to court documents. This began a back-and-forth of denials and appeals that continued through October 2019 when Schow reached the end of his options outside of a lawsuit.

Freeman, the attorney, has helped Schow sort through each of these paths along the way.

“I’m still here because somebody has to stick up for him,” he said. “The Army has totally failed him.”

The difference in pay that Schow would receive if the court forces DFAS to change his retirement is roughly $400 a month — not life changing, Schow said. But it’s about more than the money. The entire situation left him feeling voiceless and shook the values he had placed on the Army — an institution to which he dedicated two decades of his life.

“I was always a good soldier when this whole thing was going down. Then I realized that I’m really going to get screwed. I want to make the Army accountable, not just because I want to embarrass the Army. The only way that you make organizations better is you bring the bad stuff to light,” Schow said.

He also thinks about his family — his wife and child — and what has been taken from them financially and emotionally.

“The amount of emotional energies and calories that this thing has sucked out of our family is massive,” he said. “Since I’ve retired, it’s just been a continual low throb of activity.”