Fort Leonard Wood soldiers take off on holiday leave houstonherald.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from houstonherald.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By COLLEEN SCHRAPPEN | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Published: December 21, 2020
Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See other free reports here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription. ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. (Tribune News Service) Soldiers embarking on their holiday leave Sunday said goodbye to the rigors of early-morning formations, fitness regimens and fatigues at a subdued sendoff from the USO of Missouri. The annual Holiday Block Leave, when soldiers are bused in from Missouri s Fort Leonard Wood to head home from St. Louis Lambert International Airport, is usually marked with hustle and hoopla.
Share This:
We wondered how COVID would affect Holiday Block Leave for the service branches so we did some checking. It appears that no standard set of COVID procedures exists beyond CDC guidelines. Thus, individual commands and bases will have some flexibility depending on their local circumstances. Servicemembers will be tested for COVID prior to taking leave and any who test positive will be prevented from traveling.
In granting Holliday Block Leave, the military services have to balance the need of servicemembers to see their families versus the need to protect the force from COVID infection. To date, some 75,000 members of the military have tested positive for the virus. Relatively few deaths have occurred because servicemembers tend to be younger and in much better health than the general population.