# "Easy Out?" "bad paper" discharge



## mariomike (15 Nov 2019)

This US Armed Services film is about a post-war USN sailor released on a Bad Conduct Discharge ( BCD ) aka "The Big Chicken Dinner".
( Not to be confused with a Dishonorable Discharge. )

It opens in a neighborhood. A telegram delivery guy arrives by bicycle and hands the telegram to a woman. She doesn't give him a tip! She dials a rotary phone. The family assembles and heads to the train station waving flags.
The train arrives. Paul, the discharged serviceman, wearing a white suit, receives hugs. Family asks why he isn't in uniform. 
He deeply kisses his girlfriend. ( Could be a young Ellen Burstyn? )

At dinner, the family asks the sailor questions. He angrily reacts.
He gets up to take his girlfriend home. In the car in front of her family’s house, they kiss and neck in the dark. He confesses the BCD. She jumps out of the car and dumps him.

He is ineligible for GI benefits, so college is out. He goes to the employment office at a local factory.  

The hiring man hands him a paper that needs to be signed by a VA representative. After looking at the BCD papers, the VA man informs Paul he is entitled to nothing. 
Dejected, he sits on porch steps, puts his face into his hands, and cries. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7bf4acP0Wk


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## tomahawk6 (16 Nov 2019)

The BCD is the result of either a general court martial or special court martial. 

https://www.mcasiwakuni.marines.mil/Portals/112/Docs/sja/discharge%20list.pdf


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## mariomike (17 Nov 2019)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The BCD is the result of either a general court martial or special court martial.



Less severe than a Dishonorable Discharge ( DD ).

Looks similar to a CAF 2 ( a ) Release.


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