"I didn't think about it until my policy just… stopped."
He separated from the Army after eight years, moved his family across three states in six months, and never got around to converting his SGLI to VGLI. By the time he thought about it again, the window to convert without a health exam had already closed.
He wasn't hurt overseas. Nothing dramatic happened. He just got busy living a civilian life and figured the paperwork could wait.
Two years later he was turned down over a health question that wouldn't have mattered inside the VGLI conversion window. His wife found out when the group life certificate they'd been mailed didn't match what she remembered.
That's the gap this coverage exists to close. Not because you weren't covered while you served. Because coverage doesn't automatically follow you home.