First lady Michelle Obama urged Hollywood last Monday to make more films portraying the sacrifices of American military members and their families.

Col. Darel Maxfield, of Spokane, tells exquisite war stories from his time as a Bronze Star winner in Iraq. But it may be the tale of what happened since he flew home that would most surprise and confound American film audiences.

Maxfield, a former Ferris High School social studies teacher and a member of the Army Reserve, returned from Iraq in 2008. In August 2009 as he was heading for another training, this time for an upcoming deployment to support the war in Afghanistan, he suffered a stroke. He lost the feeling on his right side.

The Army cut off his salary and his health insurance benefits, yet failed to retire him.

At first, Maxfield’s paperwork halted for lack of a “line of duty” investigation into whether the stroke indeed took place on Army Reserve time. My inquiries last fall, along with those from a congressional office, seemed to jump-start the investigation.

But even once the Army made that decision in his favor, the process stalled again. Paperwork, medical records and emails bounced around the country, from Texas to California to Florida to Georgia, with a rotating cast of officers, physicians, attorneys, generals and civilians.

The bureaucrats have requested so many convoluted procedures that Maxfield now finds the experience surreal. “It’s either a really elaborate episode of ‘M*A*S*H*’ or a new ‘Catch-22,’ ” he says.

Along the way, Maxfield’s emotions have ranged from hopeful to incredulous to bitterly angry to philosophical. It helps to take the perspective of Air Force bombardier Capt. John Yossarian, the character played by Alan Arkin in the film “Catch-22.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs has declared Maxfield to be 100 percent disabled; the Army appears to have gone mysteriously AWOL.

“I’m not in a position to be either happy or sad,” Maxfield says. “It’s just laughable at this point.”

In the first year after the stroke, Maxfield replaced his income with sick leave from Spokane Public Schools, much of it donated by his co-workers. Last fall the VA began to provide some health care and disability pay.

But the Army needs to decide whether he’s still on active reserve, and restore his salary and medical coverage, or bring his military career to a close and begin his retirement pay.

Maxfield discovered he’s about to receive a Legion of Merit award for his decade of exceptional service and leadership during the global war on terror.

In the meantime, he plans to escape the fireworks of the Fourth of July. He can no longer tolerate those loud explosions. He and his wife plan to enjoy the quiet of the forest property they own north of Spokane and watch the deer, turtles and geese.

“When I got back from Iraq, I had seen enough carnage and noise and violence for one lifetime,” Maxfield says.

The last he heard, a colonel in Florida had sent his packet on to an Army Medical Review Board in Atlanta. The board deliberations, he understands, could last a few days or six months.

Maxfield believes the snafus connected to his case relate to the unusual nature of the Army Reserve, staffed by soldiers who work civilian jobs most of the month, and supervised by bosses who often sit in offices 1,500 miles away. He slogs through this fight in isolation.

I called his commander’s office in Houston last week. The specialist I spoke to had never heard of Maxfield. He said he’d have to get back to me.

That same week, though, Maxfield got an apologetic phone call from a lieutenant colonel in California. It seemed that the Army has determined to scare up every last possible soldier for training on its new sexual orientation policy. Maxfield agreed to sit in on a conference call while a trainer talked through an online PowerPoint presentation.

Like Yossarian, Maxfield realized the Catch-22 of that hour and 15 minutes he’ll never get back. If he didn’t sit through the training, he wouldn’t get paid, and if he did sit through the training, he still wouldn’t get paid.

It might make sense to Yossarian that the most protracted battle in Maxfield’s military career has been with his own Army, but it’s still a shame.