voluntarily separate on the first anniversary of their original expiration of service or ETS date (under twelve-month stop-loss); officers and warrant officers, not retirement eligible, to apply to leave one year from the end of their original service obligation date; officers and warrant officers without a service obligation to request separation 12 months after they were first affected by stop-loss; and retirement-eligible soldiers to apply for retirement one year from their original retirement eligibility date (defined as 20 years active federal service) or one year from when stop-loss took effect if the soldier was retirement eligible on the effective date of stop-loss. Despite Secretary Gates's order, by April 2008 use of stop-loss had increased by 43%. Soldiers affected by stop-loss were then serving, on average, an extra 6.6 months, and sergeants through sergeants first class made up 45% of these soldiers. From 2002 through April 2008, 58,300 soldiers were affected by stop-loss, or about 1% of active duty, Reserve, and National Guard troops. Reduction in the use of stop-loss In March 2009, Gates ordered a deep reduction in the number of personnel affected by the stop loss policy, announcing a goal "to reduce that number by 50 percent by June 2010 and to bring it down to scores or less by March 2011." In the media In the 2005 "Witches of Mass Destruction" episode of American television series Boston Legal, Alan Shore represents a client suing the US military for the loss of her brother, who had to stay in Iraq beyond the time specified in his National Guard service contract due to the stop-loss program. A film titled Stop-Loss, released March 2008, details the fictional story of a soldier (played by actor Ryan Phillippe) who goes absent without leave from the military after being notified he is being stop-lossed. In the September 2008 season 2 premiere of the Canadian television series The Border, three fictional American soldiers desert to Canada by swimming the Niagara River, using stop-loss as their legal basis for refugee status. In the 2010 episode "Moving the Chains" of the American television series House, a patient confesses to Gregory House that he has been served with a stop-loss order after completing his enlistment service. In 2015, stop-loss was used as a plot device in an episode of The Last Ship. When 16 men wanted to get off the ship, one enlisted member's contracted enlistment was already