Legion staffer here. The loss of the Legion was pretty traumatic, and a lot of the Legion witnessed it, so a lot of the recruits took leave. They were green and not used to things that bad yet. The active Legionnaires of the old team that we have now worked through it, which was really devastating to see. They were still actively going out on distress calls even as they were dealing with what happened. I don't know how they did it. Some of them were breaking down between missions, then collecting themselves right up again to take the next distress call.

The UP Council put their bullshit sanctions in place while the recruits were on leave and due to their probationary status they have different rules in place for their leavetime. They're still not technically officially sworn in yet and they were given longer leavetime than is usually sanctioned in the Legion constitution, due to it being a somewhat unusual situation.

The Council was able to treat it as if they ditched, citing the Legion Constitution, and that made it impossible for some of them to rejoin. I think a few took only the approved leavetime so some of them can rejoin (and haven't due to a few personal situations) but a lot of the others were barred from joining by the sanctions and still want to be Legionnaires to this day.

The sanctions are bullshit. They're not to protect "young people from dying," they're contributing to the risk of them doing just that.