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centermass556
Posts: 3,618 Senior Member
Where did my Army go....
centermass556
Posts: 3,618 Senior Member
SO...this is the Army I face.
In the Big Army, we go to the range in full kit..vest, helmet, knee pads, and crap....
In the big Army, we have a lot of combat wounded trying to get back to normal that can no longer wear the extra weight of helmet, vest, and crap. We also just have some broke Soldiers that were not genetically strong enough to survive day to day Army training.
Someone up the food chain has put out that if a Soldier can not fire a weapon at the range (with an extra 30-50lbs of crap on) then they should not be allowed to shoot their privately owned weapons, AND the Commanders should make these Soldiers lock their Privately Owned Weapons up in the arms room...
I am waiting for the hammer to fall on this one...
In the Big Army, we go to the range in full kit..vest, helmet, knee pads, and crap....
In the big Army, we have a lot of combat wounded trying to get back to normal that can no longer wear the extra weight of helmet, vest, and crap. We also just have some broke Soldiers that were not genetically strong enough to survive day to day Army training.
Someone up the food chain has put out that if a Soldier can not fire a weapon at the range (with an extra 30-50lbs of crap on) then they should not be allowed to shoot their privately owned weapons, AND the Commanders should make these Soldiers lock their Privately Owned Weapons up in the arms room...
I am waiting for the hammer to fall on this one...
"To have really lived, you must have almost died. To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know."
Replies
I have a better idy, lock them stupid commaders in the Arms Rooms:cuss:
Words of wisdom from Big Chief: Flush twice, it's a long way to the Mess Hall
I'd rather have my sister work in a whorehouse than own another Taurus!
As far as I know, you can't MAKE them lock up POW's unless they are in the barracks. I'd have to check the regs.
Winston Churchill
You would be amazed at what Boot doesn't weed out now....then in OSUT/AIT it doesn't get any better and then after a month or two months of training, real PT, and being made to Soldier..they start having back and knee issues. Just not genetically suited to sustain the long term stress of Army life. And we still find them long after basic...Take the basic Army Computer nerd (25B). He goes to ft meade as his first assignment and has soft duty working for some Intel GS-14 for three years, get promoted to SGT, and then is sent to a division in the 18th ABN Corp. Every Unit in the Corps has a METL that involves exiting aircraft (either fixed wing under a T-10 or rotary on a rope), running, and walking very far for a long time....And because of the first three in a "soft", not SOF (HA!), duty assignement the army doesnt find out until four years in this Soldier is not genetically fit to handle the stress of an Army Division....
I won't even go into the attitude problems Boot doesnt weed out now...
Not suprising. When I was there you had to fill out a form a week in advance to get your POW out of the arms room. No POW's allowed in barracks. Even to clean.
That's the way it was in the Army when I was stationed in Japan in 66-68. If I wanted to hunt ducks over the weekend, I had to put in a request to get my shotgun from the arms room several days in advance. We also had small bore rifle matches and trap matches and the same rules applied. Prior approval, no firearms in barracks and that's the way it was. We had some of the most fantastic duck hunting you can imagine on the Northern Japanese island of Hokaido. It was the first landmass that ducks migrating from Siberia would encounter.
All we had to do was put out a few dozen decoys in a rice paddie and we were golden. The limit was 10 per day per species. The only fly in the ointment was that occasionally we would forget to get our paperwork into the CO in time to get the shotgun out of the arms room in time for the hunt. I also missed a few trap shooting matches because I didn't get my paperwork in on time to get my shotgun out of the arms room in time for the weekend shoot.
"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and speed is the economy of motion" - Scott Jedlinski
I joined up in 2002. (I really did my level best to not be a 9/11 Patriot, but damned if I was gonna miss out on a chance to legally frag someone. My platoon got 25 towelheads at one sitting...but I digress) I finally got out of the army after my 2nd tour to Iraq, which is when I found out that M1s were going to be traded in for Strykers (and have since learned 4000 M1s are being shrinkwrapped and coldstored starting this year) The Army wanted to make everyone infantry, regardless of any potential (And I feel real) threat China possesses.
the Insurgents consistently admitted to not liking the tanks being sent out on patrol. I remember both times in Iraq, the graffiti on the wall said "The Tanks are Leaving" which was our first clue we were going home. Apparently the Senior Commander in Theater had an Al-Qaeda spy as a laundryman.
As far as PersWeaps, I never bothered with them. I figured my own assigned weapon was close enough if the hit the fan, even if I could only use it for a club.
Jerry
First off, these higher ups should get off the backs of our combat wounded and rethink their blanket policy.
Next, if you have non-hackers (broke soldiers), the company commander should send them off to porkchop (remedial) platoon and get them up to speed. If that doesn't work there's always the Admin discharge. Afterall, if they can't pull their weight why should we hang on to them.
Finally, this sort of decision should be left to the company commander since the company level commander would be in a position to better understand the case-by-case problem at hand.
Blanket policies, blanket thinking.
You know what they say,..."The narrower the mind, the broader the policy." :bang:
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! -- Mark Twain
On the other hand, I am completely loving Alaska, and for the most part this a Unit with tremendous potiential. We have some great Soldiers and truely awesome NCOs. I have a team of 3 SFC/E-7s working for me, and together we are breeding a culture change in the BN to bring the unit to its full potential....
This being said, as I understand it, the policy is, "If you can't wear your war crap (for WHATEVER reason), you can't shoot your military weapon and if you can't shoot OUR guns, you CERTAINLY shouldn't be allowed to shoot YOURS".
If the thinking here is to stimulate these soldiers to get off their profiles and get back into working in the line units, just so they can play with their personal toys off-duty, I can understand the logic. I do not, however, applaud it.
Profiles are there for a reason, to allow the soldier to recuperate. If the profile is permanant, they should be retrained if possible and reassigned. As an example, my step-father was a bomber pilot who ended up with arthritis in his neck, which was exacerbated during high-altitude flight. The resulting profile caused him to be reassigned to a berth as the XO of a Maintenance Squadron and mandated retirement in 1965. (Take a guess how many career bomber pilots the Air Force was letting go in 1965.)
If retraining and/or reassignment is not an option, the soldier should be medicaled out so that the slot can be filled by someone who IS able to do the job. My experience is that this doesn't happen as promptly as it should, if it happens at all. Many times, the profiled non-hacker is just sidelined and his enlistment allowed to expire, or career soldiers allowed to retire. This, of course, just makes it harder on the other members of the unit who must pick up the profile's slack.
Do I have a solution? Not from where I sit. It has gone on so long that it's just a fact of life, something to be endured and dealt with...like speed limits or gun permit laws.
However, when I become King, things will change, so vote for ME!
ed
My duties were mostly of a nature that kept me pretty fit for someone on sea duty 9 months out of the year. Lots of lifting, walking, and heaving heavy objects from one place to another. We had zero fitness equipment, and no place to put it if we would have been possession of any. The overseas cruises lasted for 6 months (supposedly) and then we came back to home port, or maybe for a little refit time in a Navy yard. Then there was all that 'show the flag' stuff in the Caribbean, gunnery range time at Gitmo, and other 2-4 week at sea stuff that kept us out of port. It was rumored that the Mayport, FL base had a gym, but I never saw it. Running on the deck at sea was mostly an iffy proposition. Doable if the sea was flat, but anything above 5 ft. waves was dangerous. Too much stuff to run into with the ship rockin' and rollin'. Carriers were better suited for exercise equipment; on the smaller ships it just wasn't possible.
When we did get to stay in port for any length of time, I had a 10 speed bike that I rode all over the base (got run off the practice landing airfield on a regular basis), and trips to Jacksonville Beach. A few other guys had bikes, but being on different watch sections made it nearly impossible to get together for a ride anywhere.
― Douglas Adams
The fittest days in my life were my shipboard years (no beer and nothing to do but work out makes that easy). The PT standards are (were) ridiculously easy. If you couldn't pass PT you were in sad shape, you certainly couldn't function in a casualty (carry an injured shipmate up a ladder or haul portable pumps and damage control gear). The thing that bugged me was that there was no regular exercise regimen and the mess decks always offered a good supply of high fat foods and sugary deserts. When I went on my last WestPac (6 month deployment) I brought 150 cans of tuna (lean protein) and resupplied as we hit ports of call. Staying fit at sea is no different from staying fit in port.