"No officer was willing to report their units or vehicles as unready, lest they take a hit on promotion." I just thought of a reply today involving the CO of my ship during one of our Vietnam deployments with the Riverine Navy. Our port forward gun mount (3 inch/50 cal AA) was down and needed a part from the squadron back in Yokosuka. He had no problem reporting the casualty. The squadron could have cannibalized one of the LSTs in port at the time and flown it down ASAP. While they were dithering we got an assignment to go up river, but his action kept us on the ocean and we sent some boats up instead. They were ambushed, but no one was hurt.
He was a great CO.
Sounds like you were lucky enough to have a good CO. The fact that the bad amtraks were just passed on and the new CO did nothing tells me this is now SOP. I find it hard to believe they don’t care at all about the welfare of their men, so I think either the officers had no understanding of the dangers involved or the culture of ignoring lack of readiness is really deeply ingrained. Not sure which is worse.