A Familiar Strain Is Felt In Stateside Guard Unit

THE Washington Post ^ | September 19, 2004 | Thomas E. Ricks

[neverdem]

FORT DIX, N.J. -- The 635 soldiers of a battalion of the South Carolina National Guard scheduled to depart Sunday for a year or more in Iraq have spent their off-duty hours under a disciplinary lockdown in their barracks for the last two weeks.

The trouble began Labor Day weekend, when 13 members of the 1st Battalion of the 178th Field Artillery Regiment went AWOL, mainly to see their families again before shipping out. Then there was an ugly confrontation between members of the battalion's Alpha and Charlie batteries -- the term artillery units use instead of "companies" -- that threatened to turn into a brawl involving three dozen soldiers, and required the base police to intervene.

That prompted a barracks inspection that uncovered alcohol, resulting in the lockdown that kept soldiers in their rooms except for drills, barred even from stepping outside for a smoke, a restriction that continued with some exceptions until Sunday's scheduled deployment.

The battalion's rough-and-tumble experience at a base just off the New Jersey Turnpike reflects many of the biggest challenges, strains and stresses confronting the Guard and Reserve soldiers increasingly relied on to fight a war 7,000 miles away.

This Guard unit was put on an accelerated training schedule -- giving the soldiers about 36 hours of leave over the past two months -- because the Army needs to get fresh troops to Iraq, and there are not enough active-duty or "regular" troops to go around. Preparation has been especially intense because the Army is short-handed on military police units, so these artillerymen are being quickly re-trained to provide desperately needed security for convoys. And to fully man the unit, scores of soldiers were pulled in from different Guard outfits, some voluntarily, some on orders.

As members of the unit looked toward their tour,...

[not2worry]

Well, the real truth, IMHO, has been discussed on these boards before.

If Kerry wins, Rangel will get his Bill No. 163 back on the floor in Congress. It will be immediately passed. The Draft will be re instituted before our tax returns are due on April 15th!

Wake up and smell the coffee bloggers! Rangel and his other 14 liberal supporters are going to want to turn in their chit to "President Kerry" as soon as they possibly can!

[reed13k]

And strategically - we are also seeing a loss in ship numbers which reduces our sealift capabilities for supporting these type of operations, but just as important reduces our capability to respond to both large and small problems elsewhere in the world.

As I see it we need to make up our mind - either commit to policing the world or get out of it all together. My personal vote is to maintain only two overseas bases with a combined naval CAG and Marine MEU. Everything else is then wrapping stateside tight - and ready to lay the wrath of god on anyone who messes with us. I think it would have two effects. 1) It will wake everyone else up to their need to support their own defense and 2) it will wake up the huge mega-corporations who are often expecting the US military to insure their investments are safe from seizure.

[BnBlFlag]

Employers will start finding ways to avoid hiring Reservists and Guardsmenn because they need thes people on the job. Then we have a real problem. with both recruiting and retention

[leadpenny]

I disagree that a draft would be reinstituted by either party unless it is truly needed. I happen to favor a draft, mostly, for reasons of including all American in fighting a necessary war, but, if DOD is truly able to continue with the current 'ops tempo' without a draft, Rangel nor anyone else can push it through.

[loboinok]

roughly 50 percent.Troops that is.

[armordog99]

I am curious, did your bloodbrother talked about the train-up prior to deployment? Was there train-up any good? I know ours was the worst training I have seen in my 12 years in the military. We had reserve water purification guys teaching infantry tactics.

As far as the war over here, the thing the MSM really misses is the courage of the Iraqis. These guys are going out without IBA in toyota trucks and trying to do their job. It is really something. Having said that, from were I am sitting it will take us a minimum of ten years to get a handle on the situation. And that is if we can secure the borders. And the Iraqi border patrol is less trained and less equipped that our border patrol.

I don't think the majority of the American people have the will to see casualties like we've been taking for ten years. And I am sure that at this point we do not have the man power to keep this level of troops in country for ten years. If something should happen in Korea or over Tawain, we would be up a creek without a paddle.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

The whole battalion confined to barracks, the week before deployment, just because 13 went AWOL?? That sounds overly harsh, to me.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..it's hard not to "talk down" to someone who employs gutter talk - or initials that stand for a gutter expression - on what is supposed to be a family-friendly board...

Don't waste your breath with an appeal to decency, amigo. This tag team are the two biggest military phonies on FR since DITHF. Cheers, By

[Grut]

I wonder just whose fault the lack of active duty troops is????

Could it be...... Slick Willy?

Hmm, lessee... it takes two or three months to run a guy through basic, and maybe another year for him to really get proficient. So who was President fifteen months ago?

[Feckless]

Most of the reserves and NG have families, mortgages etc

Most Regular Army do, too. As the acting CSM I told a CW4 activated and attached to our Bn at Ft. Dix during Desert Shield when he complained about being away from his family and business in a staff meeting "All those checks you've been cashing over the years was not payment for playing Spades at the armory, they were for this, and more if need be." When he objected to being spoken to like that by an enlisted man my Bn Cdr told him "Just pretend I said it then, Mister".

Thanks again LTC Pingly.

[not2worry]

Well, I guess only time will tell on the Draft.

I have been to Israel where it is just a fact of life that at age 18 all men and women enter into the Military in some form to serve their Country. I was only there a short while but my understanding was that if you were an Israeli citizen (Jewish by religion or not, rich or poor, male or female) you served your Country.

Not a bad idea IMHO. It seemed to mature a lot of kids and they had a better of idea of what freedom means.

[Arkinsaw]

I am curious, did your bloodbrother talked about the train-up prior to deployment? Was there train-up any good? I know ours was the worst training I have seen in my 12 years in the military. We had reserve water purification guys teaching infantry tactics.

That was a mixed bag. The Arkansas Brigade is an "enhanced brigade", they've been to JRTC a bunch and have had a lot of regular army training and advisors over the years. A lot of those guys served in the regular army before. Their first day of training some 19 year old just trained to be a trainer started them off on what an M-16 was. You can imagine that it caused a bit of grumbling for an enhanced infantry unit to be taught basic infantry tactics.....again. There was initially some Regular Army - National Guard tension. Frankly, the Regular Army assumed they were idiots and went from there which, I think, led to the vice versa.

The latter stages of the training were, according to him, good and dealt with the situations that had been experienced in Iraq in wargame form. They had access to those who had been over there and were run through a lot of Baghdad-like scenarios. I believe he was satisfied with the latter portion, disgusted with the early portion. (However, that training might have been useful to new guys or to units that were not "enhanced" units.)

As far as the war over here, the thing the MSM really misses is the courage of the Iraqis. These guys are going out without IBA in toyota trucks and trying to do their job. It is really something.

His statements reflect that. His opinion is very high on the Iraqi National Guard guys they deal with.

Having said that, from were I am sitting it will take us a minimum of ten years to get a handle on the situation. And that is if we can secure the borders. And the Iraqi border patrol is less trained and less equipped that our border patrol.

I don't think the majority of the American people have the will to see casualties like we've been taking for ten years. And I am sure that at this point we do not have the man power to keep this level of troops in country for ten years. If something should happen in Korea or over Tawain, we would be up a creek without a paddle.

I agree that the critical factor is the homefront, and the Democrats and media are doing everything they can to break that, and doing a good job of it.

Let's face it, the American people love the troops. Its the American people's love for the troops that our political opponents exploit. We love them so much that we hate to see them harmed and their safety becomes more important than any mission. When the safety of the soldiers is more important than anything else in the world, then there is no conflict that you are willing to send them into, because there is no conflict anywhere that is safe and risk-free. In that environment they essentially stop being soldiers and start being hostages. We let the guys in Vietnam down by treating them as if they were responsible for the war they fought and how it was fought. Its possible we are letting them down this time by overprotection and not letting them be the American soldiers they want to be out of concern for their immediate safety. We fear the casualties of taking Najaf so make a deal and pull back, thus guaranteeing even more casualties when they have to go back in...one...more...time.

I've said before, that we've forgotten 911. I'm afraid that we are going to let these Islamists hang around long enough to hit us hard again before we really "get" it.

1,000 casualties is a terrible thing, and the loss of limbs on these young people kills me. But this is a war, and its not a war like Vietnam where there is no direct danger to the United States. We could have stayed home from Vietnam and survived, we could not have stayed home from World War II and survived. This war is much more like the latter than the former but the media treats it as if it has no more purpose than Vietnam.

We had the third anniversary of 911 and the media decided that it wasn't appropriate to show us anything about it other than the memorial services because showing scenes from the actual event might be traumatic. Imagine if they decided not to show pictures of Treblinka and Buchenwald because they are "disturbing", or if they had locked away the Pearl Harbor videos. It's a whitewash. Those 3,000 killed in one hour are not worth showing us, but 1,000 killed in the response over a year and a half is made out to be Vietnam. We lost what, about 3,000 dead on D-Day alone? We lost 2,000 aircraft in the two months leading up to D-Day in preparation. We lost over 50,000 dead in the Battle of Normandy including air and ground forces.

We have completely lost our sense of proportion. If a war is necessary then the costs of victory are worth it because it is a matter of survival. If a war is not necessary, then the costs of one life is not worth it. Which do we have here?

You are probably right that we do not have the will to stay there ten years. We did on Sept. 11th. Who has been whispering in our ear since then? I'm afraid our enemy may, if we continue to lose our will, give us a very painful booster shot. Losing our will in Vietnam led to a pullout and the end of the war. Losing our will here will lead to a pullout, but it will not lead to the end of the war, it will lead to a wild resurgence of our enemy and an increased effort to destroy us utterly. There is no way out but victory and its just a matter of how soon we realize that as a people. We either realize it now, or realize it later.

[Darksheare]

Churchbull, your convictions are BS.
You have no honor or honesty.
When asked directly what you consider a weapon of mass destruction, you do the clinton two step and then claim we should yell at Colin Powell for stupid things you said.
You claim there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, despite there being teh Sarin artillery shell rigged as an IED.
You're a BS'er churchillbuff.

[Darksheare]

Gotta try to knock morale down every chance you get, don't you.

[Darksheare]

Actually churchillbull, you encounter more BS than you know, and it's fountaining from your mouth and keyboard.

[Darksheare]

The casualties we've had are remarkably light in comparison with wars of the past.
The media spins everything into a "Doomed! Doomed! Doomed!" mantra in hopes of ending what it sees as an assault on their power base.
The liberals tend to play more to the whims of other countries and our enemies.

[Petronski]

Chamberlainbuff loves busting morale.

Fresh Agitprop Here!

[Petronski]

[Darksheare]

LOL!
Yeah., that's what came to mind!
(I have a wav file for use with it too!)

You saw his thread about soldiers being threatened with Iraq duty if they do not re-enlist?
He spouted things there and never backed it up.

[Petronski]

Well, she also doesn't know how to spell Tourette Syndrome, or what the word 'profanity' means (hint: it is something that profanes the name of God; 'BS' is not a profanity, but rather a vulgarity or an obscenity).

Mostly though, I found it highly interesting that she was pushing the stretched-thin, backdoor-draft talking points THE NIGHT BEFORE Kerry mentioned the so-called 'secret plan' regarding the November guard call-up.


Hmmm, using Kerry talking points in advance of Kerry...what could that possibly mean?