US Army asks deceased to re-enlist

Herald Sun ^ | 6 January 2007

[Aussie Dasher]

The US Army has said that it will apologise to the families of deceased and wounded officers that it mistakenly encouraged to re-enlist via letters sent out in late December.

About 75 families of deceased officers and 200 families of wounded officers received such letters sent to more than 5100 officers between Dec. 26 and 28, the Army said.

"Unfortunately, the database used to address those letters contained names of officers who were killed in action or wounded," the Army said.

"Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologise for erroneously sending the letters."

The names of the soldiers had been removed from the database, but an earlier version of the list was mistakenly used.

The Army said it was taking steps to ensure this mistake did not happen again.

On Thursday, a US soldier was killed in western Baghdad, bringing the total to 3006 the number of US soldiers killed so far since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

[Aussie Dasher]

How could such a dreadful stuff-up happen?

[SmoothTalker]

Awful. I feel for the families that recieved those.

[lmr]

A Computer-Info nightmare. In today's automated society, Data Entry doesn't always keep up with real life. Databases aren't updated as they should be. And, although the correct info is in one Military Database, it isn't in the other... so on an so forth...

However, these things can be prevented with proper organization and management skills by those who implement, rely on, and use this information. A cross-reference with the database containing the deceased and a simple update to this register could have prevented this. Good database managers analyze and prevent pitfalls like this.

[lmr]

On Thursday, a US soldier was killed in western Baghdad, bringing the total to 3006 the number of US soldiers killed so far since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Almost totally irrelevant to the situation presented here, however, the Liberal media couldn't resist the urge.

[Grizzled Bear]

deceased and wounded officers that it mistakenly encouraged to re-enlist
__________________________________________________________
Something doesn't quite sound right. Officers are commissioned. They do not "Reenlist." Enlisted members reenlist.

This may be a "hit piece" designed by our loving media to lovingly trumpet the number of our dead and wounded.

[Buddy B]

This FR post is from an Australian source.

Contact Us | Herald Sun {Australia]

[Aussie Dasher]

I know. So am I!

[tlj18]

Correct; enlisted members re-enlist, while officers re-sign.

[dayglored]

> A Computer-Info nightmare... However, these things can be prevented with proper organization and management skills by those who implement, rely on, and use this information.

Your statement is quite correct.

I'll be interested to see if the people responsible for this frack-up try to "blame it on the computer". I would bet a good steak dinner that no computer anywhere was at fault, rather that people created the error. Out of any given 100 "computer-related" mistakes, typically 99 are errors on the part of people, not the computer. (And the remaining 1 is typically a Windows hiccup, but that's a different flame.)

What an awful shame -- my heart goes out to the families involved.

[Boris99]

lmr has described the problem quite well. If the Army had a requirement for soldiers to fill a certain assignment, for example Drill Sergeants, they would do a scan of a database for all the soldiers that met the basic prerequisites to become a Drill Sergeant. They would usually send out post cards stating that they met the prerequisites, and encouraged soldiers to see a career counselor to inquire about becoming a Drill Sergeant. It was not uncommon for some of the people receiving the cards to be former Drill Sergeants who had already completed a tour in that job.