If any, or even one, of these post-theater GI deaths could be traced to action of the White Hut or any other layer of management it would be a killing offense of the highest order. After WW II for a brief time we saw the need to “train down “ GI’s who had been in intense operations. Somehow that got lost thru the Veetnam years. A long time peeve of mine is that we discharge GI’s without “turning off the switch.” As a result I see guys get careless or start assuming they’re bullet proof and keep living like there’s no tomorrow as they probably did during combat. In this case two SEALS got careless and it cost them. If you could have sat them down in a classroom and proposed the scenario that played out they would have spit out in short order the necessary steps to come out OK. But they seem to have taken eyes off the ball.
In football I talk about “playing between the whistles.” Combat GI’s have the same issue-—shutting down after it’s over, and they don’t all get it done.
Hm, interesting but I wonder if it would have changed the outcome...
I think back on the conflicts I’m familiar with and have lived through and while I plead some ignorance on the subject, I have known a number of those who served in theatre and never, to my limited knowledge, went to get their “switch turned off”....
Maybe there was some “naïveté” on Kyle and Littlefield’s part but you could say that about people who go to the mall, movies, schools, etc...
Maybe we’re all naive in this country?