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Whether or not generals are entitled to this kind of luxury, there have been a number of generals throughout American military history who considered this kind of behavior on the part of commanding officers to be very poor leadership.

I'm reminded of General Gavin, who insisted on jumping with his troops, General Patton, who was notorious for driving his jeep around in the front lines under enemy fire, and a couple of other American generals whose names I forget, who during WW II shocked and awed a reporter who was traveling with them by first ridiculing him for hiding in a ditch during enemy shelling, and then in answer to his criticism of their disregard for their personal safety, responded "It's good for the troops to see a dead general once in a while..."

My take: We don't need to treat Generals well; they are already lifers. If you're already in long enough to make one star general, there's no reason to leave before you find out if you can make four stars. Afterwards, you either become a talking head or inexplicably suddenly get a job for tens of millions of dollars a year like Secretary White had with ENRON.

We should concentrate more on treating the hard to retain mid-level officers and NCOs. $50M could pay for bonuses for a whole bunch of soldiers. The mid-level officers, especially the top 10 percent of them, have a big incentive to leave for a leading business school, as they could see their pay doubled inside of two years. The better recruiting firms manage to get some of these guys $65,000 to $80,000 jobs as soon as they go on terminal leave... Similarly the NCOs will be tempted to take the college credits they usually will have earned and go for jobs with better lifestyles for their families.

Getting rid of deluxe seating on the airplanes probably would not result in the loss of any general officers; crappy pay for mid-level officers & NCOs is already a cause of retention difficulties.

Letter from Col. George Patton to his father from WWI:

Dear Papa

We have all been in one fine fight and it was not half so exciting as I had hoped, not as exciting as
affairs in Mexico, because there was so much company. When the shelling first started I had some
doubts about the advisability of sticking my head over the parapet, but it is just like taking a cold bath,
once you get in, it is all right. And I soon got out and sat on the parapet. At seven o clock I moved
forward and passed some dead and wounded. I saw one fellow in a shell hole holding his rifle and
sitting down. I though he was hiding and went to cuss him out, he had a bullet over his right eye and
was dead.

As my telephone wire ran out at this point I left the adjutant there and went forward with a lieutenant
and four runners to find the tanks, the whole country was alive with them crawling over trenches and
into the woods. It was fine but I could not see my right battalion so went to look for it, in doing so we
passed through several towns under shell fire but none did more than throw dust on us. I admit that I
wanted to duck and probably did at first but soon saw the futility of dodging fate, besides I was the only
officer around who had left on his shoulder straps and I had to live up to them. It was much easier than
you would think and the feeling, foolish probably, of being admired by the men lying down is a great
stimulus.

I walked right along the firing line of one brigade. They were all in shell holes except the general
(Douglas Mcarthur) who was standing on a little hill. I joined him and the creeping barrage came along
toward us, but it was very thin and not dangerous. I think each one wanted to leave but each hated to
say so, so we let it come over us. The infantry were held up in a town so I happened to find some
tanks and sent them through it. I walked behind and some boshe surrendered to me. At the next town
all but one tank was out of sight and as the infantry would not go in I got on top of the tank to hearten
the driver and we went in, that was most exciting as there were plenty of boshe. We took thirty.

From War Letters published by Washington Square Press