Posted on 07/18/2003 10:47:44 AM PDT by StatesEnemy
Edited on 07/18/2003 11:13:59 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
At least he's a conservative. Not quite a libertarian, but better than an affirmative-action toting, African giveway pandering, open Mexican border allowing pseudo-conservative we have now*
But I'll be, once again, forced to choose the lesser of two evils: Leftists or Leftists-Lite.
Squantos, that is the difference between 'elite units' and 'leg units' like the 3RD ID. I've spent some time in each. In the leg units, if that whisperlite stove isn't on the Placking List, it better not be in your pack. Siphon diesel, mogas or JP4--that's hazardous, you'll get an article-15 in a heartbeat.
and kept a pot of boiling water going. Drop in yer MRE for a few minutes and then pull it out hold with a leather glove and eat a nice hot "clean" meal.
"After PFC Schmedlap burned his pinkie, boiling water is no longer allowed in or around living areas."
We used to pack along two cotton "sheet" liners we inprovised for our sleeping bags......swapped out every few days and washed they keep the bag clean for months. Not on the Packing List? Not allowed.
I'm telling you, leg units like 3ID keep their soldiers dependent on the Green Machine to the point that any muff-up in the logistics causes complete chaos.
Who's forcing you to do anything? Vote for Pat, or David Duke, or run yourself.
I would agree with you.
I've been giving this a lot of thought lately. In my opinion, what we are seeing now is the result of a culture that has set in in the Army because of the decades long Cold War. Your training life in Germany- for example- consisted of regularly scheduled trips to Graf and Hohenfels maybe a trip to the MOUT site at Hammelburg every once in a while and during the Cold War itself, a regular trip up the East German border to patrol.
Field deployments for combat maneuver training were short and intense. After a while, all the troops learn that "well, if I flip my underwear inside out after 7-10 days- I'm good to go for field hygiene". A complicating problem in Hohenfels is many units did their training "in the box" in the winter when it is very difficult to get the men to practice any sort of meaningful hygiene. As long as their electric razor's battery doesn't run out in 3 weeks no water is going to touch their skin. I also knew guys who could hold their sh!t for weeks on end because they didn't want to take a crap outside. The point being, you'd have guys who spent years in this environment (US Army Europe) learning to survive Hohenfels and Graf but not necessarily how to survive in the elements for an extended period. These same soldiers go on to other units taking this learned culture with them. This is something that affects the thinking of the lowest Private right on up to the NCOs and Officers. Support and supply were used to solving problems for short times and with known, geographically conveniant logistical situations.
Another thing about this culture was it also instilled in the spouses the idea that deployments are short and what a soldier's life really consisted of was the garrison environment most of the time and a small amount of time spent training. Then with the downsize, we started getting deployed more often and for longer. But still this attitude remains- "a deployment is supposed to be six months, a year tops". I guess what I'm saying is, a culture arose within the Army that had/has solid ideas about what "routine" Army life should be like.
The more I think about it, the more I see this "culture of routine soldiery" being one source of the anger that some of the soldiers in Iraq and their families back home seem to be having. While I don't think we need to go so far as to pound it into recruits heads that they will be living in a foxhole for four years and not to expect anything more, I think we would do well to dispel this notion that "I'm supposed to get off every day at final formation and go home". I think the Army needs to emphasize more to potential recruits that being in the Army does mean that there are no guarantees and that they could very well be sent overseas for years if not for their entire enlistment because that is the nature of the missions our nation is involved with these days.
I don't want to get off on a tangent though. You're right, the Army has had a difficult time training itself and its troops for long term deployment and has problems solving some of these problems that arise as a result. But on the flip-side, it is very difficult to train for long deployment without actually deploying for a long time. I'm of a couple opinions on this. I believe an Army ought to train hard. But sometimes the best training is the mission itself and in this day and age, maybe the best way to solve many of these logistial problems for a long term mission is simply to jump in and see if what you have floats and trust your ability to solve the problems as they come up.
One thing's for certain. Contrary to what many people believe- the Army does learn from its mistakes. And they're getting better at it. When we were training up for Bosnia, we were getting live reports from that theatre from the guys on the ground that would get implemented into the training very soon so the training was useful. I'm sure the Army might be having some problems with certain aspects of this current mission but I'm also confident they will adapt their way of doing things and improve on these things in the future.
What I used to do was wash my socks in an MRE bag with a little soap. Was cold water but I'd let 'em soak for a about an hour in the soapy water and then fold the cut end of the bag over a couple of times and then shake it vigorously for a few minutes. It was better than nothing and I always had "fresh" socks.
I also made it a point to "shower" in the field. I didn't care how many people saw me standing buck naked lathering myself up. Use a small amount of water to wet your head and the rest in a canteen cup. Lather up the head with soap and wash my body as best I could with the water in that canteen cup. Rinse the head very carefully with your other canteen and try to make sure the runoff water took as much of the dry lather with it as possible. Wipe the rest off with a moistened towel corner and dry off. I was really only moving the dirt around to different places but I felt a lot fresher afterwards- especially in the crotch and armpits. Guys in my platoon used to laugh at me for my ablutions and I hammed it up sometimes by singing to make it an amusing spectacle but I felt a lot crisper at the end of a field session than many of my fellow soldiers seemed to and I didn't stink that bad either. I hate having that "funky butt" feeling. If it must be- ok I was an infantryman but I figure if I could avoid it why not?
I never minded taking a crap in the woods. An E tool with the handle folded and the blade stuck in the ground makes a nice little "prop" for your ass. You an also fold down the brush guard on the Humvee (if you have one and it has one) and prop it up with something or lock it in place with the pin. You then sit on the square hole where the headline shines through and have a nice seat- although your feet dangle. I had a platoon Sergeant who took a toilet seat with him and he used this Humvee method but put the seat on it- he was very comfy, he'd linger there and read the Stars and Stripes. If you're on a long march in the vehicles and you can't stop, you can crap in a garbage bag and tie it up afterwards- if you have a five gallon bucket on the vehicle this is even better- you can just stick the bag in there and have a sit instead of squatting with the bag. And of course a popular toilet seat is always the MRE box outer sleeve (garbage bag in it works good too in a vehicle but careful you don't collapse the cardboard on a rough road while you're sitting on it).
A US Air Force C-141 is scheduled to leave Thule Air Base, Greenland at midnight. During the pilot's preflight check he discovers that the latrine holding tank is still full from the last flight.
So, a message is sent to the base, and an airman who was off duty is called out to take care of it. He finally gets to the air base only to find that the latrine pump has been left outdoors and is frozen solid so he must find another one in the hangar, which takes even more time. He finally arrives at the aircraft and is less than enthusiastic about what he has to do.
Nevertheless, he goes about the pumping job deliberately and carefully (and slowly) so as to not risk criticism later. As he's leaving the plane, the pilot, an Air Force Major, stops him and says, "Son, your attitude and performance has caused this flight to be late, and I'm going to personally see to it that you are not just reprimanded, but punished."
The poor guy says, "Sir, with all due respect, I'm not your son. I'm an Enlisted Airman in the United States Air Force. I've been in Thule, Greenland for eleven months without a furlough, and reindeer are beginning to look pretty good to me. I have one stripe, it's two thirty in the morning, it's twenty degrees below zero, and my specialty here is to pump sh*t from an aircraft. Now just what form of punishment did you have in mind?"
I have fond memories of the Tac Evals and ORI's that I participated in while stationed at Hahn & Spangdahlem. I'd be down in the Wing CP for 92 out of 96 hours, and I'd hear the zoomies griping about having to pull 12 hour shifts.
Therefore, here's a riddle for you: What's the difference between being on welfare and being in the Air Force?
When you're on welfare, you have to go get your check!
I know, the joke is dated, because some forms of welfare are now direct deposit.
LOL! A friend of mine works at a servicing facility for a Class 1 railroad, and - among other things - he has to deal with the toilets in the nose of the motive power. While he doesn't actually have to man the "hose" (it is contracted to a portable john outfit) he gets to handle all the other pleasant aspects of it; I have been told that fixing a Microphor hopper is less than picturesque when it's January on the prairie.
Anyway, he related a similar story, only the antagonist was a road foreman or some such thing. The bottom (!) line is this: the white-collar/management world will do or say (or pay) about anything to not have to deal with their own waste.
Easy for you to say, REMF.
Fact is, it will wreck our Army and Marines if they all leave the military the first day they can.
And they ARE. I live in San Diego, and Marines who get home can't get out soon enough.
This is like dragging a knife blade's edge on concrete. You can say 'tough it out' all you want, the blade will still be ruined.
Easy for REMFs to say, in their airconditioned houses, ten feet from full refrigerators.
It is a disgrace, that these men are still living on dirt after months in the field.
The troops (Marines and Corpsmen) returning to San Diego all say the same thing: "HOW SOON CAN I GET OUT??!!"
This is no way to run a military, unless you want to lose all your best trained NCOs and future NCOs.
I did not know that. I'm currently in the Army National Guard and at our recent annual training all we got were MRE's, hot meals from field kitchens, or this really wasteful crap they called "heater meals" which looks like a scam government contract that somebody's brother-in-law won with the DOD. It's basically an MRE in a nicer, much bulkier package. The crap food that's in there is more commercial looking, not just some drab OD stuff that says "Noodles in Tomato Sauce" and it has a chemical heater simliar to the MRE. The heater in this thing takes 14 minutes to heat your food, the MRE takes about 5. It's extremely bulky, and you have much more waste (trash) with this thing. It sucks.
I don't have much use for Hack either, but this is his arena: the proper care and feeding of the troops.
Please tell us the longest period you ever went living on the ground eating MREs or C-rats with no shower, not one.
NO tent, no cot, no hot food, no shower.
Tell us now, how many months you have gone like that. Each time you got to go to some huge rear area base with hot meals and showers, restart your clock.
I am counting only dirt time here. Tell us kindly about the longest period of months the Army ever sent you out for dirt time.
Two weeks at NTC is NOTHING. That's a holiday, my non-camping wife could hack that.
DIRT TIME. Tell us about your longest, between hot meals and showers, on the dirt.
Tell us know.
Our sharp blade is being rubbed on concrete in Iraq.
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