Let me open this with the fact that I was in the US Army and I have done a "Hardship Tour". Not necessarily the hardship of being deployed to war, but nonetheless I know what it is like to be away from family for an extended period of time.
Now some of what I'm about to say is going to piss a lot of you off. And to be honest, I almost don't care. I want to take emotion out of the equation here for a moment and talk about how long we are sending our military members off to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm not sure they are staying long enough.
Here's some of my reasoning.
During World War II, a tour of duty was typically for the duration of the war. You were called up, trained, joined a unit and sent off to war. End result being, you were there until the job got done. Usually an additional 6 months after the war was over.
What this produced was well trained veterans in leadership positions. These veterans were in charge by the time replacements came directly from training to the European and Pacific theater. Your Sargent typically knew the lay of the land, knew the enemy, and, well... Knew how to fight.
Some historians theorize that one of the reasons we eventually beat back the Japanese in the Pacific, (aside from dropping a big effing bomb on them) was due to the Kamikaze attacks on our units. This didn't just include planes hitting our ships, but also infantrymen charging into machine gun fire in order to "die with honor". The Japanese soldiers were willing to CHOSE to die, in order to kill the enemy. The end result was that they lost a majority of their seasoned veterans. Nobody with experience to train the new kid in the unit on how to keep from getting his head shot off.
Of course, during the war, units were rotated off the battlefield to the rear for some "down time", but this didn't usually last very long. A couple of weeks to a month. The fact of the matter is, that the longer they were in theater, the more seasoned they became, and the harder they fought through instinct and muscle memory.
Somewhere during the Korean war, and all of the Vietnam war, this changed. We were still using the draft in order to enlist soldiers into the military, against their will if you want to put it that way. However to be "nice" they were only assigned to an average of 12 to 18 months of time in an actual combat zone. During this time, many would move up the ranks to E4 or E5. Either due to valor or necessity of the unit.
However, Whether the war was over or not, once their time was up, more often than not, the soldier would leave service. The unit would get back filled with new recruits, with no wartime experience. One other side effect to the one year tour, is the soldier knows when his tour is over. When that end date approaches, "short timers disease" can set in. Causing a soldier to get lax in their duties.
This leaves a gaping hole in one of the most important leadership areas of the military. The Junior NCOs. The corporal and buck Sargent are integral to the guidance of a new soldier in a military unit.
The only bonus to this process is that the unit itself would remain in country. So you would still have some of the more seasoned lifers remaining in the unit to train the newer privates.
Now we're bringing entire units back. A brigade will deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan for 12 to 18 months, do its job, and then get pulled back to the states completely for a 1 to 2 (or longer) year break. So, now once a unit has gotten a good lay of the land, knowledge of the people in the area, knowledge of how the enemy fights, and in this case, who the enemy might be. They are pulled back, only to be replaced by an entirely new unit that may very well have been in Iraq in the past, but not necessarily the same area and to top it off, has been "living the good" life for at least the past year.
If you'd like to challenge me on calling stateside duty "the good life" ask a vet first.
This all sounds very callous I know. I understand that nobody really wants to go to war in the first place. I also don't have a burning desire to send our boys and girls off to war. But, one has to ask question; When war does become necessity, do we want to do it right or do it nice? Some will say that I'm just an armchair commando spouting off from a position that doesn't understand what it's really like because I'm not there. To be honest, I probably wouldn't enjoy being deployed to the sandbox all that much.
Well, again. I want to take emotion out of the equation.
If we didn't want our troops to get shot at, we wouldn't send them to war. As it has become necessity for them to go, the best we should do is make sure they are equipped correctly. This not only means the best uniforms, rifles, body armor, vehicles, tactics, and MRE crackers. This also means the best training. And in this armchair commando's opinion, the very best training is not obtained with blank rounds in Ft Benning's back 40. The best training is experience.
I think we're shortchanging ourselves and our troops by denying them that experience. It would be hard on them, their families, and friends. But I think a lot more of them would come home safe if they sucked it up and fought till the fighting was done.
God bless our young men and women of the military. I thank them from the deepest part of my soul.
EDIT NOTE: I changed the section about Vietnam to clarify 12 to 18 months in a combat zone instead of in service. Thanks to my dad for pointing this out.
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2 comments:
Thank you for the thought provoking entry sir. I get it. My grandfather lied about a medical condition to get into the service during WW II.
I think what you mention may in fact only be a symptom to a larger problem. Something drastically changed between my grandfather’s generation and my generation. Something changed philosophically and culturally after World War II. Maybe it was a sense of pride and love for country and personal accomplishment. Maybe it was a realization that war is more than politics but a real battle between good and evil.
We as a nation and a culture have traded our citizenship in a larger community for individuality and self-fulfillment.
America has become McDonalized and Wallmartized. Everything is fast, cheap, and has little substance. This comes back to individuality serving as the compass for today’s culture.
Something has radically changed and what you describe is simply a symptom of a larger problem, which I cannot pinpoint, but I think it is there.
Are you suggesting that units do (say) 2 years in country rather than "merely" one?
One of the side-effects of fighting the way we do, we are not only an all-volunteer force, but also highly reliant on reservists; one reason that, up to and including WWII, a "tour" was "The Duration" (except for heavy bomber crews), was that there would be a clear end to the war.
Whereas what we are now fighting is variously termed "The Global War On Terror" or even "The Long War"; not many volunteers to sign up "for the duration" of that!
Deploying and rotating units as units, training them as units before deployment, etc., all encourage unit cohesion, which is a force multiplier. A shorter tour of duty might lead to a slight reduction in combat effectiveness, due to having to learn the AO, but extending the tour will ultimately lead to a reduction in combat effectiveness of the whole force, as the career/professional soldiers (Marines, sailors, zoomies) "vote with their feet" and seek employment elsewhere, rather than face only seeing their kids and spouses on their mid-tours, or (increasingly common) during the five months they have between redeploying from Iraq and PCSing to Korea.
There is also a reduction in effectiveness of any unit which has been in combat for a certain amount of time. 12 months is good, 18 is pushing it.
Part of the reason I retired from the Army at 20 years, instead of sticking around in hopes of a retirement check that I could actually live on, is that I was already, in the 1990s, spending every other year in Korea. So although I haven't donned a uniform since before 9/11 I sympathize with those who spend more time overseas than at home.
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