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Everyone makes fun of a 2LT with a map and a compass, until they need fire support. Then all of a sudden they know who the real King of Battle is.
Everyone makes fun of a 2LT with a map and a compass, until they need fire support. Then all of a sudden they know who the real King of Battle is.
Yup. That would be the NCO in charge.
You know.....not all officers are bad. Seems like you had Some bad experiences with a few of them......thanks for your service! Some officers realize there place in the chain of command and can lead. In a nutshell......every mission has a who what when where and why and how.
As an officer I'm responsible for the when where and why. The senior NCO is responsible for the who, what, how to accomplish that mission. Stay out of his way and generally the mission gets accomplished. When an officer starts getting into individual tasks is when he's doing the ncos job and shits gonna go south. Stay out of their way once the mission is given......back on topic
.......2lts are new at their job.....just as new as a private. I've done both sides.....12 years enlisted (made E7 then went to OCS) seen just as many privates fail land nav the infantry training center as I did OCs fail land nav at OCS. The difference is as a private you get to keep trying to pass....until you pass.......that may include a recycle back a phase in training.....but you can keep trying. At OCS......you get one retake.....and if you fail that your disenrolled from OCS.
The army can weed out the less than stellar officers even though it's a big organization. As a company grade officer if you don't get selected for company command your guaranteed to never make it past the rank of major and they give you assignments that keep you far away from actual Soldiers.To be fair I think it's some good natured ribbing. I've had nothing but good experiences with officers in my chain of command. I've seen some dopey 2nd Lts, but that's not a knock on them. To be fair though, my experience is limited to the Marine Corps... and while I may be crossing over services at some point, I really like how selective the USMC can be with their officers, but I'm biased of course. And we are a much smaller service.
Mike
You know.....not all officers are bad. Seems like you had Some bad experiences with a few of them......thanks for your service! Some officers realize there place in the chain of command and can lead. In a nutshell......every mission has a who what when where and why and ho
As an officer I'm responsible for the when where and why. The senior NCO is responsible for the who, what, how to accomplish that mission. Stay out of his way and generally the mission gets accomplished. When an officer starts getting into individual tasks is when he's doing the ncos job and shits gonna go south. Stay out of their way once the mission is given......back on topic
.......2lts are new at their job.....just as new as a private. I've done both sides.....12 years enlisted (made E7 then went to OCS) seen just as many privates fail land nav the infantry training center as I did OCs fail land nav at OCS. The difference is as a private you get to keep trying to pass....until you pass.......that may include a recycle back a phase in training.....but you can keep trying. At OCS......you get one retake.....and if you fail that your disenrolled from OCS.
Like I said I spent 12 years enlisted......and can't even imagine a program where you got a new LT assigned every 90 days or so......that's a bullshit program and can't blame a Marine or Soldier for complaining that they had to stay in theater while an officer got to go back from combat after 90 days. Total crap. but like crazymbj says.......those mistakes are long gone in today's military for the most part. When a unit deploys it goes as a unit.....and comes back as a unit.....the officers don't rotate out unless they are relieved of command. Unfortunately I've seen that happen. A horizontal engineer unit in my BN had its company commander and first sergeant relieved with 4 months of the deployment left in Iraq. Total lack of discipline in that unit and they didn't give a shit. The straw that broke the camel's back on that one was when their 4 medics were caught taking morphine from the aid station and selling it. Medics got court martials and the top leaders were relieved.......command responsibility.First let me say that like everyone who has served, I've known some very fine officers. some of which I would have followed into a fire if need be. In the post that you're
responding to, I was partly having some fun at a few young officers expense. Vietnam was a experience in time that was unusual to say the least. If you check records you will see that although the U.S was involved there for fifteen years, 50% of our losses occurred between 1968 and 1969. The luck of the draw being what it was, that's when I served. This put a strain on available man power for sure. To add insult to injury, I was told, by multiple young officers planning to make the Corps. a career at the time, that in order to advance in the Corps. they had to have combat duty on their records. To achieve this, they had to hit the bush for 90days minimally. As a result, even if a Remington raider Lt. wanted to advance, he had to do bush time. Obviously this resulted in some young officers going to the bush that probably wouldn't have been there otherwise. On the other hand, the average Marine Corps. grunt was in the bush for 13 months. His entire overseas duty station was the bush. Not only was it not good for these guys to see young officers come and go while they had to stay, but now they had the added negative of sometimes dealing with a Lt. who couldn't correctly navigate or call in air strikes and as a result, might just get everyone under his command killed. Most Lt's were just as happy to have us do the calling in and to be honest, there were long stretches when we didn't have a Lt., which told us that the Corps. didn't find it very important for a Lt. to be with us either. I understand what you said about at OCS, you only get one retake. Please understand that in Nam there were no retakes. You drop friendly fire on your own pos. and everyone with you pays.
We had great officers in Afghanistan, but I'd say most patrols our PL was a Sergeant or Staff Sergeant. Mainly because we had 2 officers for 5 platoons.
I don't at all mean it is as knock, but as I'm sure you Vietnam vets are aware, todays military is a different beast in that it's much more a professional organization as a whole. Everyone who is there wants to be there, infantry slots are first to fill up every fiscal year, and leadership has learned a lot from past mistakes. What you are describing with how they rotated 2nd Lts through in Vietnam is, frankly, terrifying. The platoon dynamic definitely changed on the patrols we had our Captain with us, but at least he was a very capable, competent, experienced leader.
Mike
Like I said I spent 12 years enlisted......and can't even imagine a program where you got a new LT assigned every 90 days or so......that's a bullshit program and can't blame a Marine or Soldier for complaining that they had to stay in theater while an officer got to go back from combat after 90 days. Total crap. but like crazymbj says.......those mistakes are long gone in today's military for the most part. When a unit deploys it goes as a unit.....and comes back as a unit.....the officers don't rotate out unless they are relieved of command. Unfortunately I've seen that happen. A horizontal engineer unit in my BN had its company commander and first sergeant relieved with 4 months of the deployment left in Iraq. Total lack of discipline in that unit and they didn't give a shit. The straw that broke the camel's back on that one was when their 4 medics were caught taking morphine from the aid station and selling it. Medics got court martials and the top leaders were relieved.......command responsibility.
Like I said I spent 12 years enlisted......and can't even imagine a program where you got a new LT assigned every 90 days or so......that's a bullshit program and can't blame a Marine or Soldier for complaining that they had to stay in theater while an officer got to go back from combat after 90 days. Total crap. but like crazymbj says.......those mistakes are long gone in today's military for the most part. When a unit deploys it goes as a unit.....and comes back as a unit.....the officers don't rotate out unless they are relieved of command. Unfortunately I've seen that happen. A horizontal engineer unit in my BN had its company commander and first sergeant relieved with 4 months of the deployment left in Iraq. Total lack of discipline in that unit and they didn't give a shit. The straw that broke the camel's back on that one was when their 4 medics were caught taking morphine from the aid station and selling it. Medics got court martials and the top leaders were relieved.......command responsibility.
In my stint in army aviation '67-68' we had a few of very good platoon level Officers. The Warrant's as rule were fearless. We joked they didn't know any better, we certainly didn't. Field grade officers on the other hand lead from the rear as a rule, were very reluctant to put themselves in harms way. They were in it for career reasons, so they tended cover themselves in unearned glory at 2000'. C'est le guerre.
The only fragging incident I can recall we a few of the gun platoon boys booby-trapped a clown master sargent's tent with a trip wired claymore mine. The gods of war smiled on him as he spotted a glint of the the wire in the morning sun the next morning. That afternoon he decided to hop on the next chopper to Tan Son Nuit AFB and got orders cut to safety of the 'land of round eyes'. Interesting times
Yes, I've heard of fragging incidents.
Being on the receiving end of casualties suffering from suspicious wounds, fragging did happen. Not that often but then again such incidents were either kept quiet or covered up.......both sometimes not very well done.
Crappy movies about Vietnam (they all are in my opinion) thanks Hollyweird.....did their best to exploit the inter-turmoil amongst units (Platoon comes to mind). It did happen but from what I saw to a miniscule degree from what Hollyweird would have us think. Things that came into play for the Army were racial issues and disgruntled draftees humping the boonies. As M60 mentioned, most all units were constantly (some severely) undermanned, particularly in that three year period (67,68,69) during which Vietnam suffered its highest death tolls. Replacements couldn't get there fast enough.
My brother in law's family took some hits.Yes, almost forgot the racial issues. I had a friend named Willy. Blackest black man I ever saw. Willy was a great Marine. Man didn't know fear. He did succumb to racial pressure though. When they pulled the Third Marine Division out of Nam and sent us to Oki, the racial issues escalated. Willy came to me one day with his hat in hand. He was clearly sad. He said that he couldn't hang with me any longer because the brothers were against it. We had pulled each others bacon out of the fire more than once. Willy and I never spoke after that day. Wherever Willie Jones is, I hope all is well for him. Damn color issues.
My brother in law's family took some hits.
The eldest brother (Marine) was killed.
His other brother was staged in Hawaii ready to ship out (Marine as well), when some racial issue broke out on the base .
Six brothers grabbed him and used him like a trampoline.
He spent a year in a wheelchair in a V.A. hospital before he could walk again.