Sailor's Mom ask General "Mad Dog Mattis" if he's ever served. Navy Times. Haha

[BugI02]

[snip]
Yes senior leaders do go out front it’s a “sphincter tighting experience” if you have to be with them.
If any bad guys find out they will do anything to capture or kill them.
Its more of a show of presence than true combat leadership.

Yep. I believe the US 10th army's WWII commander at the battle of Okinawa was killed by shrapnel while surveying the battlefield from a forward position. Lieutenant General Simon Buckner Jr. Kentucky boy

 

[Thor]

Cell phones allowed people who had nothing to say to say it all day long. Now the twitterverse/faceplant etc allows them to do the same with the world.

 

[Thor]

If you are in the military...and are not deploying...WTFO. You are like a nonessential government employee...nonessential.

 

[Mikey1911]

Yep. I believe the US 10th army's WWII commander at the battle of Okinawa was killed by shrapnel while surveying the battlefield from a forward position. Lieutenant General Simon Buckner Jr. Kentucky boy

Another three-star killed in action was LTG Lesley McNair; commander of Army Ground Forces. He was killed by friendly bombing in the initial stages of Operation Cobra, where the Army Air Forces hit our own people north of the St. Lo-Pieres road instead of hitting the Germans on the south side. McNair was only an observer without command authority. He received a posthumous promotion to full General.

Omar Bradley, in his autobiography, quoted George Patton’s epitaph for McNair, saying it expressed the feelings of McNair’s fellow generals:

”A sad waste and a useless sacrifice.”

 

[actaeon277]

The comments on that thread are rough. Talking about certain sailors ensuring that they are pregnant right before deployment and then getting an abortion shortly thereafter...

Yup.
Heard all kinds of horror stories of departments being undermanned because of pregnancies. Some are just do to the fact that that's the age women are more likely to get pregnant.
But manpower studies demonstrated increases in pregnancies before deployments.
And it you're in those undermanned departments, you get pretty bitter. The work that needs to be done doesn't go away. Less people means more work per person.
The bitterness tends to erode unit effectiveness. Quite a few tempers resulting in Mast.



During the 80s, the Navy started training women as nukes. Though they couldn't deploy (at the time no women on subs), the idea was that when a sub pulled into port, the women could stand watch so that the men coming in from sea could get a break from the grueling hours.
But, when the first couple batches were trained, the Navy ran into a serious problem.
Let's take a Reactor Operator (Electronics Tech "Nuke").
In a 6 year hitch, there is 2.5 years of training, before getting to a ship/sub.
That leaves 3.5 years for the Navy to get back the quarter of a million dollars it took to train the sailor.
Anyone determined to be pregnant gets removed from any nuclear reactor, immediately.
So, one pregnancy puts that sailor out of service for most of a year, including the following maternity leave.
So, now you're looking at 2.5 years of work to pay back the investment.. providing there are no more pregnancies.

So when the Navy calculated the average pregnancies per female sailor, ran the numbers on the $$ invested verse return on the dollar, they were horrified.
Stopped the program immediately.
Women already trained were relegated to the training school and one of the prototype demonstration models.
Which meant less billets for shore duty for male sailors.

The women I met that were in the program were very competent, I had no problem with the training I received from them.
Even the ones that were a bit bitter because they were "good enough to be deployed", because even though they were hell on interviews, it made me learn more.
But, it's about the numbers.
It's still a force that needs to fight battles and also has to worry about how it allocates it's dollars.

 

[actaeon277]

If you are in the military...and are not deploying...WTFO. You are like a nonessential government employee...nonessential.

I remember sailors saying, "I didn't sign up to go to sea. I signed up for the money."

Well tough F'n ****.
You take the king's money, you have to do what the king says.

 

[jamil]

She is quite the writer as well...

Hey. I like to grip. Who doesn't like to grip?

 

[KellyinAvon]

If you are in the military...and are not deploying...WTFO. You are like a nonessential government employee...nonessential.

Yeah, those ICBM Maintenance guys who never deploy and spend their whole career in North Dakota, Montana or Wyoming... we need them to stay there!

That is part of the equation a lot don't get. There's a difference between being world-wide qualified and in a unit that doesn't deploy (like ICBMs for obvious reasons). I know you get that, you can be ready to go but if the mission says you stay, you stay. I saw a lot of people from that world volunteer to be third country national escorts (the GIs who watched the TCNs who worked on base.) They were qualified to deploy but their AFSC didn't go anywhere.

Now if you been limpin around for the last five years... that's a different story.

 

[Vigilant]

Mattie isn’t talking about job related non-deploy able status, he’s talking about those with Non-Deployable in their jackets, health, discipline, failure at life, etc.

 

[Thor]

I know you get that, you can be ready to go but if the mission says you stay, you stay.

Yeah, I get that...the silo is their deployment.

 

[Birds Away]

I was a detailer for three years in the Navy. That means that, within my specialty, I gave people their next duty assignments. Every specialty has a sea/shore rotation usually differentiated by pay grade. So E-1 through E-4 would have a 5/2 i.e. five years of sea duty followed by two years of shore duty. That is pretty easy because all the junior folks are at sea, mostly. Ideally they make E-5 in their first four or five years. The problem comes in when they go to rotate ashore after their five years of sea duty is complete. Their aren't all that many shore duty billets available in the first place and there are always people on limited duty (the sick, lame and lazy) eating up those billets by being medically declared temporarily unfit for sea duty. So when all these hard working guys go to roll off their first five years at sea there is nowhere to put them. Most of these guys are looking at a career and understand they need a good shore job (instructor, fleet training, etc.) to enhance their ability to be promoted. So they are forced to stay at sea hoping a billet opens up. We end up punishing our best to take care of our worst (not all, **** happens). Lots of guys have gotten out of the Navy because they have done 6-8 years straight at sea and have no good prospects for a shore duty job that will keep them promotable. It sucks.


I prefer not to comment on the women who get pregnant as soon as they receive orders to sea duty and get an abortion as soon as those orders are cancelled. All I will say is it happens a lot more than one would think and nothing is done about it.

 

[SnoopLoggyDog]

Since 9/11 the National Guard and Reserves have transitioned into the "Active Guard and Reserve". The increasing ops tempo puts them into the rotation for deployments, right along with the Active Duty. No more sitting around in a "non-deployable status" because of a physical or administrative issue for years and years.

Lost a close friendship with a fellow NCO because he refused to deploy. He came up with every excuse under the sun for why he was unfit or unable to do his duty, away from home station. It really came to a head when he argued that it was "unfair" that he would be called up and activated immediately following 9/11. I had always volunteered to go on every deployment, and his tantrum caused me to see him in a very stark light. We deployed and he stayed behind with his bundle of issues. When we returned, he was out of the unit and long gone. He had aver 20 years service when he finally bailed and left the military.

 

[actaeon277]

Since 9/11 the National Guard and Reserves have transitioned into the "Active Guard and Reserve". The increasing ops tempo puts them into the rotation for deployments, right along with the Active Duty. No more sitting around in a "non-deployable status" because of a physical or administrative issue for years and years.

Lost a close friendship with a fellow NCO because he refused to deploy. He came up with every excuse under the sun for why he was unfit or unable to do his duty, away from home station. It really came to a head when he argued that it was "unfair" that he would be called up and activated immediately following 9/11. I had always volunteered to go on every deployment, and his tantrum caused me to see him in a very stark light. We deployed and he stayed behind with his bundle of issues. When we returned, he was out of the unit and long gone. He had aver 20 years service when he finally bailed and left the military.

Lots of guys did the reserves for the "free" money.

 

[actaeon277]

I was a detailer for three years in the Navy. That means that, within my specialty, I gave people their next duty assignments. Every specialty has a sea/shore rotation usually differentiated by pay grade. So E-1 through E-4 would have a 5/2 i.e. five years of sea duty followed by two years of shore duty. That is pretty easy because all the junior folks are at sea, mostly. Ideally they make E-5 in their first four or five years. The problem comes in when they go to rotate ashore after their five years of sea duty is complete. Their aren't all that many shore duty billets available in the first place and there are always people on limited duty (the sick, lame and lazy) eating up those billets by being medically declared temporarily unfit for sea duty. So when all these hard working guys go to roll off their first five years at sea there is nowhere to put them. Most of these guys are looking at a career and understand they need a good shore job (instructor, fleet training, etc.) to enhance their ability to be promoted. So they are forced to stay at sea hoping a billet opens up. We end up punishing our best to take care of our worst (not all, **** happens). Lots of guys have gotten out of the Navy because they have done 6-8 years straight at sea and have no good prospects for a shore duty job that will keep them promotable. It sucks.


I prefer not to comment on the women who get pregnant as soon as they receive orders to sea duty and get an abortion as soon as those orders are cancelled. All I will say is it happens a lot more than one would think and nothing is done about it.

Some, like personalmen had a 2 year sea/5 year shore rotation.
We would call them part timers, but never to their face.
Never mess with the guys that deal with your records.

 

[Birds Away]

Some, like personalmen had a 2 year sea/5 year shore rotation.
We would call them part timers, but never to their face.
Never mess with the guys that deal with your records.

That also applies to the guys who handle your pay and the guys who handle your food.

 

[JTScribe]

I agree that for lower ranked COs leading from the front is a good thing... well kinda, tipping my hat to the NCOs. In this case I'm speaking specifically of Mattis. By the time he entered a war zone, he was a fair high ranked CO. I don't think it's smart at all to put your "brains" at the head of the calvary charge.
Now if you're using "lead from the front" as a euphemism for "give competent direction," then I would agree and misunderstood your original post concerning.

You need to watch Generation Kill. A fictionalized version of Mattis is in it, but the characterization is dead on.