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Peace at any cost is a prelude to war!
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********** VOICE OF THE GRUNT
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********** 17 November 1999
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ARTICLES
Hack's Column
Why The Troops Are Hanging It Up 1
Mac Notes 2
>From The Field:
The Future Army 3
Anchors Are Going Away 4
Air Force Ain't What It Used To Be 5
You Asked This Man To Die 6
Medal of Honor: 7
MORRIS, CHARLES B.
Rank and organization: SSgt., USA, Co. A, 2/503rd Inf., 173rd ABN Brig.
Place and date: RVN, 29 June 1966.
Commentary:
The USMC Through The Ages In Quotes 8
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ARTICLE 1
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"WHY THE TROOPS ARE HANGING IT UP"
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By David H. Hackworth, 15 November 1999
"The purple fingernail polish and the dreadlocks covering her face and the
hole in the side of her nose where she wears a diamond stud on weekends
were bad enough," a command sergeant major says. "But then Specialist Flake
asked me if she had to take that 'pointy sticky thing that goes on my gun'
when she went to the M-16 rifle range."
Flake is a single female soldier with three children by three different
fathers. The "pointy sticky thing" is her bayonet. You know, the one that's
stuck in an enemy soldier's belly when things get close and nasty.
Beats me why this soldier is concerned with the bayonet or why her
commander insists she qualify with her rifle. When her outfit moves out on
a combat mission, Flake will be left behind to care for her kids, along
with the sick and lame. She is non-deployable. She is like a firefighter
who can't ride on the fire-truck.
The U.S. military is filled with Flakes. During Desert Storm, the
equivalent of a light infantry division of women couldn't deploy with their
units or had to return from the desert because their baby sitters went AWOL
or they'd gotten pregnant.
Today's armed forces are about half the size they were during "The Storm,"
but I'll bet you a cold one that the number of female nondeployables is
higher now than in 1991. The end-figure is guarded more closely than the
discretionary budgets which buy those sexy pilot jackets that Clinton,
Cohen and Albright like to wear when they're playing war leader.
Some U.S. Army infantry divisions have a battalion-equivalent of pregnant
soldiers. Add this to the single moms who can't ship out, and you don't
have a lean-and-mean fighting force, you have a Dr. Spock moment.
The refusal of the top uniformed brass to tell the civilian leadership
that the Flake problem is killing the force is just as criminal as their
endorsing a defective weapon system or inoculating soldiers with an
untested vaccine -- both of which also occur too frequently.
Instead, they should stand tall and shout: "The two-decade gender-blending
experiment has only proven that force-feeding women into front-line units
to satisfy the feminist movement kills combat readiness."
A recent congressional study finds 40 percent of officers and 62 percent
of enlisted personnel plan to leave military service when their hitch is
up. More than 60 percent of those interviewed cited "work circumstances" as
the final straw that broke their spirit and commitment to the military.
My own informal survey of more than 3,000 serving soldiers and sailors a
week confirms the study is dead-on target and that "work circumstances"
often should be read as code for "dealing with the Flakes."
But another factor that's fueling the mass exodus is the troops' complete
loss of trust in their seniors over the issue of women in the ranks -- the
gradual movement to make the military kinder and gentler that is slowly
destroying the vitally needed warrior ethic.
And it's getting worse. Harvard graduate Kate Aspy, a former soldier and
an expert on women in the military, says, "The 1999 Army cannot make its
recruiting objective, and they've kicked up the recruiting quota for women
to 22 percent. More alarming, surveys show that over 50 percent of serving
women are in the military to get the benefits, not to fight."
A soldier now in Basic Training reports that "five females in my platoon
were so weak they couldn't pull the charging handle back on an M-16 (rifle)."
Every male general and admiral that is not ROAD -- retired on active duty
-- or brain dead knows in his heart that the Bush/Clinton
women-in-the-foxhole-or-fo'c'sle experiment has been a disaster. But in 20
years, not one senior officer has sounded off. They've put promotion over
truth, self over mission and men, and compromise over their sworn oath to
always put duty, honor and country first.
Meanwhile, jerks like you and me lay out $300 billion a year in hard dough
that the Pentagon blows on the joke (less the Marine Corps and a few other
special units) that it's defending America.
Tell me another one.
Keep Five yards……
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ARTICLE 2
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******MAC NOTES******
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By Robert L. McMahon, 17 November 1999
In the recent issue of NATIONAL REVIEW (22 November) there's an article by
Mr. Bob Zelnick, a visiting professor of journalism at Boston University
and author of GORE: A POLITICAL LIFE, titled "Soldier Gore: The Veep In
Vietnam."
Although Mr. Zelnick's piece is mostly favorable toward Mr. Gore (Mr. Gore
actually was in the Army, volunteered, and did get sent to Vietnam), he
still has some problems with the VP's overstatements of his activities
while in Vietnam.
For example, in March of 1988 Al Gore gave an interview to VANITY FAIR
describing certain of his activities while visiting elements of his
Engineer Battalion as a military journalist: "I took my turn regularly on
the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would
move, we'd fire first and ask questions later." Again, in an interview with
the Baltimore Sun Mr. Gore stated: "I pulled my turn on the perimeter at
night and walked through the elephant grass and was fired upon."
Something struck Mr. Zelnick about these accounts as pure embellishments.
Would a firebase in-country ever assign perimeter guard duty to visiting
personnel? Would they ever to do this to visiting personnel that were not
combat savvy? Why is Mr. Gore trying to assume the mantle of "Rambo Gore"?
To be sure Mr. Zelnick was able to track down some of Mr. Gore's wartime
buddies who contradict his tall tales out-of-hand. One fellow stated that
the only place they pulled any kind of guard duty was at the huge facility
at Bien Hoa. He likened it to being a crossing guard. Nope, no shots were
fired.
I thought a more revealing aspect of Mr. Gore's character was in a letter
he wrote home to his father. He referred to the Army he served in as a
"fascist, totalitarian" institution. Does that mean that our cemeteries are
filled with fascists and totalitarians Mr. Gore? Do you still view the U.S.
military as such an institution? I can only imagine what you would have
thought of the Marine Corps had you volunteered for that institution.
We also received the following list of questions from one our readers and
he asks that you send these questions along to your elected
representatives. They deal with the Panama Canal, China (imagine that) and
certain unusual activities:
1. Are Chinese troops present in the Panama Canal Zone?
2. Are PRC Artillery pieces stored in Panamanian Security Forces warehouses?
3. Will the PRC take control of Naval and Air Force bases near the Panama
Canal?
4. Are Chinese citizens being smuggled into the USA via Panama for
$30,000.00 per person?
5. Did the last Panamanian president take money from the Chinese Government
and then force visas for up to 400 Chinese citizens?
6. Is the new Panamanian president in bed with the PRC?
7. Will short and medium range missiles be introduced into the area by the
Chinese government through the PRC owned Hutchinson-Whampoa Corp.?
8. Will PRC Bombers, and Ships be stationed near the Canal Zone?
I guess this is how we spell "World Trade Organization (WTO)".Please send
these questions along to your Congressman and Senator.
Many thanks to your readers out there who went ahead and did some homework
for us on the pay raise issue and a letter we ran last week. Two of notes
are included this week as a correction.
Please keep in mind that Hack and I are not full-time "60 Minutes" type
reporters with a staff and a producer and a beehive of fact checkers.
You're our fact checkers and there is no better way to get at the truth
than to have the truth revealed by those who really KNOW. If we run a story
that you think is squirrely, fire off a note to us. Any of you who saw Al
Gore running up "Hamburger Hill" with an M60 and 4 belts of 7.62, we'd like
a call!
Hack spent last Friday, the 12th, up at West Point signing books and giving
talks. He said that he didn't get home until 0200 Saturday morning. The
"Long Grey Line" turned out in force and kept him pretty busy. The Price of
Honor remains on the best L.A.Times seller list despite the East Coast
establishment's attempt to kill it. Hack will be signing at the Pentagon
and Press Club this Friday. He thanks all of you for supporting HONOR; its
critical message is getting out there.
Anybody want to be our "NBC" topics editor. With all the traffic on
anthrax, we really some expert help.
Don't bunch up and have a good week!
Semper Fi,
Bob
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.freeyellow.com:8080/members7/rlmcmahon/
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ARTICLE 3
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THE FUTURE ARMY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By Col. Bruce Clarke, USA (Ret), 17 November 1999
The Army Chief of Staff's vision of 5 Divisions of lightly armored forces,
as noted in the Washington Post of 16 November challenges many of the
Army's conventional wisdoms. While he is at it General Shinseki should go
one step farther and challenge another one of those wisdoms that has caused
him problems recently-the readiness of divisions.
The division readiness issue has many components, but one of the principal
ones is the actual structure of the Division. In the name of efficiency,
not war fighting, the force designers have built large cumbersome division
headquarters and support structures. When one brigade deploys it must take
significant assets from this support structure to survive. Unfortunately,
the remaining structure is hollow in some key skills and the remaining
2/3rds of the division loses its ability to deploy and fight. Hence at
least part of the present readiness problem.
Wouldn't the Army be better off if it were to abandon these cumbersome
Division support structures? It could beef up the Brigade support structure
so that each Brigade was more self-supporting. It could adopt an Area
Support Unit concept where the additional support would be tailored to the
force and the theater. This could eliminate an echelon of support forces,
but more importantly it would allow the Division Headquarters to become
what it was originally-a tactical or operational level command. The forces
assigned to the Division could be structured to meet the requirement. This
would allow a light Brigade, a middleweight Brigade, and an Armored Brigade
to be combined to form a force for peacekeeping or fighting. This force
would have a heavy reserve available, if needed to deal with enemy heavy
armor or other situations where the shock action and firepower that armor
provides might be needed. The armored equipment exists in Europe, Korea and
afloat to support such a concept. It is like the POMCUS stocks that the US
maintained in Europe during the Cold War.
Presently the 24th Infantry Division Headquarters at Fort Riley, without
any active duty units assigned, would be perfect for testing the concept of
a Command and Control element that could have almost any types of
subordinate elements attached to it for a specific campaign or battle.
General Shinseki has started down this path, he might as well take the next
steps.
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~~> more articles in Part B ~~>
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