-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Mail From Hack, 2001-08-22 1) Hack's Column: Soldiers Win Battles, Not Staff Weenies 2) Hack Notes: Zimm Leaving *Soldiers For The Truth* 3) Mail To Hack --1-- Soldiers Win Battles, Not Staff Weenies by David Hackworth The U.S. Army has 10 active-duty fighting divisions. Almost all are at 100 percent strength, thanks to Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who cut some of the blubber from those bringing up the rear in an attempt to build more muscle up at the front. But while Shinseki has shanghaied thousands of soldiers from depots, schools and headquarters – where about 70 percent of Army personnel are dug in – and shipped them off to fighting battalions, combat readiness hasn't improved down where the rubber hits the track. Scores of unit leaders from fighting squads to battalions say that when they deploy to a hot spot, they're lucky to put two-thirds of the soldiers they've trained into foxholes. "Unit manning continues to haunt us," says an infantry captain who asked that his name not be used. "General Shinseki might have had the best intentions by flushing out the TDA units – those outfits that bring up the rear – to fill the divisions 100 percent, but the reality is something else. When forced out from their ROAD – Retired On Active Duty – hiding places, most combat-arms soldiers, permanent profile in hand, report to the battalions where they're useless as they can't deploy. My 800-man battalion is currently over 100 percent strength, yet the equivalent of a rifle platoon doesn't man their assigned billets." The 30-percent or more who are AWOL are somewhere in the division or post area. You'll find an infantry platoon sergeant working in the division protocol shop looking after the VIPs, grunts handing out towels at the gym, rifle-squad leaders keeping the how-great-we-are charts glowing at brigade and division headquarters. This is an old problem and one that won't go away until the Army takes a hard look at itself. In Vietnam, my 884-man infantry battalion hit the paddies with less than 250 soldiers when I first took over. After much arm-twisting, we got our paddy strength up to 400, about half of our authorized strength. The rest were on profile – sick, lame and lazy, on R and R, at school, transferring in or out or detailed to higher headquarters, reinforcing that already-oversized octopus. Shinseki is right that the solution is to cut the fat – he just needs to go deeper. For example, there are so many active-duty military around the D.C. flagpole that it would take at least one full day at four abreast for this mob of staff weenies and support troops to pass in review at the Lincoln Memorial. If I were secretary of defense for just one day, Mr. Rumsfeld wouldn't recognize the Pentagon or the Washington metro area when he returned to duty 24 hours later. At least three out of four of the military types in and around the Pentagon would be on their way to fighting units. The Army has two other huge make-work headquarters – TRADOC in Virginia and FORSCOM in Georgia, each headed by a four-star with all the attendant pomp, ceremony and sycophants – that should be merged and then cut by 50 percent. Charts, staff papers and red tape don't kill enemy soldiers – trigger-pullers do. Then there are the Army division headquarters, which are as obsolete as the horse cavalry. They should be replaced by agile, lean and mean regimental combat teams as was so brilliantly advocated in the book "Breaking the Phalanx," the author of which – Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor – was rewarded for his honest sounding off about needed reforms by being shuffled off to Fort Nowhere. Of course, posts and bases must be staffed with the permanent manpower they need to support the line units. But these essential jobs – running ranges, doing instruction and maintenance – could be well-filled by retired soldiers instead of stripping the line units of able bodies. Training and sending combat units into battle without all their players produces the same results as allowing the Baltimore Ravens to go out with only seven players against a full-strength New York Giants squad: the kind of slaughter that went down in North Africa in 1943 and South Korea in the summer of 1950. The grunts who get to know the enemy on a very personal kill-or-be-killed basis deserve better. � � ******* (c) 2001 David H. Hackworth Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc. http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column there ~ or send a request to sub to THIS weekly mailing directly to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Snailmail address: Twin Eagles Ink P.O. BOX 11179 Greenwich, CT 06831 � � ******* � --2-- � Hack Notes Sadly, SFTT is no more. It died because of fratricide and apathy. Zimm and his many volunteer assistants did a first-rate job, and all of us owe these guys and gals a vote of thanks. Here is Zimm’s summation of what went down: >> Dear SFTTers: What a crazy two weeks it has been. Life is easier in a cavalry charge!Most of you were probably surprised by the abrupt disappearance of ourwebsite on 18 August 2001 and what it means to SFTT. To Hack and I, the final decision to withdraw from SFTT was as difficult aspulling the life support on a deathly ill relative. Despite the high painlevel for all involved in this, it was ultimately the only decision topreserve sanity and a family life. Since we resurrected SFTT on Hack's initiative in January of 2000, we hadmade tremendous strides in building an organization that informs on the bigpicture, while addressing the concerns of the "Grunt" in the trenches. Injust one year, the organization grew to about 25,000 members and ournewsletter even reached numerous foreign countries. Our goal was to build apermanent headquarters and an operating structure to gain influence at thelevel of AUSA, but without the excessive overhead. Unfortunately, we neverreached the funding level to make SFTT function without over-relying onvolunteers, thus placing too much burden on Hack and I. A salute and warm "thank you" to all of you who struggled valiantly to makeSFTT happen. Man, together we moved mountains and made the troops' voicesheard from the smallest command post right into the five-sided wind tunnel. I will continue my fight for the troops, their families and our vets bywriting opinions for Army Times and other publications and by contributingto Hack's weekly Voice Of The Grunt mailing. You can reach me [EMAIL PROTECTED] Best to All, Zimm << I had planned to turn my syndicated newspaper column -- about 10 million readers -- and other work over to Zimm and fade away as old soldiers are supposed to do. Have been working for 63 years from a start-up job at age eight of sweeping floors in a food market, to being a 14-year-old sailor, then a 15-year-old soldier, and then a military writer/reporter -- and now a military columnist. But will hang on with Judy’s weekly newsletter until a replacement is found. I am not happy, but Eilhys is. She says, “When you fade away, you die!” And she’s right. Aren’t most wives? Most of my same-age buddies are kicking the bucket all around me, and I feel like I could still run a rifle company and maybe even ramrod a rifle platoon. Know I could walk their butts off; and, from what I’ve seen of most of today’s young soldiers, do more push ups. ******* We won a victory last week. Here’s the lead from a Boston newspaper: “Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis was suspended from teaching at a Massachusetts college for one year without pay for lying that he served in Vietnam, the college's president said Friday." I am told that your letters created a storm and caused Mt. Holyoke’s brass hats to cave. Shows what the power of people who pull together can do. Too bad the majority of SFTT’s readership didn’t want to pull together and pay the price of admission. Am afraid this same apathy will eventually destroy this country. Believe me, when I grew up in the hungry 1930s, it was a GREAT country. Keep Five yards, Hack ******* --3-- Letters To Hack >From Our Friends In Oz Who Suffer From PERFUMED PRINCE-ITIS.� Hack >> Sir: I am an Australian serviceman currently serving in East Timor and have read your books. This place is no comparison to your deeds and operations, but I must say that a lot of the problems you have written about with the US are duplicated in a smaller way with our army. What you call ticket-punching is occurring in a big way with the ADF. I have served a total of 19 years and hold the rank of SSGT. I must say that the officer corps in this army has disgraced itself on numerous occasions with the enlisted men. They have shown themselves to be lacking in basic field skills and the welfare of their charges. I will not go on with examples but to say that the senior NCOs of this army, behind closed doors, are very concerned that should we partake in a larger, challenging police action or worse, a lot of lives would be lost needlessly. Our personnel evaluating form (PR66) is so out of date it is refered to as a kiss arse form. Personality based. If you do not get on well with your superiors, that is be seen to praise and argree with them only, you get canned. The new tree-hugging army has taken over with the priorities now being concerned with comfort and over the top safety. The austeyer weapon we have has been blamed for its ineffectiveness due to the amount of negligent discharges in the field. The real reason is that the army -- to save dollars -- has chosen to give everyone minimum trg with the weapon. We have soldiers who have yet to fire the weapon for five years deploy on operations. The emphasis is now on what they call dry firing. They now give us an award for being deployable. Isn't that what soldiering is all about. It goes on and on..Discharge rates are at an all time high. They have removed the 20-year pension scheme, and we serve till 55 to get a pension of any sort. Our Australian of the year (Cosgrove) is worshipped, but his underlings are despised for their softness. We have soldiers now who only do six weeks basics and have two years to pass their physical fitness tests from date of enlistment. Its hard to believe. I read and understand your comments on the Australian army in Vietnam re: Clark, but that sadly is no longer the case. We have yet to be tested in Timor. The militia are just rabble if that. Your books are often found in libraries of Bns here and are a hot item for reading at the moment. It's amazing that the basic skills of soldiering rarely change -- nor the officers. Well done on your career; you have a made a difference not only to the US military but to the Australian digger. Thanks mate for a good read. << A DAY IN THE LIFE OF OUR NATIONAL GUARD? >> Well, Lads, a few cold ones later and my blood pressure is coming back down to dangerous. Another weekend closer to retirement. I'll open this chapter in Guard lore by telling you I had a 4 drill weekend, BUT I had to get up at 0330 to be on the road by 0430 to get to the unit by 0530 to stepoff at 0600 to drive 2hrs to be at Batallion for 0800 formation. I am CO for the movement because the real CO will meet us at BTN. As will the 1st sgt. I only know this information because I called the unit and asked the admin NCO last week. Not once in the last 30 days has my CO called or answered any of my calls or e-mails. We step off late as usual, almost 0700. One of our main goals is to catch up on admin, but our admin NCO has a family emergency and can't go and didn't get our files together to bring up. No problem; BTN has copies. NOT! Not one record and nothing got done in admin. Surprised? I am tired and cranky and I don't want to play. I can't find my CO because Capt wrinkle bomb had gone to officer call in morning with the Col. and worn his old uniform with 1st LT sewn on the collar. So he went to town to get Capt stuff put on -- a three-hour tour... Get to BTN and find that the ROTC types are giving basic rifle classes. BASIC... how to break down your weapon, immediate action (SPORTS) zeroing, LOADING and UNLOADING magazines, shooting positions and a fats machine. All so we can try to qualify and night fire next month. BUT the CO won't be there Sat from 1400 till Sunday AM because he has football tickets. Carry on, sir. Oh, by the way: approximately 1/3 of the nastys have never fired the M16 or have not fired it in many years. I met up with my counterpart, a promising 2LT who just got out of Infantry officer school: in his short amount of time, he, too, hates our sloppy do-nothing CO. But he tells me to keep the faith; he heard the officers are all rotating after the Bosnia troops return in OCT. Well, he was almost right. All senior officers in the BTN, except Capt Sluggo. He stays. We are also getting two new 2nd Lt's in Sept. So we will have five officers and maybe 40 troops in the company. How to split them up? Capt Sluggo finds us conspiring 2LTs and informs me that I have a job... I am to be the "Recruitment and Retention/morale/family support coordinator/communityevent/family day planner and any other job he can dodge" officer . That will keep me busy for two years, I won't have to (can't) go to the field or command troops, just file my papers. Then I can go to IOBC and Bradley school. AND HE won't be going back to the company tonight so I'm in charge tomorrow. I get back, release my 10 man company, and tell them formation 0800 and an inspection 0750 rolls around, and I still have one asleep in the drill hall. 0800 I tell the ssgt with 18yrs in the nastyguard to post the colors and for the 2 squads for inspection. .......... He can't. No one can. They don't know how. In the last 13 years (the longest anyone present had been with the company), they had NEVER had a formation, NEVER had an inspection, N E V E R !!!!! He stands in front of the troops who are at parade rest (Guard style) and gives the command OPEN......Ranks! And they stare at him. Partly because they don't think he's right and partly because any command given to them is foreign. We work through a few other minor rough spots; I put the boys to work; I break into the co's office, and I start holding court. First I have to teach everyone to Report properly. Then I hold some good old fashioned ASS Chewings. I felt 10 times better when it was done. I must be doing something right; one left after lunch and didn't come back. The CO does not check in once, and I don't bother to call him. My parting words at final formation (where we brought down the colors, but did not salute the first time because the sgt running the formation could not remember the command "Present arms," so we just stare at it and hope no one notices. He got it right after a spot correction, and we ran it back up for another try. Stand BY. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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