Officer Retention

[Cavguy]

I am not sure the numbers support your claim that folks are "hiding out" in TRADOC. I know Fort Benning cleaned house about three years ago and replaced just about every NCO and Officer who didn't have a SSI-FWS on their right shoulder. Granted there are still some officers and NCO's out there who have avoided deployments but I think most of them are in the very senior grades (O-5 and above or E-9), it's hard to find too many O-3 to O-4's and E-4 to E-7's out there without some time in a combat zone. Again, there are probably some who got by with a 120 or 180 day deployment to Kuwait or Qatar but I am not convinced that folks can hide very easily. Especially since the implementation of dwell time, it is automatically annotated at HRC whenever they pull up your records.

PT,

Agree somewhat, but my initial shock upon arrival here at Fort Leavenworth was the sheer number of perm party officers (not ILE students, which are about 98% combat vets) without combat patches. Most of them outrank me, but I always want to ask - what hole have you been hiding in?

Branch has said that those with the higest dwell time will absolutely deploy next, so I agree, it will even itself. I have a post command, MAJ friend who never deployed. Commanded in Korea, a second command at Knox, and then AC/RC. He's getting his first downrange deployment early next year..... I guess the system is working. I think many of them, like my friend, simply had jobs that didn't deploy to SWA, and didn't volunteer to head downrange or were locked into other jobs.

I liked the USMC "Every Marine into the Fight" message that went out recently, the Army needs to do the same.

[tequila]

Following Cavguy's note: General: Deploy or risk promotion chances.

Marines who have not gone to war should be concerned when promotion time comes around, a top Corps official said.

“I guarantee you ... if you have a six- to seven-year war and you don’t get to the war zone, you needn’t wonder what’s going to happen when it’s time for promotion,” said Lt. Gen. Ronald Coleman, deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs in Quantico, Va.

Coleman spoke at a Marine Corps Association meeting here Wednesday, where he told an audience of mainly retired and active-duty Marines that leathernecks who haven’t deployed to a combat zone need to find a way to get to the fight.

“If I’m on the promotion board, I’m going to make a note of that,” he said.
While some Marines have served three, four and, in some cases, five tours in Iraq, 40,000 still have not deployed, Coleman said. Some of those Marines are in the pipeline, including those making the transition from boot camp to infantry battalions.

In January, Commandant Gen. James Conway announced his plans to rearrange assignments so that every Marine is given the chance to go to war. At the time of his announcement, titled “Every Marine Into the Fight,” some 66,000 Marines — a third of the force — had not deployed.