Quote Originally Posted by Courtney Massengale View Post
On the latest promotion list to O4, out of the 40 selected in my branch (including 2 BZ and 2 DBZ), seven had never been deployed and four did not have a Company Command.
Okay, 18% hadn't deployed; I suspect that's fairly close to an Army norm; some unit types are always in greater demand than others and that creates an imbalance in a big, busy Army. You'd be amazed at how many Tankers never got to Viet Nam, much less some CS/CSS jobs and ranks...

As for the Command, without getting into which branch, how many company slots are available, how long they've been in the service and so forth, that really doesn't tell me much. Plus, don't I remember that you are or were on your second company command tour? Which one of those guys did you deprive?

Not picking on you, seriously but all sorts of things can get in the way of commanding a company as you know -- and most CS/CSS guys are good at their job which is far more important than commanding a company. Honest. I've met more Company commanders who weren't technically competent -- or weren't good commanders -- than I care to recall.
There's your future warrior leaders of the United States Army.
We don't want Warriors; they're generally undisciplined louts.

What we do want is professional, tactically and technically competent Soldiers -- to realign something that is not broken, just strayed off the path. Neither deployments or command are necessary to do that, neither really confers wisdom or moral strength...

Leading the Army to improve just takes smarts. And will. Mostly will.