A War's Impossible Mission

[Ken White]

"Down time in the rear" was ever thus -- Korea and Viet Nam had the same syndromes. Korea was tolerable, Viet Nam was far worse and your description sounds like Viet Nam x 1.5...

One BIG difference is that the problems in those earlier wars were unlikely to be senior NCOs but more likely to be Officers of other than combat arms or even more often, MPs. Thus, it seems we have a major change of who the uncomprehending are -- and they are that, uncomprehending, not necessarily ill intentioned -- and that is very worrisome.

It really needs some education. What is the Sergeants Major Academy doing to those guys? What are they doing? Things must have changed, I served as a Bn and a Bde CSM in peacetime and in combat and I sure had other things to worry about. In both states of conflict.

I'm not going to address that stupid reflective belt which is and should be trashed worldwide but certainly restricted to CONUS at a minimum...

To your secondary point -- may be your primary but to me it's secondary. Not to denigrate it or lessen the evil or pain of it but simply in view of the inevitability of it. It cannot, I believe, be prevented; it goes with the job:

Update: one interesting study that should be conducted is on burnout. Police Officers, psychologists specializing in trauma, ER doctors, etc... face a high degree of burnout that can lead to a shortened career lifespan. Is their a correlation for soldiers in COIN? Is there a quantifiable time limit/tour frequency that soldiers can maintain? Just a thought.

It's been studied and there are no conclusive results to my knowledge. My observation is that it is very much an individual thing; some people can take a lot of stress, others less. Everyone has a breaking point and there's no way to tell what action or event will trigger that point in an individual -- though leaders can and should see the signs of an impending problem if they know and watch their people. That means the Squad Leader has to let the Platoon leader know because no one can know 40 people well enough to spot that if one is doing one's other jobs; that, in turn, means the PSG or Plt Ldr have to train and require their subordinates -- which they're supposed to be doing in any event.

I'm not sure whether the tedium and long term pressure of COIN operations are worse than MCO. My sensing is that each affects different people in different ways; some can tolerate one and not the other, some tolerate neither and some can tolerate both fairly well. There are studies which posit 200 days of combat is the determinant but that's a median and I think it's still a very individual thing.

Having said all that, re: the original issue in the linked Article, seems to me the wrong folks are the recipients of the Article 32, from the WaPo article:

"Over the past year, Hill's company made at least 10 such requests, although none were approved, according to 1st Lt. Larry Kay, Hill's executive officer. Kay, who is also facing charges related to the incident, added that other U.S. companies' detainees are routinely accepted by battalion and blames the repeated denials on friction between Hill and his battalion command."

The Captain erred, so did his 1SG but (1) I don't see a 'federal case' here and (2) who's investigating the Battalion for not accepting the detainees? More questions than answers at this point, perhaps more information will come out.

More importantly, when the Australians were in Viet Nam, they wisely threw up a 20' berm around their base camps and they did NOT use local contract labor. Seemed smart to me and I spent a couple of years in Viet Nam railing about the stupidity -- it is that -- of using local employees on combat bases to 'boost the local economy.' Stupid. Abysmally stupid.