Taking Care of Field Grade Officers on TDY...NOT!!!

[sandbag]

Let's see if I can summarize this thread. I'm not quite sure if I understand it, so bear with me.

OP: This satellite ILE site is pretty jacked-up in terms of chow and transportation conditions. You'd think it was better thought through. This is a rant. Thanks for listening.

Generic Response Type 1: Wrong forum! This is for combat arms stuff!

Generic Response Type 2: You're lucky you're not living in a ditch and eating bugs to survive! Why are you complaining?

Generic Response Type 3: Yeah, Type 2 is right! When I went to Insert_School_Here, we had to road march fifty miles each way. So, if it sucked for me, it should suck for you, too.

Generic Response Type 4: Screw you, FOBbit! Screw Os, too!

I think the only thing I might have missed was the obligatory "82nd-Airborne-is-the-greatest-we-single-handedly-won-every-war-we've-ever-been-in" post. Hell if I know. My attention span started to wane.

Come on, guys, I thought we were adults. We used to beat Soldiers when I enlisted, but we stopped because it's just a plain stupid thing to do. What does that have to do with some Major having to carpool to his ILE site? Simple: why settle with mediocrity? If we adopt stupid historical precedent as policy, we'll be the same Army that starched our combat uniforms "because that's the way we've always done it". If we're going to do that, let's start forming ranks 300 abreast and firing muskets. It's equally dumb.

So OP posted some frustrations in the wrong forum. I'm not so much ashamed of that as I am by the responses. Honestly, if that is the kind of response posters can expect, we as a professional forum are no better than a bunch of kit whores arguing about what badass sling we can buy from our local "tacticool" vendor that allows us free range of movement in the DFAC. To assume that OP concerns aren't valid because he's not 11-series or whatever is juvenile. What if OP's done four combat rotations and a few hundred convoys? Is there an SWJ standard for body count or something to be considered a valid contributor? Gee, what is it? I sure hope I qualify!

I guess the whole point of the exercise is that we as an Army should be constantly looking for ways to make things better for our people. If we're going to go down the road that only certain groups of people are worthy of respect and good treatment (regardless of rank, folks; tough, but I know we can do it!), how are we going to get people to do the jobs that aren't deemed worthy?