Soldier Sounds Off

[thedrifter]

Soldier Sounds Off



A letter to Hack.

Sir,

Read your column this morning over a bagel and a cup of coffee, and on of the things you mentioned really got me agitated.

In the past year, I've served back to back tours in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. I returned early to PCS to Korea. I'm a soldier, I understand what duty is, and my country needs me.

I'm also single, never married. It absolutely burns my ass that married soldiers get more money to PCS, more money in their basic allowance for housing, priority for on base housing, a family separation stipend (which just increased in October) when they deploy, and a first class family support infrastructure on every post that takes care of their loved ones when they're away. Every tour or deployment that I've been on the married soldiers are the first to rotate back...providing their comrades an incentive to get hitched before the next deployment. That they have the gall to throw the "family reasons" card on the table when it comes time for reenlistment is sick. I'm sorry, but too many military marriages are DOA (dead on the altar) to begin with because of the immature service members and their would-be spouses. I'm curious to know how the Marine Corps has done with their policy prohibiting first term Marines from marrying. Selfless Service? Didn't I read about that on my "Army Values" dog tag?

The next issue I want to sound off about is the Army World Class Athlete Program and the Army Soldier Show. Smells like Pork to me. Let me get this straight...we're at war...I'm in the Army...I don't have to go to combat if I'm in a chorus line traveling CONUS putting on song-and-dance shows or I can throw a javelin with the best in the world? Right. Got it. I can get behind the Golden Knights jumping at airshows as a recruiting tool; I can see the USAMU competing in shooting matches as a way to validate their training TTP's that filter out to the rest of the force. But when the Army is sponsoring a NASCAR team, a Top Fuel Dragster, a song and dance troupe, a team of Olympic athletes, black berets, Army Values dog tags and credit cards ... could I get some BBQ sauce with that pork?

Let's put all of that money back into the force in the form of better equipment and training for the soldiers, and get our soldiers focused on being soldiers.

A Soldier


http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c...91889157264019


Sempers,

Roger