SITREP ON MILITIA INFANTRY UNITS

[Mark Antony]

Wow.  Lots of reserve bashing.

Not sure if this will cheese anyone off and I usually stay out of this stuff but its hard sometimes, especially seeing some of the same names over and over bashing away thread after thread.

I think it was 48th Regulator (sorry if I'm wrong) earlier that said that on his tour he didn't know of anyone staying back that didn't have compassionate4 leave or was a ****up.  I would challenge anyone to say differently.  If anyone wants a tour nowadays, all you have to do is find the right person to talk to and you can get transferred in.  As an infanteer, if you aren't going on a tour nowadays or in the future, you don't want to.  Anyone challenging this on this thread better be sending an e-mail higher to complain about not getting a tour.  I'm sure it can be arranged.

As for hitormiss, on my singular piddly little tour I saw plenty of bad reserve leaders and bad reg leaders.  The critical difference IMHO is all the reg guys know the reg leader for a long time before so its easy to forgive their failings (leadership, personality or otherwise).  They'd still get you killed just as fast but at least you know who you are and they always got the benefit of the doubt over a newer reserve guy (2 tours under their belt or not).

I'd think as a senior reg Cpl it would be excellent pers development to be able to guide a res MCpl with less experience to help ensure the success of the section as a whole.  The res guy succeeds, you succeed and, if the good reg leaders notice you, there are kudos to collect later.  Everyone wins.  Unfortunately its far and few between to be seen on tours.  I would throw out A Coy of 2PPCLI in Croatia in 93.  I heard a lot of good things from buddies about that Coy as an example of Res to Reg incorporation/cooporation on a tour (no I wasn't in that Coy).  I'm sure it wasn't perfect but its something to discuss.

 

[GO!!!]

I have a question that will probably seem stupid but, having never experienced it, what exactly is this 10% and what do they tell them?

I mean I have an idea but do they say you are going,...going,..going,...whoops, stay home or are they told they are not going unless....?

Yup.

It basically worked out that an entire platoon, from the Lt on down was workup trained, given shots, leave, LTA, disembarkation leave, all the kit.......CHOP. "sorry boys, Ottawa has made it clear that this will be a reserve tasking. Sign your kit back in to CQ, see you monday - and wear the green cbts."

All soldiers had that leave taken out of our annual allotment, the single guys did not get to go home at christmas (because they had already been told to use their LTA, because they would be gone till the end of the fiscal year). The request for replacement leave and and additional travel time at christmas was denied. As a result, a third of that platoon quit, including the Lt.

Bitterness and resentment may not have been present before, but when those same privates had to stay in Edmonton instead of going home during christmas leave, working shifts on the duty desk on December 22nd, because all of their leave had been used up - on order, and watched a bunch of reservists with two weeks workup get to go instead, tempers reached the boiling point. As one private stated "reservists cost me christmas at home, three months of solid workup training, 10-15 days of leave, $20,000 in allowances and the sheer letdown factor."

 

[Mark Antony]

Unfortunately GO!!! I think those men got wrong information. Maybe you are talking to someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone....

They do not simply stand down full infantry platoons the day before embarkation (you did say that they got their embarkation leave and thus I can infer that they would have been departing in the next day or two).  If it happened, it was because of some other reason than what you are laying out.

Easy to blame the reserve guys who just want to do their part.  Easy to blame politics.  Less easy to accept that reserve are here to stay and to help them integrate with the system.  These guys are here to take the "pressure" of the system (although from what I hear there isn't any pressure).  Maybe its time for everyone to stand up an tell higher there isn't any pressure on the system and the regs can do the job.  I never hear that except on this site.

 

[Britney Spears]

OK, I'm obviously not on the same page as you guys because I just don't understand the dynamic here. Everyone talks about this tour like it was a trip to Vegas or Disneyland or something. What about the MISSION? "I got screwed out of $20,000 in allowances" is a pretty silly complaint, because the army isn't a welfare program and you're not going over there to collect a fsucking allowance, you're there to do a job.

Shouldn't we be making decisions with the baseline of "Sending whoever is best able to complete the mission with minimal cost in casualties and kit", instead of "Sending whoever could use the money and resume padding"?  I mean, there ARE people over there still trying to kill us, so it's not exactly going to be a Sunday picnic, is it?

Or did I arrive mentally unprepared for the debate again?  ???

 

[JBP]

One thing I'd like to point out that no one has so far, is that almost ALL, I'd say 90%, of the reservists from my unit I've talked to have done multiple tours....

Usually it's the same guys itching to go back and do another tour, I don't know if it's cause of the money, the different lifestyle, escaping civilian responsibilities, whatever, but I noticed that's a trend.

A Sgt just came back to my unit from A-Stan, this was his 3-4rth tour, I can't remember exactly. He's been in the PRes 10 yrs and has tones of courses under his belt, including the CF Unarmed Combat INSTRUCTOR course and he is always on BMQ/SQ courses as Staff and Section Cmdr etc...

Would you folks tell him to his face he's mostly worthless? I think someone like him is more of the ideal reservist no?

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

GO!!!!,

Understand why people were bitter, but, like you said " Ottawa has made it clear". To be pissed off at the reserves guys would like you being pissed off at all CWO's because of the stupid idea yours had about jump pay.

As for saying now they had used up their leave, I'm sure the professional NCO's in the unit instructed and guided the men through a grievance process......

 

[Journeyman]

I'm going to take a lot of fire on this one...

It's always interesting to watch someone call fire onto their own position, which is why I told HitorMiss last night that I was just going to lurk....and roast hotdogs on the inevitable flames  ;D

For a UK perspective on the issue of Res being able to 'hack' real combat...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2044598,00.html

...have done multiple tours....
Usually it's the same guys itching to go back and do another tour

Yes, this does appear to be a trend in the mo-  but that's not limited to the Res, where you've got senior leadership with a CD and the Golden Jubilee (and occasionally some bizarre "Order of Babel" that I can't seem to find on the Medal/Decoration Order of Precedence table), and you find MCpls with 2-3 tours.

In Kosovo ('99-'00), there were 2 Cpls in my section, who each had 5 different gongs - - and divorces. I had to go to NDHQ for an afternoon after the tour, and CD plus one non-tour ribbon (GJ, OMM) was majority view there. If nothing else, this has created a booming business in "Staff Annoyance Visits" so that more people can get 30- or 60- days in-country and get a badge.....but that's a separate rant.

 

[George Wallace]

Unfortunately GO!!! I think those men got wrong information. Maybe you are talking to someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone....

They do not simply stand down full infantry platoons the day before embarkation (you did say that they got their embarkation leave and thus I can infer that they would have been departing in the next day or two).  If it happened, it was because of some other reason than what you are laying out.

Sorry guy, but it is and has been done.  I side with GO!! on that statement, as it happened to me.  However, GO!! it is also a sign of poor leadership at your Unit to have screwed these guys out of their Annual Lve and LTA.  I know in my case it was still choked up against the Tour, even though I was cut just before getting on the plane.  So, perhaps you are starting to see that it is not Reg vs Res that is the problem, but instances of poor leadership on both parts.  Would you like to substitute something else for Res in your arguments?  Say CSS? I am sure you will reach much the same conclusions in your mind, as you have now.  There is just as much distrust between Cbt Arms and CS and then CSS types as there are between Cbt Arms and the Res.  Where do you stop?

 

[Haggis]

"sorry boys, Ottawa has made it clear that this will be a reserve tasking. Sign your kit back in to CQ, see you monday - and wear the green cbts."

So you blame the soldiers instead of the system?

and watched a bunch of reservists with two weeks workup get to go instead,

Must've been one switched on bunch of Reservists!  I don't know of ANY Reserve unit that could have soldiers up to speed for Kandahar in only two weeks. (clearly they deserved to go. )

As one private stated "reservists cost me christmas at home, three months of solid workup training, 10-15 days of leave, $20,000 in allowances and the sheer letdown factor."

And as a 7 year Cpl (a junior leader), your response to this soldier was what, again?

 

[pbi]

Quite apart from the Reg/Res argument which, like a persistent zombie, refuses to stay dead but keeps getting out of its coffin and stumbling around....

It strikes me that we have a very serious information breakdown inside the RegF, in the Army in particular. My impression is that the most senior leadership of the Army and the CF sincerely, with all the best of good will, believe that their soldiers are getting burnt out by op tempo. This has been communicated both inwardly to CF audiences and outwardly to the public until it has become accepted as an article of faith. We have pers policies that are supposed to deal specifically with it. We encourage the use of Res, and of a managed readiness program, to try to deal with it.

And yet, the message that comes through loud and clear on these pages (and elsewhere, I might add...) is that large numbers of troops, especially Inf soldiers, are so chronically under-deployed that it has become a retention issue. It is so bad that employing Res actually just aggravates things.

If the latter view is correct, and I think that there is probably quite a bit of truth to it, how the hell has the information gotten so lost and distorted? Have we heard the cries of certain strained MOCs and simply applied a broad brush to all of our soldiers? Is the chain of command in the Infantry so broken (not to mention all the many other ways that we have of passing information in the CF these days, from talking to visiting VIPs to brown envelopes through Ocs hours to the Ombudsman...) Are all these broken too?

Maybe its the insidious aging of our force: we are getting much too old, too fast. (Compare a typical group of Cdn and US Reg Army types and you may be shocked at how much younger and fitter the US group appears...). Older folks, usually found at the WO/senior officer level and in CSS trades, often don't like instabililty, unpredictability and being moved around as much. Is this the natural reaction of an aging force?

Is it an unintended result of the Army Managed Readiness program, that breaks us down and deploys us by sub-units in "plug and play" TFs, instead of standing units, so that the good old expectation that everybody would get a tour is now OBE?

Maybe this discussion belongs on a thread of its own (Mods...?) but I have a feeling it is worth talking about. Something is wrong.

Cheers

 

[HItorMiss]

It strikes me that we have a very serious information breakdown inside the RegF, in the Army in particular. My impression is that the most senior leadership of the Army and the CF sincerely, with all the best of good will, believe that their soldiers are getting burnt out by op tempo. This has been communicated both inwardly to CF audiences and outwardly to the public until it has become accepted as an article of faith. We have pers policies that are supposed to deal specifically with it. We encourage the use of Res, and of a managed readiness program, to try to deal with it.

And yet, the message that comes through loud and clear on these pages (and elsewhere, I might add...) is that large numbers of troops, especially Inf soldiers, are so chronically under-deployed that it has become a retention issue. It is so bad that employing Res actually just aggravates things.

If the latter view is correct, and I think that there is probably quite a bit of truth to it, how the hell has the information gotten so lost and distorted? Have we heard the cries of certain strained MOCs and simply applied a broad brush to all of our soldiers? Is the chain of command in the Infantry so broken (not to mention all the many other ways that we have of passing information in the CF these days, from talking to visiting VIPs to brown envelopes through Ocs hours to the Ombudsman...) Are all these broken too?

Yes Sir that is what I believe to be the case, but the Cbt A and the Inf in particular are out numbered so our voices are drowned out by the CSS which are indeed distressed. On that topic I discussed this very thing today with some augmentees to my unit, and put forth the concept of Inf Res guys going with the CSS trades to back fill them, They were very receptive to it, the best part was the concept of say a convoy gets hit, now your soft skinned vehicle driver is not just a driver but a trained Infantry man able to put to use all his combat skills in an emergency with likely greater proficiency then the avg CSS driver.

NO I am not saying CSS trades are combat ineffective, I sure as heck can;t drive a truck like they do and I'm pretty the avg CSS Driver can't lead or do a section attack like I can.

Maybe its the insidious aging of our force: we are getting much too old, too fast. (Compare a typical group of Cdn and US Reg Army types and you may be shocked at how much younger and fitter the US group appears...). Older folks, usually found at the WO/senior officer level and in CSS trades, often don't like instability, unpredictability and being moved around as much. Is this the natural reaction of an aging force?

Is it an unintended result of the Army Managed Readiness program, that breaks us down and deploys us by sub-units in "plug and play" TFs, instead of standing units, so that the good old expectation that everybody would get a tour is now OBE?

You may very well be on to something there but how do we change it? I seriously cannot find away and when the subject is broached the reply of " the system is here to stay so get used to it and make it work" Is heard all up through the chain, up to and including the CLS who I heard say that from his own lips.

 

[HItorMiss]

It's always interesting to watch someone call fire onto their own position, which is why I told HitorMiss last night that I was just going to lurk....and roast hotdogs on the inevitable flames   ;D

Yup and again I thank you 

how did those human smoked hot dogs taste? I'm kind of stingy and partial to hot sauce did it affect the flavour LOL  ;D

 

[Forgotten_Hero]

I may be wrong, but it seems the "solution" you allude to is to deploy every fit Reg F soldier, maintain the 10% reserve of only reservists (who then likely never deploy, or gain such experiences to train their own soldiers in the unit), and when the crap does hit the fan, these soldiers that you have created as "second class" and "not quite good enough" become your only source of reinforcements?

I agree, that is quite dangerous.

Plenty of people agree that the average reservist is not up to the same standard as the average reg, it seems. Couldnt it be argued, then, that that indicates that the reservist could use the training and experience of tour to more benefit than a reg force soldier?

As for what I think... I think that the reserves should be pushed so that they're up to par with regs, and as for tour, wouldnt it solve plenty of problems if we simply pooled all the reg and reserve applicants together and simply chose from the best? It would give all troops, both reg and reserve, a bit more reason to push themselves and learn, and no one could claim that either the reg or reserve troops stole their job...

 

[Forgotten_Hero]

It comes down to this I am a 7yr Reg Force Cpl...That Reserve MCpl or Sgt etc etc has alto less experience then me in just about everything you could name let alone days in, I would find my life unnecessarily endagered by that person being in charge when he is clearly not ready for it.

Well, I'm still green, so tell me if I've misunderstood something... but doesnt even a Sgt, with plenty of time in, a subordinate to the freshly trained 2LT?

 

[Fishbone Jones]

and put forth the concept of Inf Res guys going with the CSS trades to back fill them, They were very receptive to it, the best part was the concept of say a convoy gets hit, now your soft skinned vehicle driver is not just a driver but a trained Infantry man able to put to use all his combat skills in an emergency with likely greater proficiency then the avg CSS driver.

So they're no good as Infantry only if they have to serve with you or yours, but with anyone else they're just crackerjacks eh? :

 

[TCBF]

"Or did I arrive mentally unprepared for the debate again?"

- Not at all.  In fact, you cut right to the chase.

BUT, there are two Armies:  There is the Operational Army - the one you allude to above - then there is the CAREER Army.  It is the CAREER Army that pounds the square pegs into round holes.  That's how people in bureaucracies function.  All politics is locapl, etc.

It is our MHR policies at all levels that have done more harm to the CF than all of the recent bad guys  put together.

 

[little jim]

Why is everyone so upset at this thread – the PRes/RegF bashing.

It’s because they all probably view the current missions the Army is engaged in as being highly desirable to go -  I am going to make the generalization that a lot of people are thinking like myself and view the current Op ARCHER deployment as one of those deep, dark, never tell your friends, or your mom – but the REASON THEY JOINED.

The challenge there isn’t to see how drunk you can get on the beach, how many bus stops you can build or Mostovi’s you can give out but a deeper challenge.  (I remember coming back in '02 thinking "was that the high light of my military career?")

As pointed out in numerous posts there would appear to be a number of problems with the system when viewed through the eyes of both the Regs and the Reserves.  It might be the time to suck back and realize that both sides have strengths and weaknesses and use that to our advantage – do your own estimate.

It’s easy to pick sides and say GO!! And HitorMiss are evil but at least they have the strengths of their convictions.  They have cited tales of others in the regs becoming disillusioned at the system and “voting with their feet” as the reserve world would say.  It appears that both of them are staying put.  You may not like their attitude or the manner in which they express themselves but they are hurt by the same system that hurts the reserves through so many little in justices.  I’m not saying get all brokeback mountain with them but at least acknowledge they have a point. 

I spent six months jumping everytime I heard those magical six words “Get the rental to do it.”  At least ‘toon is marginally less offensive than Stab.  Our reserves do go overseas with the same kit, eat in the same mess and share quarters with their RegF comrades in arms.  It could be a lot worse…

 

[HItorMiss]

So they're no good as Infantry only if they have to serve with you or yours, but with anyone else they're just crackerjacks eh? :

I'll let the sarcasm go and point out it was meant as a viable suggestion to a problem we seemed to have all agreed on, which would be the fact the Infantry guys are biting at the bit to get over but the CSS guys seem to be the guys getting out. I have never said that I Reserve Soldier is untrainable up to a regular force standard, as as such I would say using them to back fill the CSS although not in their trade specific job gives everyone a benefit... The Reg Infantry guys to do the Job they train for 365, The Res guys get both the training and the Operational experience to take back to their unit, with the added benefit of non trade specific knowledge as well, and the CSS guys get to have some of the strain removed from their shoulders.

Tell me Reccegyu what is so horribly wrong with that plan? Taking into account it might not have been all my idea but maybe it was hashed out with some Reserve augmentees, As is seems your more taking issue with the fact that I put forth this idea then looking at the idea for it's merit.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Nope. Quite simply the previous standard you've implied for them was not good enough for you, but you think it's good enough for someone else.

I find nothing wrong with the idea, but let's spread it out to the other Cbt Arms reserves also. Certainly the Armoured Recce Res are much more adapted to working from vehicles than the Inf Res, so why not them? And the Arty and Eng Res.

 

[HItorMiss]

Regardless is it not a fair and balanced short term plan?
or at least the framework of a plan?

*Posted that while you were I guess editing yours, I see not a single problem with that. I simply used Inf Res Pers beacuse it was with them I discussed the idea with and because the main part of this whole thread has been based on the Res Inf*