{"id":29037,"date":"2012-03-08T08:59:10","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T12:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29037"},"modified":"2012-03-08T09:40:15","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T13:40:15","slug":"chandler-tells-ncos-roll-your-sleeves-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29037","title":{"rendered":"Chandler tells NCOs “Roll your sleeves up”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin sent us a link this morning in Stars & Stripes<\/a> to an ass chewing cloaked in pep talk terms that Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III gave to some NCOs in Europe the other day in which he told them that they need to roll up their sleeves and get back to the work of being NCOs. Because, for some reason, they weren’t able to be NCOs what with a war going on and all. I wonder who’s been doing all of the NCO stuff for the last ten years. Must have been the officers, huh?<\/p>\n

In an interview after his talk to the NCOs, Chandler said the Army would also be checking its databases to flag soldiers with repeated misconduct, including nearly 5,000 soldiers who committed multiple felonies while on active duty.<\/p>\n

That could occur, he said \u201cbecause as an Army we had some breakdowns in accountability for our soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

He elaborated on his post-Vietnam War comparison, saying the similarities included coming out of a long, protracted war and reducing size, at the same time that alcohol and drug abuse and other at-risk behaviors had increased.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find it hard to believe that there are 5000 convicted felons not in jail still leading troops. I mean a felony is an imprisonable offense, isn’t it? And disparaging the 1975 Army is pretty weak. Yeah, I knew some NCOs who abused drugs in those years, but none of them had been to Vietnam. The Vietnam veterans who were left after the war were nothing but professional and they did the heavy lifting when it came to building up the Army after the war. Chandler’s misrepresentation of those years only highlights the fact that he wasn’t around, in fact, he joined in 1981, so he was in 7th grade in 1975. So he’s working from stories he heard once.<\/p>\n

As evidence, Chandler, whose last assignment was commandant of the Army Sergeants Major Academy, said that half the sergeants enrolled in drill sergeant school or recruiter school \u201ceither don\u2019t show up or can\u2019t pass the PT (physical fitness) test.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wasn’t in the last wars, but I don’t think I’d show up for drill sergeant school if I was drafted either. Nothing against those of you who sacrificed part of your career to perform that important function, but I never liked the idea of being a drill sergeant or go through the epitome of garrison duty for however long the school is. I never even considered being a drill sergeant. Not being able to pass the PT test? There’s no excuse for that. Unless these guys are showing up for drill school right off a deployment, which I suspect might be the case. It took me months to get back to my PT score after six months in Desert Storm, so I can sympathize. But apparently the Smadge is more concerned with statistics than the reality. <\/p>\n

Chandler also criticized highly visible and sometimes offensive tattoos \u2013 and sergeants for not counseling their troops against getting such tattoos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That I go along with, sort of. I don’t have any tattoos, though. I’m too pretty to have to add decorations. And I’ve never been able to think of something I’d want permanently displayed on my perfect body. But to blame NCOs for their troops getting tattoos is probably a bit naive. <\/p>\n

I got chewed out by my battalion commander once because one of my squad leaders, who was on crutches went downtown, got drunk and got in a fight and beat the snot out of someone with his crutch. Somehow, it was my fault. So I took corrective action by patrolling the “Iron Triangle” at 2am and loading my troops in my van and taking them back to the barracks – more often than not resulting in more unnecessary violence on the street. I’m not sure if that was a good idea now, but it illustrates how much influence an NCO can have on his subordinates. They knew I was coming around at oh-dark-thirty and they were still out there, and still misbehaving. You can tell a private to not get a tattoo (and “offensive” is subject to discussion), but it certainly won’t stop them if they think they’re being clever.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit that I don’t like sergeant majors (no, you pseudo-English majors, it’s not sergeants major), never have. It seemed to me that a lot of good First Sergeants went to the Sergeant Major Academy and had their brains sucked out and came back only with vision that could spot a cigarette butt on the ground from miles away. If Chandler wants to clean out the ranks, get rid of every E-9 who refuses a command position, and every E-8 who won’t take a company. That’s where the problem begins.<\/p>\n

ADDED:<\/strong> I was awarded 2 Article 15s during my years, one as an E-3 and another as an E-6, neither would have been an offense as a civilian and neither impacted my career significantly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin sent us a link this morning in Stars & Stripes to an ass chewing cloaked … Chandler tells NCOs “Roll your sleeves up”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}