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Stupid army tricks

September 20th, 2006 by Double Tap

I don’t know if it’s because I am recently returned from the “real world” or what, but I’ve decided I’ve just about had it up to here with Army stupidity.

It could be that because I am from a National Guard background, that I just don’t get some of the Active Duty mentality. On the other hand, I’ve heard Active Duty soldiers complain about some of the stupid things that are forced on us, so it can’t be all me.

For example, senior NCOs and officers like to talk about “taking care of soldiers”. In reality, many times, they are talking about taking care of themselves. Usually, they raise the biggest stink when they feel they’ve been slighted in some way, or if something they feel should have occurred, didn’t occur.

Another stupid thing is uniforms. The army issues many different pieces of uniform and uniform accessories, with the full intention that you use them. However, commanders, first sergeants and sergeants major sometimes decide that they don’t like that piece of uniform accessory and then place limitations on when or even if it can be worn. Meanwhile, every soldier from all the other units are free to wear it. For example, the army issues a heavy black fleece jacket for cold-weather use. Our commander arbitrarily decided he didn’t like the looks of it and banned the unit from wearing it - despite the fact that everyone else on the base was wearing it. Another similar thing happened with a subdued infra-red U.S. flag that was issued to us, to be worn on the right sleeve. Again, despite the fact that we are in a combat zone, and the U.S. Army issued it to us to be worn, our commander decided he didn’t like the looks of it and banned their wear.

Still another uniform accessory is the reflective belt. Within the last year or so, it has become imperative that everyone wear a friggin’ reflective belt while in physical training clothes - whether you are running down the street at night or not. And at night, while on the FOB, everyone has to wear the belt not only in their PT’s, but also in their camouflaged ACUs. It’s all in the name of “safety”, but it really treat us all as if we were children. You don’t see the Marines doing this kind of stuff.

The Army is all about style over substance - how things look is often more important than how they work. Here in Iraq, even on the base, you are required to carry a pistol or a rifle and one magazine of ammunition with you at all times. You aren’t allowed to actually carry the weapon loaded, just carry the ammo - in case something happens. Okay, I can see that - no problem here. However, what happens if your weapon is down for maintenance? In the case of one soldier I knew, his weapon had a maintenance issue and it wouldn’t fire. Therefore, it was now little more than a club, and there was no point in carrying it around, because it wouldn’t have done him much good in a confrontation anyway. Well, his First Sergeant didn’t see it that way. He made him carry the broken weapon around all the time anyway - because it didn’t “look right” for him not to have a weapon. Again, looks over practicality.

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