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Military Families & Couples |
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No Excuse for Abuse
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By David H. Hackworth
Since 9/11,
the good grunts in our Reserve and National Guard have
stood tall and made the Pentagon’s helter-skelter,
hurry-up-and-wait Reserve mobilization plans work at
great personal sacrifice to themselves and their
families.
It’s fair to say that without our heroic
citizen-soldiers, domestic airports and critical facilities
wouldn’t have been secured, and our regular forces couldn’t
have achieved their battle objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nor could our military have sustained and supported the bloody
occupation of Iraq – which more and more is becoming the
Reserves’ full-time burden.
Virtually all of these part-time soldiers from
every one of the services – less the Marine Corps – have
rucksacks full of grim tales regarding screw-overs either by
the Pentagon, their own chain of command or the
regular units to which they were attached. |
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Or a combination of all of the above.
Here’s one horror story culled from the
thousands of complaints that just keep coming: In late
February 2003, only a few weeks before two mighty iron fists –
the Army’s 3rd Mech Division and the Marine’s 1st Marine
Division – punched toward Baghdad, the Air Force Reserve’s
elite 514th and 439th Aeromedical Staging Squadrons were
activated. Two days after D-Day in Iraq, they were flown to
Germany and busted their butts converting a gym at Ramstein
Air Base into an operational, 100-bed contingency aeromedical
staging facility, the 86th CASF.
Shockingly, the CASF was still setting up when
the casualties started pouring in. “We were three days late
for the war and two months late for the mission,” explains one
medic. So much for prior planning.
The CASF is composed of total pros who don’t
suffer incompetence quietly. Many of their docs, nurses and
medics have practiced their medical disciplines for decades in
civilian life, and most of these highly skilled folks were at
Ramstein during Desert Storm. “We are a very highly trained
group with an unmatched depth of experience,” says one doctor.
“But as reservists we also brought with us a rare quality in
the armed forces: total honesty. We don’t have military
careers to protect, and unlike the normal military health-care
system, we put our emphasis on customer service.”
Right from the get-go the CASF ran into an iron
wall of regular Army bureaucratic red tape – beginning with
the commander of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which the
unit directly supported. “He really had no clue why we were
there,” reports a doc. “No one had briefed him on how to use
us. And we spent our early days battling him while the
incoming casualties built up.”
Miracles happen. Desert Storm heroine Col.
Rhonda Cornum took over as commanding officer of Landstuhl,
and according to another doc, “She was truly a bright light in
the nighttime and got things clicking.”
Now the most taxing problem for the fine 86th team became Army
Reserve and Guard non-battle casualties who should have never
left the States for
Iraq in the first place.
“By the time my group was redeployed home in
November we had handled about 9,000 casualties,” says a medic.
“Many of these were pre-existing prior to their deployment.
One soldier with a broken wrist in the USA had his cast cut
off and was told to get on the plane. As soon as he landed in
Kuwait he complained about the pain in his wrist and was
immediately evacuated to us and then to the States. Total time
in theater: two weeks. You can multiply that story by
thousands with confidence. Substitute fractured wrist for torn
knee cartilage, diabetes, hypertension, herniated disk,
thyroid disease, depression, anxiety disorder, pregnancy – the
list goes on and on. It was a travesty.”
A travesty is putting it mildly. The CASF’s
records provide a paper trail that goes from crooked,
pencil-whipping small-unit leaders all the way to the
Pentagon. Ironically, the same mistakes were made during
Desert Shield/Storm, but since the Air Force brass
conveniently lost that after-action report, the folks in
command were free to screw up all over again.
We must make sure these patriotic soldiers are
treated well and used properly. Which means Congress needs to
get on the stick and sic the GAO (General Accounting Office)
on the Reserve/NG ASAP.
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By permission to Couples
Company
Copyright © 2004, David H. Hackworth |
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Books by David Hackworth
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Steel My Soldiers' Hearts:
The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation
of the U.S. Army, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, Vietnam
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The Price
of Honor
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Hazardous Duty:
One of America's Most Decorated Soldiers Reports from the Front
With the Truth About the U.S. Military Today |
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