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Somewhere, General George S. Patton Jr. Is Weeping (and Cursing)
In the retirement community where I live, I frequently have breakfast with some of my fellow “old warhorses”. This week, one of my friends, a grizzled old sergeant major brought in two articles he had just run across. At first, we thought they were merely internet hoaxes. Sadly, they were not.
It has been announced by the Secretary of the Army that a draft policy change is underway that will allow CONUS-based soldiers to transfer if they feel that state or local laws discriminate against them based on gender, sex, religion, race, or pregnancy. According to the draft policy, the only thing needed for a transfer would be for a “soldier” to declare that a certain state/locality is “too racist, too homophobic, too sexist or otherwise discriminatory to be able to live there safely and comfortably”. (Note: The Army has always had a “Compassionate Transfer” policy but only for a limited number of reasons.)
Since many (if not most) of the Army’s major installations are in the Deep South or “Old Confederacy”, we went around the table naming them. We came up with Texas (Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Fort Sam Houston), Louisiana (Fort Polk), Alabama (Fort Rucker), Georgia (Fort Gordon, Fort Stewart/Hunter Army Airfield), South Carolina (Fort Jackson), and North Carolina (Fort Bragg). Along the periphery, we added Oklahoma (Fort Sill) and Kentucky/Tennessee (Fort Knox and Fort Campbell).
Now, virtually all of these states can be termed as Conservative. Will this new policy become the rationale for the wholesale shuffle of personnel who whine that they are being discriminated against? Has the Department of the Army even considered this?
Under this deranged policy, it is conceivable that the units in these installations could become mostly white, straight, and male. Is this what the Army has come to?
To those of us around the table, we came from an Army whose mottos of “Duty, Honor, Country” and “This We’ll Defend” were taken to heart. Yes, there were installations (such as Fort Polk) that we dreaded being assigned to. However, that was just part of being a soldier; suck it up; be a man. If we had a complaint, we were usually told to “take it to the Chaplain and have him punch your T.S. Card”.
Almost as disturbing was the second article showing that the Army is carrying on its books the equivalent of 13 brigades worth of non-deployable soldiers. (Over 58,000 troops.) The Military Times article stated that these soldiers are on temporary and permanent medical profiles preventing them from fully performing their duties. No doubt there are some soldiers who are still rehabbing war injuries and accidents. However, it appears that the bulk of these non-performers is composed of those who have “poor sleep habits, obesity and overuse injuries”. How can this be? How can an army have so many bodies that are either unable or unwilling to fight?
For the Army, it’s time to clean house. When a soldier (male or female) is consistently unable to perform their duty, it should be mandatory that they be separated from the service. They are not only a waste of money; they endanger this nation.
I had to chuckle when I read that PACAF commander General Kenneth Wilsbach stated that “The Army must ‘step up’ to protect Guam and other Pacific air bases”. How can the Army perform missions such as this when so many troops are unable to perform their duties?
I suppose that was a rhetorical question. All of us know the answer. It is a complete lack of leadership starting with President Biden and running through SECDEF Austin to CJCS Milley and CSA McConville. On their watch, the Army’s readiness has slipped dangerously to the point where the security of the entire nation is threatened.
General George S. Patton Jr. would have never tolerated this, not to mention his superiors Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall. They would have resigned before being involved in the situation we have today. All of these men had integrity; none of today’s leaders know the meaning of the word. It is extremely unfortunate that they mistake “wokeness” for leadership. All of us will pay the price for it.
Published in General
You might appreciate this photograph … that’s General Patton front and center, as always, with General Walton Walker to his left. My great uncle Brigadier General Julius Easton Slack is second from the right. He was commanding general of XX Corps Artillery under General Walker, instrumental in the liberation of Metz, France.
This photo was taken in June 1944 in England, just after Patton took over the Third Army. I am building a site with loads of pictures from WWII, and it’s always growing. Let me know via direct message if you and your friends are interested and I’ll send you the url.
God bless you and thank you (and them) for your service.
You forgot the mother of all army bases in Georgia: Fort Benning.
Ah! You got me! Thanks!
Yes, it still exists but we were just looking at the largest bases.
Benning is huge.
Yup, I had it on our list but passed over it when I was typing.
BTW, they moved most of the Armor School from Fort Knox to Benning which I didn’t understand. I always thought it was better to have the Infantry training in Benning, the Armor in Knox and the Artillery in Sill.
We could save a lot of money by never sending US soldiers where they aren’t wanted – we could end war forever.
Outrageous. Ridiculous. Foolish. Misguided.
Those are a handful of words that came up for me in reading your excellent post, CA. The idiocy of the decision-makers in our military is also frightening. Can we trust that we will have the gumption, the dedication and fortitude to protect us and our future? I have serious doubts . . .
Great post, and I recommend it highly for promotion to the Main Feed.
I retired in 2013, after 30 years of service. The US Army was ever the “bitch mistress,” who would take, and take, and take, and almost NEVER give back. But when she did, it was so good as to make me forget all the other times. If I could go back and start all over again, I would.
Be that as it may, I’m convinced that the”Professional” institutional Army, from 1954 to present, is (in sum) a failure. Major reform and restructuring of the senior officer ranks is necessary, starting with a re-establishment of the traditional American military structure of small Regular Army and large base of Citizen-soldiers. (I know this is heresy to say, and I’m considered an apostate…but it’s indisputable. The U.S. Army hasn’t won a war since 1954, and shows no sign of being able to anytime soon unless something changes.)
If it makes you feel any better….
https://nypost.com/2022/06/26/obese-retired-russian-general-called-to-fight-in-ukraine-report/
Not too long ago, if one had a GED instead of a diploma, he had to take a few college courses before he could enlist. The GED alone wasn’t enough. Now they aren’t meeting recruitment goals so folks don’t have to have a diploma, I heard. I agree with Postmodern, we need more citizens prepared to serve. The federal government is ruining the standing army and other services. Perhaps that is part of the Marxist “long march through the institutions.”
The sensitive souls hated Patton and removed him from command several times. Just like Trump now, manners instead of winning was more important.
Wow, this guy is leading the Special Forces? I’d pay money to see him jump from an airplane; especially doing a HALO jump…
My uncle was an NCO who fought from France into Luxembourg into Germany. For part of that time he was under Patton. He and his colleagues hated Patton. They thought he cared about uniforms and trivia more than the ability to fight.
Just one data point, but it was something that stayed with Uncle Carl for 60 years.
Blame Obama for the wussification of the military.
As much as I agree with the spirit of this statement, the institutional rot in the US military reaches back far further than the Obama years. He simply took advantage of it, and thus accelerated the decay.
Men want to do men things, not men and women things. I think that with the end of the draft, it became clear that attitude was no longer workable.
They won, he came back alive. And yes, Patton was a little weird.
I retired Jan l, 1999… thank goodness.
@PostmodernHoplite, in one paragraph you captured what I always experienced in the military. Now, as I look back at the crap that was thrown at us and remember the wise words of an old SFC, “Don’t ever get too comfortable with a situation and don’t get too P.O’d because it’s going to change”.
I never did understand folks who said that they loved the military; to me it was always a love/hate relationship. But I would still do it again (except for a teflon shoulder & hip and other assorted ailments).
Also, thanks for your endorsement for a promotion to the Main Feed but I think I must have run afoul of the editors in the past. Oh well….
*****Whoops, I guess I whined too early. This was just promoted. Don’t I feel like an idiot?*****
His waist approximates the hat size of most leaders within our Defense establishment.
Yeah, to say the least. Patton’s slapping incident received a lot of attention but his biggest screw-up was Task Force Baum which was an attempt to rescue his son-in-law from a POW camp. It was a total disaster but Patton kept his job. Actually, this might not have been the worst case of preferential treatment for flag rank officers. Over in the Pacific theater, Admiral Halsey sailed his fleet into a typhoon losing hundreds of men, and several ships and aircraft. He managed to get away with a slap on the wrist for his “error of judgement”.
That says it all…
I have a recurring nightmare that if our Army, under its present leadership, were called upon to fight a major war, it would perform similar to what the Russian army is now in Ukraine (bloated and unprepared).
I’d pay to see him trying to sleep on a camp cot; he’d need at least a queen-size.
I’m thinking that his top would make a great wobbie…
I retired from the Navy in August 1999. I’ve heard of similar things going on there as well. This is going to get a lot of good young kids killed before it gets fixed.