For the last few days I have been working in earnest on the company newsletter. This will be the third issue of five, maybe six, we will send to the soldiers and (hopefully) the families of soldiers in this unit. If you want a copy of either of the previous newsletters or the one I am working on now, email me at ngussman@gmail.com. This issue is mostly about the half of Echo Company that does refueling--the company I am in is about half refuelers for helicopters, half vehicle maintenance, plus a few cooks, supply and administrative soldiers.
The comments have stopped on the Pennlive article, but I was emailing a friend and it reminded of on big difference between training for the Cold War in the 1970s and our current situation in Iraq: We are six months into this deployment and have not lost ONE soldier. Back in the 70s we had a joint NATO exercise called REFORGER. About 150,000 NATO troops would manouver on the East-West German border. My recollection is 30-50 soldiers died during each REFORGER. A lot of it was jeep rollovers. No seatbelts back then in tactical vehicle. Two infantrymen attached to our unit in 77 crawled under an M-88 tank recovery vehicle to sleep and keep warm. They were crushed in their sleeping bags when the 57-ton vehicle moved on an alert order.
We'll most likely all go home alive and those guys are worried about who has longer work hours or better chow. Dante puts Envy deep in Hell.
That's why.
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You're absolutely right! You may not have ended up at the deluxe accomodations of Camp Cupcake, but the fact that you guys will probably all come home has got to be gift enough. We look forward to you all returning.
ReplyDeleteThe Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 08/20/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
ReplyDeleteI agree and couldn't believe some of the comments that were being made. Publicly critizing your chain of command in a way that bordered on insubordination was very appalling to me.
ReplyDeleteAs my European friend said, we are Americans first (entitled to our opinion!) and soldiers second--at least the whiners are.
ReplyDelete