It’s a very prestigious thing to be able to call yourself a soldier. Many walks of life pass through the ranks of the military for many different reasons. Any person who completes their training and mandatory commitment has my respect, and should have yours as well. This article is geared towards the people that decide to continue their service to America after their initial contract, those on the path of a career soldier.
There is many ways to serve your country, and many branches of service, but to stay on topic I am gonna focus on the Army and Army National Guard. To be a soldier in the Army takes a lot of commitment and sacrifice on many levels, which makes it hard to see exactly how hard it is to be a soldier. Of the many sacrifices a soldier has to make, I would say family is the biggest sacrifice with the most impact. Family is very important to a soldier, they are always there for ya when you need them, and family gives a soldier the sense of purpose he/she needs, a clear picture of what you are fighting for. The sacrifice in full is two sided, being a family member of a soldier requires dedication and sacrifice as well, moving and following the army position wherever it may go, and the soldier not always being home for holidays and special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, and other special days. Family is the reason I decided to give up the active Army and finish my career in the Army National Guard.
In my opinion, being a National Guard soldier is much more difficult than being a regular Army soldier. This is a very powerful statement and it will take a good bit of explaining so you can understand what I mean by this, because being an active duty soldier is a very hard dangerous job. To be any type of soldier takes a great deal of discipline, responsibility, mental and physical fitness, dedication, and many other traits that would come in various orders depending on which soldier you talked to. Being a regular Army soldier is a 24 hour a day job, 7 days a week, and your training for war all the time, so that you are comfortably proficient in your job when the time comes that your called upon to perform. After a statement like that one may ask, how can any job be harder than that?
The profound reality of the Army National Guard, is that National Guard soldiers are expected to be proficient in Army career jobs with a fraction of the paid training time regular Army soldiers have. Every soldier, regardless of their job title and position, is required to be proficient in tactical combat, more commonly referred to as basic soldier skills. Tactical proficiency and weapons qualification with your assigned weapon, (most common weapons are M-16 assault rifle and M-9 pistol), combat maneuver techniques and communications are some of the basic skills needed. There are many other skills and proficiencies that coincide and are needed to be considered combat qualified, and that is just the basics of being a soldier, after that you have to learn and master your actual MOS or job in your unit.
Regular Army units have monthly training schedules that dictate how often they do which training, MOS training, or basic soldier training, depending on what leadership thinks their soldiers need the most. Sometimes training is unit level, and other times training may be conducted in squads, or smaller group settings, depending on many things like trainers and what is to be learned. Leadership is always adjusting how it is done to optimize training time and skill level. National Guard on the other hand, since they only gather to train once a month (1 weekend a month and 2 weeks once a year), has a much harder time creating training schedules, and more importantly what should go in them. With the limited amount of training time allotted for national guard soldiers, the sad reality is that a lot of their training is done on their own time without being paid for their time and hard work, or even supervised for that matter. The only way for the National Guard to keep their soldiers fully trained is to require them to perform training tasks (assigned by officers or noncommissioned officers, NCO’s, In their chain of command) during off duty hours on their own time without compensation. This is not a stretch of anyone’s imagination, or exaggeration of the truth in any way. I have spent more than a decade training, and assigning training to soldiers under me, to be completed at home without pay, compensation, or any other benefit ( not even a retirement point) provided by the government.
This is the first problem (of many) I am presenting of the Army National Guard (ARNG) which needs addressed at a congressional level. Our nation already spends an enormous amount of money on the military, and I believe most of it is justified, and I don’t know if there needs to be more money allocated to the military to fix this, or if we need to reallocate money already in the budget, but this is a problem that needs the backing of the American public to get fixed. I tried pushing this matter through the chain of command in my units (more than one unit and state) of assignment while I was serving as a soldier and leader before I retired. The issue was never given a chance to be looked at for a resolution, I was ALWAYS told there is no funding for extra training. My commander would always tell me to accomplish all I could during the training period, called IDT (inactive duty training, this is what normal monthly National Guard training is called), and assign the rest of the training to be completed between drills. There is a very big list of yearly tasks every soldier in the ARNG must complete to be considered Trained, qualified, and/or deployable. On top of this list of tasks, soldiers must qualify with their weapons, be trained on their equipment, tested on their physical fitness, briefed on many yearly mandatory subjects (like sexual harassment, EO, and many others), and still find time to do hands on training with their fellow soldiers to practice real world training scenarios. It is impossible to complete this training during the small amount of time allotted during IDT and annual training for National Guard soldiers.
To be a leader in the ARNG takes a great deal of dedication and selfless service, because every soldier under you will look at you for guidance, so you must be prepared to set the example. Wether it is physical fitness, Army knowledge, equipment training, soldier skills, military bearing, and many other skill sets, ARNG soldiers need a good leader to look to for the answers, and a good example of what to aspire to. So as a ARNG leader you must spend a lot of your civilian time working on Army things to ensure you are upholding the Army standards.
To be continued…
This is a good first step to help people understand what it means to be a citizen soldier. I will continue this discussion later, I am out of time for now, and with the Christmas coming soon I have lots to do. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and may love and joy fill your houses and your hearts through this holiday season.
Voice of the People (VoP) 