There's Dumb..and there's Army Dumb!

From the Soldier side: I know in most large civilian companies, there are dumb things that happen. Sometime’s it’s the really dumbass boss who thinks his/her  way of doing something is so great, but those who work for dumbass struggle each day doing something the way the boss wants it done….when if it was done the correct way, things would not only work better, but the company would profit.

When the dumbass boss is allowed to continue doing things the “wrong” way for years, they think it’s the right way…and as soon as they retire, get fired or quit, the next person corrects all the dumb things…hopefully.

Well, just think how big the US Army is (or was before the current cuts)… it was a giant business, or as we used to say: “The US ARMY, 230 something years of tradition unchanged by progress or intelligence.”

The other day somebody asked me about my deployment to Bosnia….wow, that seem like years ago, but it was really a good time…most of the time. What really kind of bothered me about the Bosnia and later the Iraq deployment was: Most of the training we had was absolutely totally useless off the wall stupid shit that some dumbass office pogue must have made up.

In about January of 2003, a bunch of us were told that we’d be going to Bosnia later that year. OK, cool. We were Army National Guard—which means we go in for training one weekend a month and two weeks of “summer camp”. Well, before we got put on active duty orders, we were called up several times at the last minute and told: “you have to come to mandatory training THIS weekend at Camp (fill in the blank.)”

OK, I never questioned my orders, even though in reality, they were required to give us more than one or two days notice. For my “real job”  I would tell the police chief: “Sorry boss, I got called in for my training this weekend, I have to go.” He never gave me any grief.

As far as training for either police work or the Army, I always looked forward to it and figured I’d learn something new and it would make me able to do my job better.  In many cases, the training was FUN!  (Thank you tax payers!)  In much training, it was rather boring, but important stuff. 

Then, we’d show up at the camp and they’d have a couple of retards who’d never deployed anywhere try to give us some training on our jobs--- which usually never made any sense and was put together so quick and bad, that it was a total waste of our time.

Then they’d do it again and again. We were called in for last minute training for a total of 60 friggen’ days before we even were put on active duty orders…and none of the training made any sense or was useful at all when we actually deployed. From what I recall, all of this last minute training was all done by people who had NEVER left the States and really had not even studied anything about Bosnia.  (with the exception of one contractor company who gave us about a week of training that was GREAT!) 

Then, when we got put on active duty, we went to wonderful Minnesota to be with the Red Bulls.  RED BULLS- Attack and stuff

As the Army always does, before a Soldier can be deployed, he or she must go through deployment training. I guess now days this training is good, but in 2003, it was not only useless, but if we actually did things the way they trained us, we’d have all died.

Typical blown up house in Bosnia

Now, I hope you understand that I’m not just making this up. Remember, by 2003, I had been a civilian police officer/detective/sergeant/ranger master/ etc for over 22 years. My attitude in any kind of training is I hope to learn something new every day…however, this training was a big case of “Army Dumb.”

Old Russian tank...

For example, they trained us to search people…OK, as a cop, I had literally searched people thousands of times…did it almost every day and many times took guns, knives, and other bad things off of bad people. So, when we went to class to learn how to search people, I listened…hoping that maybe I’d learn something new.

Blackhawk ride from Eagle Base

Nope. The way they were training us was not only dumb, but it made no friggen’ senses. We were placed at simulated “traffic check points” (which we had none of in Bosnia) and we were taught to search a person by patting them while our “cover soldier” stood near and watched and were supposed to do something if we found a weapon on the person. I’m not going to go into the boring details, but the way they were training us was so dumb, that I was actually laughing. 

Army Dumb Detector--- off the meter

When I searched the persons in training the way I did as a civilian cop, the “trainer” told me I was doing it all wrong.  I just looked at them and said: “I’ve been searching bad guys for over 20 years, the way you’re training is not only wrong, it’s retarded.  If you want to “fail” me, go ahead---but do you want to take my place and get deployed?” 

Most of those training us were “broken” national guard soldiers who were non-deployable--- of course they were never going to go anywhere.  The all passed me through the training…and when we were leaving Bosnia months later, I asked some of my comrades if they ever used any of the stupid, dumbass training we’d been given.  Nope.  Just a waste of time—The Army Way.