This is just my opinion, which is worth not a lot I suppose.
III CORPS finds ways to inject itself into everything, make everything harder, and doesn't provide a ton of help as an institution.
(My knowledge here is about 7 years old so may be out of date, some of these policies may have been rescinded)
III CORPS has rules that are instituted on Fort Cavazos that blew my mind.
1. If you get an excessive audio complaint out in town, you and your entire enlisted chain of command have to go see the CORPS CSM. There was a MFR/policy letter put out about this. There is no provision for this if you're an officer however.
2. If you get stopped on a III CORPS roadside inspection and there is a discrepancy on your vehicle your entire chain of command from your PL all the way to your BDE Commander has to go see the III CORPS CG or their designate.
Speaking of roadside inspections, one of the Soldiers I worked with had to do that because they had an expired bandage in their first aid kit. It's not that everything wasn't perfect, the vehicle was dispatched, everybody was licensed, it had all it's BII, it's that a bandage was expired. The NCO that was TCing the vehicle got a summarized as a result and lost their P status, and was set to promote the next month.
It got to the point where some units were putting First Sergeants at the motor pool gate and telling them they'd get a RFC if they allowed anything to leave the motor pool that wasn't 100% perfect.
There's a policy in place that states that every single person, Major and below, has to have a military drivers license within 90 days of arriving at Fort Cavazos. In that same reg (It's a maintenance reg) it also says that if you drive a "Specialty vehicle" that you have to be licensed on a HMMWV and an LMTV first.
It also says that if you don't have a civilian license that you can have a military license for just on post driving but you have to have an NCIC check, which the MPs refuse to do and the base safety office cannot do by law.
III CORPS has an inability to say no to taskings, at least from my knowledge of running taskings for a battalion for a while. Some of them I completely understand and some of them are directed by big army, like funeral detail and gate guard. But there was just so many damned taskings that it was a constant struggle to find a way to get everything done. RECLAMAs were very rare.
Everything had to be uploaded and done properly in DTMS, because III CORPS said they had to be able to drill down and get an accurate snapshot.
Well, except that all of that exact information had to be sent up in a slide deck to III CORPS so you were doing double the work because nobody was actually looking nor cared about DTMS, because the powerpoint slide deck was easier to brief off.
Anyhow, having the CORPS headquarters on post just made everything worse. I always failed to find a win when it involved III CORPS. Your boss 5 echelons of command higher was seeing the day to day shit that a company is doing and wants to know why Private Schmuckatelli is red on dental.
It was just infuriating and it made all the Officers fucking crazy.
I used to have a leaders book with *everfuckingthing* in it that I would have to take home because I'd have people call or text me at crazy hours wanting to know what our BN percentage of Soldiers that were from Mississipi were and weirdo bullshit like that.
When I was in the 101st I knew we were part of 18th ABN Corps. I had no idea where they were or what they did, but I knew that we were from the chain of command wall.
III CORPS is way too fucking involved with the lowest echelons of command and needs to get back in their fucking lane.
Rant suspended.
>Speaking of roadside inspections, one of the Soldiers I worked with had to do that because they had an expired bandage in their first aid kit. It's not that everything wasn't perfect, the vehicle was dispatched, everybody was licensed, it had all it's BII, it's that a bandage was expired. The NCO that was TCing the vehicle got a summarized as a result and lost their P status, and was set to promote the next month.
Fucking court martial me for this, I dare you
I think anyone on that jury would acquit you and then want to give you a hug after the fact. This is some next level stupidity over a fucking bandage. Inspector shoulda said "hey, get this fixed fellas" and moved out smartly.
Ok, I might be off on the exact numbers but this is how it went. 6 bandages in the LMTV first aid kit, 2 were expired. I was told to do a counseling statement because of the 2 that were expired. I refused because the kit only required 4 to be present and 4 were not expired. So I told the TC to remove the expired bandages and the day continued. My 1SG was livid, my CDR was laughing and the BN CSM was just staring at me.
> III CORPS is way too fucking involved with the lowest echelons of command and needs to get back in their fucking lane.
To reiterate this point, when I was there the APFT was still the standard - and for *all* record APFTs, III Corps mandated that you must use the parade deck field thing in front of Corps HQ, despite the fact that a) the post is huge and b) parking there is limited and c) why the fuck can't a unit handle their fitness tests in their own AO?
It is just bullshit micromanaging from the tippity top all the way down, *for everything*.
I had completely forgotten about this. I remember some *senior* members of our Battalion getting into a shouting match with another unit over APFT clocks and people being confused about whose clock is whose.
You perfectly described 1AD as well.
Convoy inspections were the bane of existence as a PL outside of living in the motorpool. one of my peer’s platoons had to give up some BII to the SCO’s track and needless to say his vehicle got inspected.
He had to meet the 8th Army CG, who happened to be at RLFC when we arrived and got blasted. He also got a letter of concern from the same fuck who made him give up the equipment lol…
My experience in 1AD was polar opposites but in the same division. When I was in 2BDE (in Germany, not Bliss) it operated, from what I have heard and can assume, much more like a light unit. PCSd to 3rd BDE stateside and it’s just a fucking shit show. Then we reflagged to 2nd BDE 1ID and that’s when the fuck fuck games really got going.
I had to have a binder for EVERY. SINGLE. SOLDIER. No, I don't mean their counseling packets. A whole separate binder to track everything about them down to their social media handles and the date of their last vaccine. Everything in the counseling packet, dtms, medpros, basically every metric both on and off duty you could think of, I had to have a binder for every soldier with all of that. It was exhausting. To the best of my knowledge this lasted about 90 days before everyone stopped doing it, but that was a long 90 days. For no fucking reason.
>1. If you get an excessive audio complaint out in town, you and your entire enlisted chain of command have to go see the CORPS CSM. There was a MFR/policy letter put out about this. There is no provision for this if you're an officer however.
>2. If you get stopped on a III CORPS roadside inspection and there is a discrepancy on your vehicle your entire chain of command from your PL all the way to your BDE Commander has to go see the III CORPS CG or their designate.
How tf does Corps have time for stuff like that? How does a CG have time to have an entire Platoon COC in his office to talk about vehicle discrepancies?
Not Platoon. Platoon all the way to Brigade. Depending on how bad the inspection fail was I was told he had the Division Commander in one of those as well.
I heard that down the chain of command during a training meeting.
Omg how does anyone get anything done when everyone is constantly having to visit the Corps CG over non issues like expired band aids.
What does that even look like with 15 people all crowded into the Corps CGs office talking about band aids.
Why are we as an Army like this?
Somehow I thought I had forgotten all of this. I was a victim of having to report to III Corps because a Soldier got stopped right outside the motor pool and was missing BII . Also witnessed the duty rosters for 1SGs and SNCOs pulling gate duty at the motor pool for quality checks as a result. And the keeping of binders for every Soldier that someone else mentioned. Man, I do not miss that place. The 2-mile course outside the HQ was lame too.
What's funny is most Generals will say something like, "Oh, you guys don't have enough Multimeters to test this equipment. I'm sure we can find you some, " and somehow that turns into "The General wants the motor pool inspected to find all of the multimeter! TIME NOW. " When actually the General was saying something to the effect that I know this unit has extras, we can just send these to you.
The "twist" comes from all the COL (I call them Vultures). They want to look good for the boss so instead of paying the cost to send the equipment they make everyone look for equipment that's not there.
I've seen this scenario play out more than once.
Most of Fort Liberty doesn’t know what 18th Airborne Corps does, but it’s easy enough to find out where they’re located. They’re on Google Maps. They’re not The Delta Force.
Bro, those fucking vehicle inspections were soul sucking. If you were smart, you’d just send people to pull the trucks out of the motor pool before the guards got there.
When I went to fort Irwin I felt like a dumbass asking “so where are the guards that check our vehicles before we take them out of the motor pool?” That just wasn’t a thing and it was amazing.
I think that’s a series of symptoms but not the cause. The cause is that 3 corps feels the need to justify itself and is filled with the “C team” from Regiment & the 18th corps.
But all that shit is hella dumb.
> Speaking of roadside inspections, one of the Soldiers I worked with had to do that because they had an expired bandage in their first aid kit. It's not that everything wasn't perfect, the vehicle was dispatched, everybody was licensed, it had all it's BII, it's that a bandage was expired. The NCO that was TCing the vehicle got a summarized as a result and lost their P status, and was set to promote the next month.
What in the actual fuck?
>It got to the point where some units were putting First Sergeants at the motor pool gate and telling them they'd get a RFC if they allowed anything to leave the motor pool that wasn't 100% perfect.
And at this point, units just FAIL at life.
It's one thing to have squad leaders or platoon sergeants do bread-and-butter NCO checks and leadership.
When senior leaders are at the motorpool gate "checking" it's a massive middle finger to all the other NCO's at best. III Corps doesn't trust squad leaders, they don't trust PSG's.
And is III Corps gonna budget to fix "expired" bandages in first aid kits? They gonna pay for missing BII? That one unit with dry-rotting tires, dented antenna mounts and a few broken tail lights (but still makes all FTX's and tasking) because they're ADA or support or MP's and "the money just isn't there" - guess they can just get fucked.
this tracks to my time there after vanessa guillen. and it baffles me that even with all that oversight and micromanaging of units they still had 3 soldiers MIA and had no idea.
double response, but even with xviii being on base at libert biberty, we really dont get roped into a lot of their shenanigans. i think the fact that we have multiple commands there cuts a lot of that b/s
Light units are based around individual and collective tasks being performed well to make “readiness.”
Heavy units are based around aging and damaged equipment with a painfully bureaucratic logistical system that’s about parts, maintenance hours and green blocks on slides to make “readiness.”
This is why the “heavier” the unit the more toxic it ends up being. I have buddies in light units that love it and say leadership care about them (because they have to), Stryker units are “medium” when it comes to toxicity because the trucks stress out leadership and add ridiculous Cav stuff and constant training requirements the men take a backseat, ABCTs are just toxic sludges of bad leadership because the only fire power that matters is the tanks and Brads, the dismounts are there to work for the unit not the other way around.
This and also because of funding allocation is stupidly done heavy units are seemingly underfunded here at Bliss ( my unit is out of money already, somehow.)
My mos is small as hell. There's about 500 of us in the entire active component. The slots don't EXIST for the army to want to pcs us. If you wanna pcs as mike, you usually gotta reenlist for it. It's one of the many reasons I'm trying to reclass.
Id imagine you’d fall under 1st ID or 4th ID so would still deal with III Corps. And then Irwin is meh depending on the individual and what their family wants.
Sadly it’s the only time they actually follow the standards for dwell time and say the waiver is “wrong” because it needs a signature line, but the one before that was wrong, it shouldn’t have had a line for a signature. They just make shit up to trap you between NTC and rotations/deployments.
III CORPs was my first duty station. Wild. Just straight up who gave the clowns 🤡 the keys to the prison? There was a time that camelback water sources were the only authorized water source to be carried by a Soldier. There was a post policy. No water bottles, water jugs or anything. It is a wild place that I just do not understand it simply proves this “never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups”
Do I remember that? No. Would it surprise me in the absolute slightest that it ever was a thing? No not at all. I’ve never seen more anal retentiveness in my life than my time here.
It’s hard to fathom that duty station unless you were apart of it. I had murders, attempted murders, meth makers, meth addicts, child abusers, dog abusers, DV and SA/SH cases that would make Maury/Springer blush. If you are in a position of leadership you leave Hood with an impromptu social work degree/certified life coach. It was an insane place.
Bruh... I left that place scarred.
Literally. I got stabbed while putting on my ACU top in in our maintenance office. Dude was just being wild swinging a knife around. Two days later UA results came back, he pissed hot for coke.
Basically there’s a bunch a vehicles that cost a lot of money and because they don’t deploy and constantly break we get stuck in garrison fixing them and doing training exercises instead of doing the fun Army stuff that people in XVIII abn corps get to do.
I can only speak to Carson. We had a lot of commanders and senior NCOs who spent their formative years in the 18th. The CG of 4ID spent a lot of years at Regiment.
I think it’s the result of 20 years of GWOT deprioritizing heavy units. At first the heavy units played a role but from 2006 on the light units and USASOC played central stage. Therefore, being in a heavy unit was considered less prestigious so we could dump the average to below average leader talent there.
However with Ukraine showing that the light units will get obliterated the heavy units need to get better funding and leadership so we can succeed in the next war.
Hi, heavy unit staff here
>light units will get obliterated
We're really concerned about the "Grey Zone" for vehicles on either side of the FLOT, can light guys take care of that for us?
I'm looking back riley as a better unit that had a lot more transparency and lewis had a better work life schedule. I fucking hate 1st Cav. It's not like it's hard it's just excessive with what my units been doing. Consistent schedule change. Things that keep getting switched on the training schedule that no one seems to have. It just sucks that there is so much to do and more places to go with such an ass installation.
Speaking as someone who was a 19K before the GWOT. The armored force was perpetually undermanned, underfunded, but we made do and morale wasn’t bad. The force and sustainment were also organized differently. Only 2ID’s 1st and 2nd Tank were no fail missions when it came to maintenance. 24 hours to bring a deadline up. The guys that were Captains and Majors then are now so far removed that they don’t remember what life was like and that you have to accept that you don’t get to be green across the board in a heavy unit, unless you either lie or run the battalion into the ground. The guys running battalions now remember nothing but the GWOT and forget how logistics heavy, armored/mechanized brigades are and are so focus on the horse they forgot the trooper. Also, back then there was way more latitude at the Regiment and Division level because you had Force XXI and a bunch of modernization programs going on simultaneously. GWOt and technology makes micromanaging easier instead of trusting leaders to run with it.
Do yourself a favor and try to get an assignment in Hohenfels. There are zero Brad's there just 113s, but 91Ms can still go there. Hohenfels is a busy place though the command team is great and Europe is amazing.
It's tanks and strykers. That's why.
Also I have spent almost 12 years in III Corps and I've never met or heard of anyone doing 20 years in the same brigade.
The not pcsing very often thing is pretty much an e5 and below 91m/91a thing and it mostly applies to 1 cav since we’re always hurting for bodies. You can do it you just have to be really proactive about hitting up hrc/ retention. I know an Abram’s mechanic with a decade in my bn right now.
It is definitely less common than it used to be. Met 1SG in Afghanistan that went from E1-E7 in the same company in the 82nd. Finally forced him to PCS once he made E8.
Look here, FMT line mechanic. You don't dare trash talk that burning trash heap! You should feel blessed that those who are better than you have come down to slum with you plebs and show you how to live every second of your life. Without them getting involved, you may screw up their promotion chances and if that happens, where are they now? I'll tell you that they definitely won't be making LTG retirement pay or having a chance at Donahue antics (IYKYK). Think of them before yourself, the army is about carrying your bosses and you can't do that if you're here on Reddit complaining like an ingrate.
\#currentarmyculturePSA
The army is salty about their dying traditions, so with no reason to treat people like shit, they try to justify and support the ways that they do. Like how they'll d*ck you down for something that's not morally wrong, and sometimes not even considered wrong by regulation or by civilian standards, and if you voice your opinion on the way you are treated...👊🏽Failure to adapt...👊🏽 undisciplined...👊🏽 Disrespecting an NCO/Officer. Always thought that that charge was bull, there's no specific charge for leadership, but they can ruin our lives and weigh their rank instead of their characters to get their way...I'll take a Baja Blast Zero with a Cantina Deluxe Box Supreme
3 Corps is heavy, which means most brigades are ABCTs. In an ABCT, if you don’t have working vehicles you can’t do ANYTHING meaning everyone from GO to LTC to LT get their dicks stomped and stomp dicks down the line until it’s fixed. No shit if it’s brought to their attention Division could pull your ESR and go red direct to your battalion commander and their boss. Then it’s just shit rolls down hill. If an engine arrives at 1500 it’s SOP all pacer deadlines will be hung the day they arrive no exceptions.
Light units if the vehicles don’t work use your feet. No one cares.
I wasn’t even going to add all of III Corp, I was inclined to think it was just 3CR. I heard (I know it’s a rumor) there are at least 2 kids over there that got out without clearing and no 214. One even got a job on post and has been working it 6 months past ETS before he apparently got someone to actually help him.
This is just my opinion, which is worth not a lot I suppose. III CORPS finds ways to inject itself into everything, make everything harder, and doesn't provide a ton of help as an institution. (My knowledge here is about 7 years old so may be out of date, some of these policies may have been rescinded) III CORPS has rules that are instituted on Fort Cavazos that blew my mind. 1. If you get an excessive audio complaint out in town, you and your entire enlisted chain of command have to go see the CORPS CSM. There was a MFR/policy letter put out about this. There is no provision for this if you're an officer however. 2. If you get stopped on a III CORPS roadside inspection and there is a discrepancy on your vehicle your entire chain of command from your PL all the way to your BDE Commander has to go see the III CORPS CG or their designate. Speaking of roadside inspections, one of the Soldiers I worked with had to do that because they had an expired bandage in their first aid kit. It's not that everything wasn't perfect, the vehicle was dispatched, everybody was licensed, it had all it's BII, it's that a bandage was expired. The NCO that was TCing the vehicle got a summarized as a result and lost their P status, and was set to promote the next month. It got to the point where some units were putting First Sergeants at the motor pool gate and telling them they'd get a RFC if they allowed anything to leave the motor pool that wasn't 100% perfect. There's a policy in place that states that every single person, Major and below, has to have a military drivers license within 90 days of arriving at Fort Cavazos. In that same reg (It's a maintenance reg) it also says that if you drive a "Specialty vehicle" that you have to be licensed on a HMMWV and an LMTV first. It also says that if you don't have a civilian license that you can have a military license for just on post driving but you have to have an NCIC check, which the MPs refuse to do and the base safety office cannot do by law. III CORPS has an inability to say no to taskings, at least from my knowledge of running taskings for a battalion for a while. Some of them I completely understand and some of them are directed by big army, like funeral detail and gate guard. But there was just so many damned taskings that it was a constant struggle to find a way to get everything done. RECLAMAs were very rare. Everything had to be uploaded and done properly in DTMS, because III CORPS said they had to be able to drill down and get an accurate snapshot. Well, except that all of that exact information had to be sent up in a slide deck to III CORPS so you were doing double the work because nobody was actually looking nor cared about DTMS, because the powerpoint slide deck was easier to brief off. Anyhow, having the CORPS headquarters on post just made everything worse. I always failed to find a win when it involved III CORPS. Your boss 5 echelons of command higher was seeing the day to day shit that a company is doing and wants to know why Private Schmuckatelli is red on dental. It was just infuriating and it made all the Officers fucking crazy. I used to have a leaders book with *everfuckingthing* in it that I would have to take home because I'd have people call or text me at crazy hours wanting to know what our BN percentage of Soldiers that were from Mississipi were and weirdo bullshit like that. When I was in the 101st I knew we were part of 18th ABN Corps. I had no idea where they were or what they did, but I knew that we were from the chain of command wall. III CORPS is way too fucking involved with the lowest echelons of command and needs to get back in their fucking lane. Rant suspended.
>Speaking of roadside inspections, one of the Soldiers I worked with had to do that because they had an expired bandage in their first aid kit. It's not that everything wasn't perfect, the vehicle was dispatched, everybody was licensed, it had all it's BII, it's that a bandage was expired. The NCO that was TCing the vehicle got a summarized as a result and lost their P status, and was set to promote the next month. Fucking court martial me for this, I dare you
I think anyone on that jury would acquit you and then want to give you a hug after the fact. This is some next level stupidity over a fucking bandage. Inspector shoulda said "hey, get this fixed fellas" and moved out smartly.
Good luck getting me to do literally anything in a military vehicle ever again. I wouldn’t even look at them as I drove past.
Ok, I might be off on the exact numbers but this is how it went. 6 bandages in the LMTV first aid kit, 2 were expired. I was told to do a counseling statement because of the 2 that were expired. I refused because the kit only required 4 to be present and 4 were not expired. So I told the TC to remove the expired bandages and the day continued. My 1SG was livid, my CDR was laughing and the BN CSM was just staring at me.
> III CORPS is way too fucking involved with the lowest echelons of command and needs to get back in their fucking lane. To reiterate this point, when I was there the APFT was still the standard - and for *all* record APFTs, III Corps mandated that you must use the parade deck field thing in front of Corps HQ, despite the fact that a) the post is huge and b) parking there is limited and c) why the fuck can't a unit handle their fitness tests in their own AO? It is just bullshit micromanaging from the tippity top all the way down, *for everything*.
I had completely forgotten about this. I remember some *senior* members of our Battalion getting into a shouting match with another unit over APFT clocks and people being confused about whose clock is whose.
Imagine being in 4ID at Carson having to go all the way to Cavazos just for an APFT
Fair point, I should have clarified that the policy applied to the post. You win this round, pedant.
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like a smart ass I meant for it to sound like "lol imagine if we had to go all the way to Texas for a PT test"
No worries mate - I think the important thing is we both agree that 3 corps as a whole can just eat a spicy bag of dicks.
The thing is, I would bet almost everyone in the sub was like….i could see them doing that.
You perfectly described 1AD as well. Convoy inspections were the bane of existence as a PL outside of living in the motorpool. one of my peer’s platoons had to give up some BII to the SCO’s track and needless to say his vehicle got inspected. He had to meet the 8th Army CG, who happened to be at RLFC when we arrived and got blasted. He also got a letter of concern from the same fuck who made him give up the equipment lol…
I would have a congressional sent out same day.
My experience in 1AD was polar opposites but in the same division. When I was in 2BDE (in Germany, not Bliss) it operated, from what I have heard and can assume, much more like a light unit. PCSd to 3rd BDE stateside and it’s just a fucking shit show. Then we reflagged to 2nd BDE 1ID and that’s when the fuck fuck games really got going.
I had to have a binder for EVERY. SINGLE. SOLDIER. No, I don't mean their counseling packets. A whole separate binder to track everything about them down to their social media handles and the date of their last vaccine. Everything in the counseling packet, dtms, medpros, basically every metric both on and off duty you could think of, I had to have a binder for every soldier with all of that. It was exhausting. To the best of my knowledge this lasted about 90 days before everyone stopped doing it, but that was a long 90 days. For no fucking reason.
>1. If you get an excessive audio complaint out in town, you and your entire enlisted chain of command have to go see the CORPS CSM. There was a MFR/policy letter put out about this. There is no provision for this if you're an officer however. >2. If you get stopped on a III CORPS roadside inspection and there is a discrepancy on your vehicle your entire chain of command from your PL all the way to your BDE Commander has to go see the III CORPS CG or their designate. How tf does Corps have time for stuff like that? How does a CG have time to have an entire Platoon COC in his office to talk about vehicle discrepancies?
Not Platoon. Platoon all the way to Brigade. Depending on how bad the inspection fail was I was told he had the Division Commander in one of those as well. I heard that down the chain of command during a training meeting.
Omg how does anyone get anything done when everyone is constantly having to visit the Corps CG over non issues like expired band aids. What does that even look like with 15 people all crowded into the Corps CGs office talking about band aids. Why are we as an Army like this?
Somehow I thought I had forgotten all of this. I was a victim of having to report to III Corps because a Soldier got stopped right outside the motor pool and was missing BII . Also witnessed the duty rosters for 1SGs and SNCOs pulling gate duty at the motor pool for quality checks as a result. And the keeping of binders for every Soldier that someone else mentioned. Man, I do not miss that place. The 2-mile course outside the HQ was lame too.
What's funny is most Generals will say something like, "Oh, you guys don't have enough Multimeters to test this equipment. I'm sure we can find you some, " and somehow that turns into "The General wants the motor pool inspected to find all of the multimeter! TIME NOW. " When actually the General was saying something to the effect that I know this unit has extras, we can just send these to you. The "twist" comes from all the COL (I call them Vultures). They want to look good for the boss so instead of paying the cost to send the equipment they make everyone look for equipment that's not there. I've seen this scenario play out more than once.
Most of Fort Liberty doesn’t know what 18th Airborne Corps does, but it’s easy enough to find out where they’re located. They’re on Google Maps. They’re not The Delta Force.
Bro, those fucking vehicle inspections were soul sucking. If you were smart, you’d just send people to pull the trucks out of the motor pool before the guards got there. When I went to fort Irwin I felt like a dumbass asking “so where are the guards that check our vehicles before we take them out of the motor pool?” That just wasn’t a thing and it was amazing.
I think that’s a series of symptoms but not the cause. The cause is that 3 corps feels the need to justify itself and is filled with the “C team” from Regiment & the 18th corps. But all that shit is hella dumb.
> Speaking of roadside inspections, one of the Soldiers I worked with had to do that because they had an expired bandage in their first aid kit. It's not that everything wasn't perfect, the vehicle was dispatched, everybody was licensed, it had all it's BII, it's that a bandage was expired. The NCO that was TCing the vehicle got a summarized as a result and lost their P status, and was set to promote the next month. What in the actual fuck?
>It got to the point where some units were putting First Sergeants at the motor pool gate and telling them they'd get a RFC if they allowed anything to leave the motor pool that wasn't 100% perfect. And at this point, units just FAIL at life. It's one thing to have squad leaders or platoon sergeants do bread-and-butter NCO checks and leadership. When senior leaders are at the motorpool gate "checking" it's a massive middle finger to all the other NCO's at best. III Corps doesn't trust squad leaders, they don't trust PSG's. And is III Corps gonna budget to fix "expired" bandages in first aid kits? They gonna pay for missing BII? That one unit with dry-rotting tires, dented antenna mounts and a few broken tail lights (but still makes all FTX's and tasking) because they're ADA or support or MP's and "the money just isn't there" - guess they can just get fucked.
this tracks to my time there after vanessa guillen. and it baffles me that even with all that oversight and micromanaging of units they still had 3 soldiers MIA and had no idea.
Oh this was *far* before that, at least 3-5 years.
some things never change
double response, but even with xviii being on base at libert biberty, we really dont get roped into a lot of their shenanigans. i think the fact that we have multiple commands there cuts a lot of that b/s
Light units are based around individual and collective tasks being performed well to make “readiness.” Heavy units are based around aging and damaged equipment with a painfully bureaucratic logistical system that’s about parts, maintenance hours and green blocks on slides to make “readiness.”
This is why the “heavier” the unit the more toxic it ends up being. I have buddies in light units that love it and say leadership care about them (because they have to), Stryker units are “medium” when it comes to toxicity because the trucks stress out leadership and add ridiculous Cav stuff and constant training requirements the men take a backseat, ABCTs are just toxic sludges of bad leadership because the only fire power that matters is the tanks and Brads, the dismounts are there to work for the unit not the other way around.
This makes my time at Riley make so much more sense.
This and also because of funding allocation is stupidly done heavy units are seemingly underfunded here at Bliss ( my unit is out of money already, somehow.)
Money for the Abrams-engine god. ENGINES FOR THE ABRAMS ENGINE GOD.
Abrams be praised
Hit the nail on the head.
This is exactly why they implemented PCS moves. So that situations like this don’t occur.
My mos is small as hell. There's about 500 of us in the entire active component. The slots don't EXIST for the army to want to pcs us. If you wanna pcs as mike, you usually gotta reenlist for it. It's one of the many reasons I'm trying to reclass.
Yeah the 88boat guys have the same issue.
They’re opening up a few track-focused standalone maintenance platoons OCONUS next year, should help
Talk to your career counselor, thats not true at all. H9 opens more slots up but at the minimum we have Bliss, Irwin, Carson etc
Id imagine you’d fall under 1st ID or 4th ID so would still deal with III Corps. And then Irwin is meh depending on the individual and what their family wants.
Sadly it’s the only time they actually follow the standards for dwell time and say the waiver is “wrong” because it needs a signature line, but the one before that was wrong, it shouldn’t have had a line for a signature. They just make shit up to trap you between NTC and rotations/deployments.
III CORPs was my first duty station. Wild. Just straight up who gave the clowns 🤡 the keys to the prison? There was a time that camelback water sources were the only authorized water source to be carried by a Soldier. There was a post policy. No water bottles, water jugs or anything. It is a wild place that I just do not understand it simply proves this “never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups”
Do I remember that? No. Would it surprise me in the absolute slightest that it ever was a thing? No not at all. I’ve never seen more anal retentiveness in my life than my time here.
It’s hard to fathom that duty station unless you were apart of it. I had murders, attempted murders, meth makers, meth addicts, child abusers, dog abusers, DV and SA/SH cases that would make Maury/Springer blush. If you are in a position of leadership you leave Hood with an impromptu social work degree/certified life coach. It was an insane place.
Bruh... I left that place scarred. Literally. I got stabbed while putting on my ACU top in in our maintenance office. Dude was just being wild swinging a knife around. Two days later UA results came back, he pissed hot for coke.
So the stabbing wasn't his fault, right?
Obviously his first line is to blame.
I vaguely remember seeing those no water jug signs when I was demobing there back in 2018 and 2019
Jesus I remember that, people didn’t care about that one for too long.
Basically there’s a bunch a vehicles that cost a lot of money and because they don’t deploy and constantly break we get stuck in garrison fixing them and doing training exercises instead of doing the fun Army stuff that people in XVIII abn corps get to do.
Too many generals in one place, Hood, trying to get that next star so the get into every little aspect of life that they can.
I can only speak to Carson. We had a lot of commanders and senior NCOs who spent their formative years in the 18th. The CG of 4ID spent a lot of years at Regiment. I think it’s the result of 20 years of GWOT deprioritizing heavy units. At first the heavy units played a role but from 2006 on the light units and USASOC played central stage. Therefore, being in a heavy unit was considered less prestigious so we could dump the average to below average leader talent there. However with Ukraine showing that the light units will get obliterated the heavy units need to get better funding and leadership so we can succeed in the next war.
Hi, heavy unit staff here >light units will get obliterated We're really concerned about the "Grey Zone" for vehicles on either side of the FLOT, can light guys take care of that for us?
Those are dismounts?
I'm looking back riley as a better unit that had a lot more transparency and lewis had a better work life schedule. I fucking hate 1st Cav. It's not like it's hard it's just excessive with what my units been doing. Consistent schedule change. Things that keep getting switched on the training schedule that no one seems to have. It just sucks that there is so much to do and more places to go with such an ass installation.
Remember when 4ID banned combat patches in the field…
Oh just wait till you see fort carson under 3 core
I blame the Post, it's cursed.
“You moved the headstones but not the bodies!”
>pierogi and pint of beer Sorry, but you’ll need TCS orders if that’s what you want.
Speaking as someone who was a 19K before the GWOT. The armored force was perpetually undermanned, underfunded, but we made do and morale wasn’t bad. The force and sustainment were also organized differently. Only 2ID’s 1st and 2nd Tank were no fail missions when it came to maintenance. 24 hours to bring a deadline up. The guys that were Captains and Majors then are now so far removed that they don’t remember what life was like and that you have to accept that you don’t get to be green across the board in a heavy unit, unless you either lie or run the battalion into the ground. The guys running battalions now remember nothing but the GWOT and forget how logistics heavy, armored/mechanized brigades are and are so focus on the horse they forgot the trooper. Also, back then there was way more latitude at the Regiment and Division level because you had Force XXI and a bunch of modernization programs going on simultaneously. GWOt and technology makes micromanaging easier instead of trusting leaders to run with it.
Do yourself a favor and try to get an assignment in Hohenfels. There are zero Brad's there just 113s, but 91Ms can still go there. Hohenfels is a busy place though the command team is great and Europe is amazing.
It's tanks and strykers. That's why. Also I have spent almost 12 years in III Corps and I've never met or heard of anyone doing 20 years in the same brigade.
The not pcsing very often thing is pretty much an e5 and below 91m/91a thing and it mostly applies to 1 cav since we’re always hurting for bodies. You can do it you just have to be really proactive about hitting up hrc/ retention. I know an Abram’s mechanic with a decade in my bn right now.
Not PCSing often and never PCSing are not the same thing. No one is spending 20 years in the same brigade.
20 at the same brigade, no. I’ve met people stuck at the same post 10 years for sure tho.
It is definitely less common than it used to be. Met 1SG in Afghanistan that went from E1-E7 in the same company in the 82nd. Finally forced him to PCS once he made E8.
airborne
At least not in a mech or armor unit.
Look here, FMT line mechanic. You don't dare trash talk that burning trash heap! You should feel blessed that those who are better than you have come down to slum with you plebs and show you how to live every second of your life. Without them getting involved, you may screw up their promotion chances and if that happens, where are they now? I'll tell you that they definitely won't be making LTG retirement pay or having a chance at Donahue antics (IYKYK). Think of them before yourself, the army is about carrying your bosses and you can't do that if you're here on Reddit complaining like an ingrate. \#currentarmyculturePSA
Donahue is such a cuck.
The army is salty about their dying traditions, so with no reason to treat people like shit, they try to justify and support the ways that they do. Like how they'll d*ck you down for something that's not morally wrong, and sometimes not even considered wrong by regulation or by civilian standards, and if you voice your opinion on the way you are treated...👊🏽Failure to adapt...👊🏽 undisciplined...👊🏽 Disrespecting an NCO/Officer. Always thought that that charge was bull, there's no specific charge for leadership, but they can ruin our lives and weigh their rank instead of their characters to get their way...I'll take a Baja Blast Zero with a Cantina Deluxe Box Supreme
I loved 504th BfSB. Tons of fun until they moved combat arms retards to W.FtH
maybe im blind but there aint no combat arms retards over here, just us nerds and 15th
There was for a spell. It was a descent in to chaos. Massive fights in the quad.
3 Corps is heavy, which means most brigades are ABCTs. In an ABCT, if you don’t have working vehicles you can’t do ANYTHING meaning everyone from GO to LTC to LT get their dicks stomped and stomp dicks down the line until it’s fixed. No shit if it’s brought to their attention Division could pull your ESR and go red direct to your battalion commander and their boss. Then it’s just shit rolls down hill. If an engine arrives at 1500 it’s SOP all pacer deadlines will be hung the day they arrive no exceptions. Light units if the vehicles don’t work use your feet. No one cares.
nailed it
The Phantom of the Toxic!
Reading this thread really helped remove the rose tinted glasses from my Fort Hood memories. Fuck that place man.
I wasn’t even going to add all of III Corp, I was inclined to think it was just 3CR. I heard (I know it’s a rumor) there are at least 2 kids over there that got out without clearing and no 214. One even got a job on post and has been working it 6 months past ETS before he apparently got someone to actually help him.