Thread by @LethalityJane

That unit armorer post reminds me of the time my 4ID unit promised my soldier he could deploy late so he could see his kid get born. Then someone decided he couldn't. So the company decided to make him the armorer so be would have to go to the course and would come out on trail.

Here's the twist: they made me counsel him that if he failed the armorers course for any reason, for example, taking his wife to the hospital because she was in labor and not getting the required class hours, they would give him an article 15.

I was so fucking mad that they punted that counseling down to me. I wrote it up, and we spent the session with me telling him how it was unenforceable and verbally advising him how to fight it if it actually happened.

He lucked out and he finished the course. His wife gave birth something like three days before he flew out. So he got to see his first kid born at least. They made him wait until after his nine months in Kuwait were over before he could take paternity leave.

God knows sitting in Camp Buehring doing make-work was more important than getting to be with your newborn baby and recovering wife, I guess.

When it was time to go back my PL and PSG were making some noise about how his leave might need to be further delayed depending on what the company had going on, they might need the armorer there.

One of the very few times in my career I stared at someone and told them if they did that, I was walking the soldier down to IG and signing a witness statement for them. I wish I had done it more often in my career. But I'm glad I did it then.

He finally got his paternity leave. He's never going to get those first weeks with his wife and baby back. I'm mad about that to this day. If he'd been going to Syria or something, I get that. It sucks but I get it. But Camp Buehring, Kuwait? Be fucking for real.

Colonel who made the call that no one was getting paternity leave on that deployment is a general now.

Oh it was the same unit that promised us pre-deployment block leave so a lot of people didn't take holiday block leave because they were saving for pre-deployment and then at the formation right before holiday block leave they told us they canceled the pre-deployment block leave.

So it was too late for anyone to request time off for Christmas instead, and they had no chance to take leave before the deployment at all 🙃

That was the Army unit that completely and totally burned me out, physically and mentally. I muddled on a little longer before deciding my body hurt enough and my brain was tired enough that I would just take a medical retirement. But all of those issues stemmed from that unit.

The PA who thought I was faking a knee injury that ultimately turned out to be a torn ACL requiring surgery was also from that unit 🙃

Same brigade got in trouble because they modified a whole ton of people's profiles to make them deployable and then when all those people got to Kuwait and clearly needed physical therapy, surgery, mobility aids to get around, the hospital unit freaked the fuck out.

It wasn't just me - that unit just completely burned out so many people. Our retention rate was so low, our brigade retention NCOs were having weekly meetings to get yelled at by Division.

I'll acknowledge that most Army units aren't that bad. But when you get stuck in one, it just seems like there's no way out sometimes. It was so fucking grim, and the Army lost a lot of decent soldiers to ETS from that unit because everyone was just done.