Category: U.S. Army

Here comes another badge for U.S. Army soldiers to train for:

Soldiers outside the infantry, combat medic and Special Forces fields will soon have the opportunity to earn a badge acknowledging their experience at critical skills, the Army announced Friday on the service’s 244th birthday.

The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command recent approved the long-anticipated Expert Soldier’s Badge, which will be awarded to top performing soldiers who pass a test demonstrating their prowess in physical fitness, marksmanship, land navigation and warfighting, the command said in a statement. The badge will be the equivalent of the Expert Infantryman Badge and the Expert Field Medal Badge, and it is expected to be introduced in early fiscal year 2020, according tothe command.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Congratulations to Command Sergeant Major Grinston:

Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston, who has been in the service for more than 30 years, has been selected to be the 16th sergeant major of the Army, the service announced Tuesday.
Grinston is the senior enlisted leader for U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., and he will be sworn in to his new role at the Pentagon on Aug. 16, according to the Army. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel Dailey, who has been in his position since 2015, is retiring.
“I look forward to working with Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston,” Army Secretary Mark Esper said in a prepared statement. “The Army is in the midst of a renaissance, and he is a great choice to carry on our readiness, modernization and reform efforts.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This must have been quite a bad work environment to win a settlement from the Army:

An African-American civilian hospital employee “reached a significant settlement agreement” with the Army in late April after a lawsuit filed last year alleging that she was subjected to a racist and sexist command climate while working in South Korea.
Shawlawn Beckford, who served on active duty for 11 years before returning in 2006 as a civilian, had accused the Army of supporting a hostile work environment at Brian Allgood Army Community Hospital at Yongsan, where she was an administrator from 2009 to 2015.
“As a civilian employee it is my duty to represent and uphold the Army’s mission, vision, and leadership philosophy — in or out of uniform,” Beckford said in a May 1 statement from the office of her attorney, Kellogg Hansen in Washington, D.C. “But I am more than a position. I am a person with feelings and emotions, and I was mistreated in a system that failed to protect me.”
Reached for comment by Army Times, Beckford requested to keep the dollar amount of the settlement private.

Army Times

This is something I have seen before, people thinking it is okay to use racial slurs if they are of the race the slur is intended for:

“On a weekly basis during that time period, [the command sergeant major] would visit Ms. Beckford’s office and make belligerent, gendered comments toward her,” according to the lawsuit. “For example, he told her, ‘You’re a single parent. You’re a slut.’ ”
He also made comments about her race, the complaint said, calling her “just a house [N-word],” “dumb [N-word],” “our token Black person” and “ghetto.” (…….)

The 15-6 investigation found that though he used racial slurs in the office, it wasn’t in a discriminatory manner, because he himself is black. Still, he was relieved of his position and barred from leading a command again, according to the complaint, but stayed working within the office and continued to harass Beckford.

You can read more about the poor work environment at the link, but the hospital at Yongsan Garrison seems to have had some highly unprofessional people working there.

A command sergeant major tries to enforce a regulation and now she has to deal with this mess:

A Muslim soldier based in Fort Carson intends to sue the U.S. Army over allegations of discrimination and harassment that began shortly after she started wearing a hijab.

Spc. Cesilia Valdovinos, who has been in the military for seven years and has served in Afghanistan, converted to Islam in 2016. Since she started wearing her hijab, a head cover, at work, she has been subjected to name-calling, increased personal inspections and has been demoted, she and her attorney, Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation said. (……..)

After she returned, a command sergeant major of the 704th Transportation Battalion asked her to take her hijab off in a public place to show that her hair was in a bun underneath the scarf, per Army regulations.

Valdovinos, a culinary specialist, said after she removed the scarf, her hair fell out of the bun, making it appear that it wasn’t following code.
But Valdovinos said she was reprimanded for violating Army regulations for women’s hair even though she was in compliance.
Fort Carson officials declined to discuss whether Valdovinos was punished over her hair, saying it would violate Valdovinos’s right to privacy. But Zinn’s statement said the sergeant major acted appropriately by enforcing regulations for how women should wear the hijab.

Denver Post

You can read more at the link, but is anyone surprised that this hijab-gate controversy is happening after she was facing punishment for an inappropriate relationship which she was eventually found guilty of and demoted?

The Pinks and Greens are officially coming to a clothing sales near you some time soon:

Formerly known as the “pinks and greens,” the World War II-era officers uniform could go Army-wide as soon as 2020, according to a release that was posted Sunday to the Army’s website but was not shared through any of its social media channels.

Here is a really cool story to read about this Veteran’s Day:

“After getting my masters I worked for the U.S Army at the department of state. I worked with an amazing diverse crowd from the United Nations,” said Kadhem. “Joining the Army always interested me. I wanted to serve the United States and wanted to belong to an organization that would make a difference, and for me that was the U.S. Army.”

While working at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, Kadhem received her visa and moved to Washington, D.C.

In April of 2015, with the support of her Family and her father’s encouragement to join the Army, Kadhem enlisted in the U.S. Army as a unit supply specialist.

“My whole life I have never felt equal to men and in the Army I was able to liberate my body and mind by the equality they demonstrated,” she said. “I was 28 when I went through basic and advanced training. It was very physically challenging for me but I wanted it, so I pushed myself and it has changed my life in so many great ways.”  [Army.mil]

You can read the rest at the link.

Any gamers out there in the Army that want to help recruit?  Here is your opportunity:

The Army is putting together a team of video gamers from within its ranks to try to reach young Americans in the digital worlds where they spend much of their time.

More than 15 years after launching “America’s Army,” a first-person shooter game aimed at enlisting real world soldiers, the Army is calling for active duty troops and reservists to compete in video gaming tournaments, or esports, in one of its latest recruiting efforts.

The move follows the Army’s failure this year, for the first time in more than a decade, to meet the fiscal year target for bringing in new soldiers as it seeks to expand its ranks to more than 500,000 in the next four years.

The Army is also creating a “functional fitness” team to compete in CrossFit athletic events and is reportedly looking to spruce up recruiting efforts with more bonuses, more recruiters, better furniture and a new slogan to replace “Army Strong.”

The service plans to hold tryouts for a variety of electronic games, said Staff Sgt. Ryan Meaux, an Army recruiter, in a Facebook video on Wednesday.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

I hope everyone has their profiles ready because the Army Combat Fitness Test is coming to an installation near you:

The Army spent six years developing the ACFT to better align fitness standards to the physical skills soldiers need in combat, compared to the four-decade old APFT. The new, 50-minute test requires a soldier to perform three repetitions of a deadlift, throw a medicine ball backward over his or her head, perform as many hand-release pushups as possible in two minutes, complete a sprint-drag-carry course, perform as many leg tucks while hanging from a pullup bar as possible in two minutes, and complete a two-mile run in less than 21 minutes. Each of the exercises, Army officials said, correlates directly with common activities that soldiers perform on the battlefield.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Here is an update on the story of a US Army nurse set on fire by a civilian co-worker at the hospital at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  Her supervisors ignored her pleas for months before the attack to do something about the guy.  Now she is launching a lawsuit against the Army:

For the nurse who survived the attack, the fight is not even close to over.

The Feres doctrine prevents service members and their families from suing the Defense Department in the event of injury or death, but for 1st Lt. Katie Blanchard, that is beside the point. In September, she filed a personal injury claim against the Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she was working at Munson Army Health Center at the time of the September 2016 assault.

“Is it okay for us to have gross negligence and zero accountability in the military? Because if you look at my case, that’s what it is,” Blanchard told Army Times in a Wednesday phone interview. “Zero accountability for the way they treated me and the things that they missed that will forever affect my life.”

I really don’t have a firm opinion yet on the new Army Combat Fitness Test, but I doubt being able to do deadlifts would have done anything to help Task Force Smith during the Korean War:

While the Army’s new gender- and age-neutral combat fitness test is hard, soldiers should have time to train for it before it becomes mandatory on Oct. 1, 2020, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Monday.

“If you can’t get in shape in 24 months, then maybe you should hit the road,” Milley said at the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. “Maybe you should consider an alternative to this.”

During the 50-minute test, soldiers must complete a strength deadlift; throw a medicine ball over their head; do a set of pushups, during which they lift their hands off the ground after each pushup; complete a 250-meter “sprint, drag, carry” event; and finally run 2 miles. The Army is refining the standards for each event, which are based on whether a soldier’s military occupational specialty involves a “moderate,” “significant,” or “heavy” amount of physical exertion.

Task & Purpose asked Milley on Monday if the Army could end up losing older soldiers, who are unable to perform as well as younger ones on the combat fitness test.

“We don’t want to lose thousands of soldiers,” Milley said. “This fitness test is hard and no one should be under any illusions about it. But where we really don’t want to lose soldiers is on the battlefield. We don’t want young men and women killed in action because they weren’t fit.”

Many of the first soldiers sent to the Korean peninsula in 1950 were not physically prepared to fight a war in the hilly terrain, leading “countless numbers” of them to be killed as a result, Milley said.  [Task and Purpose]

You can read more at the link, but there was many factors that led to what happened in the early months of the Korean War and not being able to do leg tucks was not one of them.  For example being a able to throw a medicine ball at T-34 tanks would not have done much good when their bazookas and 105mm artillery could not even stop them.

Anyway here is my favorite part from the interview with General Milley:

“And there’s nothing like it. Ground combat is unbelievable. Go look at those kids, who are walking up and down the hills of Afghanistan. My dad at the beaches of Iwo Jima went 19 consecutive days without eating in some of the most brutal combat in military history. Combat is not for the faint of heart. It’s not for the weak-kneed.”

While the combat fitness test represents “a bit of a culture shock” for the Army that is sure to draw plenty of complaints, Milley said he expects the vast majority of soldiers to rise to the challenge.

“We’ve got to get this Army hard,” Milley said. “We’ve got to get it hard fast.”

Is that going to be the new Army recruiting slogan, ” Get Army Hard”?  😉