"I Didn't Sign Up for the Navy to be in the Army!" The Other Military Draft

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank04082008.html


"I Didn't Sign Up for the Navy to be in the Army!"
The Other Military Draft
By JOSHUA FRANK

"There sure as hell is a draft going on," the passenger sitting next to me said begrudgingly as the flight attendant handed him a ginger ale on our way in to Los Angeles last week. "I signed up to be in the Navy, not the damn Army."

It will be his third deployment to Iraq in four years but his first to be served on shore. Thousands of Navy and Air Force personnel are now serving non-traditional roles in Iraq -- posts they never signed up for. Steven, who asked I not use his last name in print, said he's to receive six weeks of weapons training at a California Army base before being flown over to Iraq for a year-long deployment.

"We've all heard of the stop-loss policy, there's even a new movie about it, but few know about what else is happening in our armed forces right now," Steven explained. "The back door draft is real, for sure, but here we are being shipped off to Iraq to basically serve in the infantry. It's ridiculous."

The Department of Defense reports that sailors and Air Force members are carrying out many different missions in Iraq, from traditional duties in the air and sea to construction jobs, medical operations, civil affairs, custom inspection, security and detention operations. Most are promised non-combative roles in Iraq, but many have found themselves to be in harms way once they arrive.

In 2007 the Navy sent roughly 2,200 "individual augmentees", as the service calls them, to handle combat-related duties with Marine and Army units stationed in Iraq. As of early April, 2008, 92 Navy and 46 Air Force personnel had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with those numbers sure to rise as the U.S. troop surge continues into its second year.

[fasttense]

1. I use to be in Navy Recruiting.

I still have friends who are recruiting for the Navy. They tell me this is a disgusting little secret, they never tell recruits. It has been going on for quite some time now.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. I am sure you know then

that there are a lot of little secrets recruiters never tell the recruits.

[peacebird]

2. wasn't this part of Rumsfeld's infamous "Blue to Green" initiative? Where he thought

thousands of Navy and Air Force personel would volunteer to switch over to Army and Marine slots? As I recall it wasn't exactly a huge success ( :eyes: ) so he changed it from voluntary to this perverted intra-service draft....

[madokie]

3. I spent 15 months at Vietnam's Cam Rahn Bay Naval Air Facility

a little over 37 months in the Navy and never seen a ship. At first I joined the Navy to stay out of Vietnam but volunteered for 'Nam anyway after a little over a years stint at the Navy's S.E.R.E. school in Warner Springs California. Hell, I didn't want to waste all that high dollar training I had;-)
War, what a waste of life where nothing is ever settled anyway. imo

[JoDog]

11. My best friend

drew a low draft number in 1970 and decided to volunteer with the Navy to avoid being drafted into the infantry. The skills test indicated he was a born corpsman. He wound up the medic for a Marine unit in the jungle. Despite his best efforts, he ended up being shot at any way. He barely ever saw a ship either.

[madokie]

17. at the s.e.r.e. camp where I was stationed it was about a fifth Navy Corpsman Vets

because of the 250 or so students every couple weeks that came through that phase of the course and my relationship with them was why I volunteered for 'Nam in the first place. The base commander there, made me think on it for a week before he would let me actually do it and then I suspect he pulled some strings to get me the duty in 'Nam that he did.
I say thanks Lt. your efforts to keep me safe worked as I did make it back home :-)

[cynatnite]

4. They did this with my brother-in-law during the first gulf war...

He was in the Navy as a dental assistant and wound up working as a medic during the first gulf war.

[Diane R]

18. My brother enlisted in the Navy as Dental Assistant. He was promptly made a Marine Medic & died.

My brother was sent to Vietnam as a Marine Medic and immediately sent to Hill 881, Khe Sanh. He was killed when they were ambushed the first week.

The military has been doing this for a long time; using Navy enlisted personnel as Marine medics.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. THat is because the Marine Corp does NOT have medics of its own

for the last 270 years they have relied on the US Navy, which they are part off, to provide Corpsmen, called Docs by the troops... and protected by the Marines.

[NNN0LHI]

5. I can remember posts here advising young people to join the Navy because it was safer

I bet some people fell for that crap too.

Don

[stahbrett]

6. Well, it probably is statistically safer

With >4,000 total military deaths, and <100 of them Navy, and <50 of them Air Force.

[NNN0LHI]

12. Would that statistic be enough for you to advise some confused kid to enlist though?

Thats the point I was trying to make.

Dead is dead.

Don

[stahbrett]

13. No, but if the kid was going to enlist anyway, it's a good stat to pay attention to

I would never advise a kid to enlist... that should be his or her own decision, but if that decision is made, sure... I'd mention that statistically speaking he/she has a better chance of not being killed by joining the Air Force or Navy.

[Diane R]

19. Read my post above about my brother joining the Navy and being killed as a Marine Medic in Vietnam.

[Marrah_G]

7. I talked about this alot in the last 18 months

MY brother led a battalion of 450 navy personnel to serve on the ground in Iraq last year. His Bat replaced another Navy Bat and when he came home he was replaced by yet another Navy bat.

These are Naval Reserve Units (my brother had been retired for ten years).

So at the very least there are 450 Navy personnel on the ground in Iraq doing customs work that was formerly the duty of the Army at any given time.

I believe they are also using Naval medical personnel.

[Beausoleil]

8. It's normal for Navy hospital corpsmen

to be attached to Marine units and serve in combat. Was so in 'Nam. For other Navy rates, not so much.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Once again, a little history the Marine Corp does not have Medics

they are Navy Corpsmen, after all the Marines are PART of the Navy... and they hate to be reminded of that

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. My good friend's nephew is in the Navy and just got back from combat duty in Iraq

He said he thought he would be working on a ship, since he is in the NAVY. He laughed and said they even flew him over there. He hasn't been on a ship yet and he has been in the Navy over a year now.

[Smith_3]

14. I am astonished about how naive some people are.

If you join the military, they are going to put you where the hell ever they like. That is what you sign. If you don't like that don't sign.

[Orsino]

16. There's also esprit de corps to consider, however.

Recruits are indoctrinated from day 0 to believe (or at least to chant loudly on command) that they are better than members of the other services, simply by virtue of their having signed up for the Navy (/Army/Marines/Air Farce/yes, even the Coast Guard). Take a trained seaman, send him to .50-cal school and station him on a pile of sand, and you mess with this fundamental element of the military mind. Is it a mature way to think? Probably not, but it's one of the few joys we allow our troops--and it is useful at times.

In the Army, we had that going on even internally. I picked my MOS, and took pride in the lengthy training, the high demand for my skills, and in the big reenlistment bonuses. We in SATCOM were better than other soldiers, and soldiers were still better than sailors, etc. Had someone tried to turn me into an infantryman, I would have felt betrayed, too--but that's nothing compared to the way that real infantry would have felt about me, the pretender.

I know that the other uniformed services have the same dynamic going on, to varying degrees. A sailor who is very good at his job, suddenly turned into a mediocre soldier? After all the recruiters telling him that in the Navy, at least you die clean? I have an idea as to how he might feel, and that's before we consider the in-your-face combat this fella might experience. Meanwhile, the skills he'd hoped to build a career on atrophy, and he will fall behind.

Morale in the services must already be at historic lows. This won't help.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. It is at historic lows

and morale is a mes

[napi21]

15. My son was in the Navy fir 16 years...got out about 4 years ago.

He's working for a civilian contractor in Sicily now. Two years ago the Navy (or so they said) offered him $185,000 to do a 12 month stint in Iraq. He scared the sh*t out of me when he said "he thought about it" but ultimately told them he spend enough time in "the sandbox" during Gulf War1 and din't want to go back. He also told me quite a few of his buddies were also offered jobs lke that, and they acepted!