corrente

This is ugly. This is beyond FUBAR. Read past the lead and see how screwed up this situation is getting before these guys even get on the boat to leave for the Big Sandy:

(via The State (Columbia SC) via WaPo)

THOMAS E. RICKS

The Washington Post

FORT DIX, N.J. — The 635 soldiers of a battalion of the South Carolina National Guard scheduled to depart today for a year or more in Iraq have spent their off-duty hours under a disciplinary lockdown in their barracks for the last two weeks.

The trouble began Labor Day weekend, when 13 members of the 1st Battalion of the 178th Field Artillery Regiment went AWOL, mainly to see their families again before shipping out. Then there was an ugly confrontation between members of the battalion’s Alpha and Charlie batteries — the term artillery units use instead of “companies” — that threatened to turn into a brawl involving three dozen soldiers, and required the base police to intervene...[Note: booze was involved. Big whoop.]

This particular Guard unit was put on an accelerated training schedule — giving the soldiers about 36 hours of leave over the past two months — because the Army needs to get fresh troops to Iraq and there are not enough active-duty or “regular” troops to go around.

Preparation has been especially intense because the Army is short-handed on military police units, so these artillerymen are being quickly re-trained to provide desperately needed security for convoys. And in order to fully man the unit, scores of soldiers were pulled in from different Guard outfits, some voluntarily, some on orders.

As members of the unit — drawn mainly from South Carolina’s coastal Lowcountry — looked toward their tour, some said they were angry, or reluctant to go, or both. Many more are bone-tired. Overall, some of them fear, the unit lacks strong cohesion — the glue that holds units together in combat....

The decisions include the Bush administration’s reluctance to sharply increase the size of the U.S. Army. Instead, the Pentagon is relying on the National Guard and Reserves, which provide 40 percent of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Also, the top brass has concluded that more military police are needed as security deteriorates in Iraq and the violent insurgency flares in ways that were not predicted by Pentagon planners.

These soldiers will be based in northern Kuwait and will escort supply convoys into Iraq. That’s some of the toughest duty on this mission, with every trip through the hot desert bringing the possibility of being hit by roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire.

Sgt. Kelvin Richardson, 38, a machinist from Summerville, S.C., volunteered for this mission but says he now wishes he had not and has misgivings about the unit’s readiness.

Richardson is a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which he served with the 1st Cavalry Division, an active-duty “regular” unit. This battalion “doesn’t come close” to that division, he said. “Active-duty, they take care of the soldiers.”

Pfc. Kevin Archbald, 20, a construction worker from Fort Mill, S.C., who was transferred from another South Carolina Guard unit, also worries about his cobbled-together outfit’s cohesion.

“My last unit, we had a lot of people who knew each other. We were pretty close.” He said he does not feel that in the 178th. Here, he said, “I think there’s just a lot of frustration.”

UPDATE: Hit "publish" too fast without highlighting what I think is the most important line in this story. The rules for creating effective mass armies have been around since the ancient Spartans and two of the biggies are gone with the wind here:

(1) You want to instill not just training in a particular skill, but pride that that is the most important damn job in the whole friggin' service. Artillery is particularly intense, so much that they have their own saint even (Barbara). This is compensation, in part, for being the original "cannon fodder." Now that's been taken away from them. Does wonders for morale.

(2) Even more important is unit cohesion. Draw your own inference how well THAT'S working here. You are, after all, supposed to fight the Other Guy, not your mates. As best I can tell Pfc Archbald is considerably more hip to this than whoever threw this mismash together.