All service NCO Ranks

2009 is the year of the NCO for the United States Army.  I find that admirable.

Unfortunately they have a “WONK” writing about it as far as I can tell.  I have been trying to write this article because I do believe having 2009 being the year of the NCO is a great thing.

This is the problem with folks who have great ideas in the military but don’t understand how to broadcast that message without putting everyone to sleep.  Need a sleep aid?  Read official correspondence.  I promise you, you will be asleep within minutes.

It’s almost like they are trying to show how “SMART” they are or puff their chests out to show how much smarts they have.. Great, go get your MBA or get a political Science Degree, and go argue with the eggheads.

Most NCO’s the new E-4’s and above are the ones your trying to target with this valuable message.  I would say if you were to ask any of them what was passed in the “POWER POINT” presentation after being shown this publication would not be able to convey what your trying to convey to them.

Doing a proclamation like this is more then putting up stodgy words and phrases on a PowerPoint.  Get away from Powerpoints, I know you ARMY officers love it.. I think you need to go through a Powerpoint Anonymous program, or a 12 step program.

Who are your audience?  What is the Avg. age of those your trying to communicate with?

Don’t get me wrong, the NCO’s and below want to be communicated with, but you just turn them off when you use your “LEADERSHIP SPEAK” from your Covey Seminars etc.

You should explain things like your trying to explain to your neighbor or your significant other.  Leave the wonk speak with the upper echelon where you fit in.

I like to tell this story as it served me well as a SNCO, (Chief Petty Officer).

After I made Chief up here in Great Lakes, I took over the Medical Department at the Reserve Center, What used to be a fractured office (Air Vs. Surface) I pulled together into one cohesive team.  How did I do this? I listened and spoke with my Subordinates (Hate that word, my team) so I understood where they were at and they understood where I was at.

Mind you the meetings I went to used lots of big words and acronyms etc.. of the current flavor the of the week of leadership style that someone had “JUST DISCOVERED”, but I never spoke to my team this way.

By doing this we created I believe the best department in the command, enough to where if one of my folks made a mistake, I.e accidentally shooting themselves in the thumb with a atropine gun (Don’t ask) they came right to me because they trusted me.  That story is for a different day though..

The way I knew I was getting through though was one winter day.  It was snowing like crazy outside, and all the E-6 and below did snow removal duty around the center.   Chief Petty Officers, or some of them at least, thought they were above that, regardless of manning etc, thought they were better then the “TEAM”.

I was not that way and I had good leadership that instilled this in me from my days at VFA-204.  (ADC(AW) Burns) We were short on manpower so I went out and started shoveling with my juniors.  About 5 minutes in.. one of my Petty Officers mussed under their breath.. “Hey Chief, look at the window”.

I turned and every CPO from the building were at their respective windows staring at me and then you could see the conversation going, wild waving of arms, etc..

5 minutes later.. All the CPO’s even the Command Chief was out there shoveling with me.  I heard about it later from them, “How could you? ” etc..

How could I? Because I listened, I understood the job they did.

While I was senior in Rank, we communicated in a way my team understood, and I never had a doubt that we had each others back.

Isn’t that how you can show the year of the NCO?  If your going to have a year and recognize them, help them understand what you want.  Show them you have been there, don’t talk down to them, talk to them.

I salute all the NCO’s, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Air Force, as you truly are the backbone of all services.  We could not get our jobs done without your dedication and hard work.

I hope I communicated well to you.

Bravo Zulu, you deserve it.

D/C

USA, USN, USMC, USAF, USCG

FORT RILEY, Kan. — Sgt. Ryan Nyhus spent 14 months patrolling the deadly streets of Baghdad, where five members of his platoon were shot and one died. As bad as that was, he would rather go back there than take his chances in this brutal job market.

Sgt Ryun Nyhus USA

Nyhus re-enlisted last week, and in so doing joined the growing ranks of those choosing to stay in the U.S. military because of the bleak economy.

“In the Army, you’re always guaranteed a steady paycheck and a job,” said the 21-year-old Nyhus. “Deploying’s something that’s going to happen. That’s a fact of life in the Army — a fact of life in the infantry.”

In 2008, as the stock market cratered and the housing market collapsed, more young members of the Army, Air Force and Navy decided to re-up. Although several factors might explain the rise in re-enlistments, including a decline in violence in Iraq, Pentagon officials acknowledge that bad news for the economy is usually good news for the military.

In fact, the Pentagon just completed its strongest recruiting year in four years.

“We do benefit when things look less positive in civil society,” said David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. “What difficult economic times give us, I think, is an opening to make our case to people who we might not otherwise have.”

The retention rate of early-career soldiers in the Army has risen steadily over the past four years and now stands 20 percentage points higher than it was in fiscal 2004. As for the Navy and the Air Force, early- and mid-career sailors and airmen re-enlisted at higher rates in October than during the same period in 2007. The Marine Corps was not immediately able to provide comparative figures on re-enlistments.

Alex Stewart joined the Army two years ago, when the factory where he worked as a welder started laying off. He was sent to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division, which suffered 87 deaths last year, the highest total suffered by the 20,000-member unit since the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

When his hitch was up in earlier this year, the 32-year-old from Grand Rapids, Mich., didn’t hesitate to re-up for five more years.

“I want a stable life for my wife in a very shaky economy,” Stewart said. “There were no other options.”

Stewart’s new assignment will take him to Germany, where he will serve as a truck driver, although it is always possible he could be sent back into combat.

“I figure if I do another five or 10 years in the Army,” he said, “the economy will turn around and I can get a truck-driving job.”

Army Spc. Alicia Fauls, 20, of the Woodlands, Texas, had two years to go when she re-enlisted last week at Fort Riley, home of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, which has one brigade in Iraq, one headed home and another preparing to ship out. She has not been sent into the war zone yet but knows an assignment in Iraq or Afghanistan is probably in her future.

“I did have only two years left, but I’m not sure what I would do,” Fauls said. “It’s harder to find jobs. If I do wait to get out, the economy should be in better shape.”

When Nyhus’ tour in Iraq ended in April, he talked to his wife about getting out of the Army and working toward a college degree. But the father of a 2-year-old daughter opted for the job security, even though he is likely to be sent back to Iraq as a member of the 4th Infantry Division, which has shouldered a heavy burden of the fighting.

Marine Staff Sgt. Angela Mink, who was injured in a helicopter accident in Iraq in 2004 and now works in public affairs at the Corps’ New River Air Station, N.C., said the thought of taking a civilian job “without my fellow Marines just didn’t appeal to me.” Moreover, she had little hope of finding a private-sector job that pays as well as the Corps.

“Equivalent pay is nonexistent, once you factor in insurance premiums, housing costs,” said Mink, 37. “And we would definitely have had to relocate. I have a child with a disability, and what civilian employer is going to take that into consideration when they think of moving you somewhere?”

And so the married mother of five signed up recently for four more years.

Roughly 208,000 men and women left the military in 2007. Some were rank-and-file warriors, while others worked in specialized fields such as satellite communications or computer networking. About 30 percent of enlisted soldiers hold a bachelor’s degree.

The job market is still fairly good for veterans with technical skills, especially those coveted by defense contractors, said Carl Savino, a retired Army major who runs a company outside Washington, D.C., that offers employment services to new veterans.

Sgt. Michael Rodriguez, 29, of San Antonio, decided to get out after he landed a job with a defense contractor working on communications systems. “I feel pretty secure with them,” said Rodriguez, who will leave the military soon.

But even defense-contractor jobs could dry up as the economic crisis deepens, Savino said.

“Jobs are getting harder to come by for veterans,” Savino said. “The farther they deviate from the defense contractors, who are still in reasonably strong shape, the more challenging it is.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took a giant step Monday toward more tightly blending the active-duty military and reserve components into an “integrated total force,” calling for wide-ranging personnel policy changes, codifying the reserves’ homeland defense role and adequately funding oft-overlooked reserve equipment requirements.

In a Monday memo sent to every senior uniformed and civilian Pentagon leader and copied to three other cabinet secretaries, Gates directed the development of a new Total Force Integration Policy that recognizes the “cultural divide that exists” between the active and reserve components. “All vestiges of the cultural prejudice” that remain in law “should be removed” by Congress, he wrote.

Gates also called upon Congress to “mandate that the National Guard and Reserves have the lead role in and form the backbone of DoD operations in the homeland.”

Congress, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves it chartered and the Pentagon, Gates wrote in his 41-page memo, “all recognize that the National Guard and the Reserves are integral to the Total Force and have assumed a greater operational role in today’s force.”

The commission distributed the memo Monday evening in advance of the Pentagon’s planned Tuesday release.

Gates endorsed 82 of the 95 recommendations issued by the commission in its final report in January — some of the 82, he noted, have already been completed or are currently being implemented.

Twenty of the 82 recommendations will require the support of Congress; one asks the president to direct all federal agencies to issue guidance emphasizing the importance of reserve service and to prescribe sanctions for civilian supervisors who fail to comply with guidelines regarding treatment of reservists.

The directives and recommendations represent a near-sweeping endorsement of three years of work by the commission, which said that significant reforms were needed to support the reserve component’s relatively new operational status, including management of the reserves as part of an integrated force.

Gates agreed, saying the Pentagon needs to blend the promotion and management of active and reserve enlisted troops and, separately, officers, into integrated manpower systems. Promotions, Gates said, should be based on the achievement of competencies, not just years of service; the services should tailor “the timing of and opportunity for promotion” by career field, “depending on service requirements.” The moves would require legislation.

Two recommendations would be annual budget action items. Gates ordered that designated “lead offices” for the remaining recommendations submit their implementation plans to the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness within 25 days.

“The commission members and I are extremely pleased with today’s announcement,” said commission chairman Arnold Punaro in a statement that accompanied its release of the memo. Gates’ decisions, he said, “were not easy to reach and will not be easy to implement” … but are “changes that are essential if the Guard and Reserves are to remain fully capable of meeting current and future threats.”

Several of the commission’s recommendations have already been adopted, including the elevation of the National Guard to a joint activity of the Defense Department and elevating the National Guard Bureau’s chief to 4-star rank.

Gates also:

• Directed the formation of a senior study group to review the current duty status structure, including the commission’s recommendation to reduce the number of duty statuses from 29 to two: on active duty, and off;

• Directed the services to conduct a “baseline review” of reserve component equipment requirements, “some of which remain tied to Cold War force management and a strategic reserve”;

• Directed the Army and Marine Corps to restore their reserve components to the highest level of readiness “as soon as possible” but no later than 2015;

• Directed the bolstering of reserve component family support services programs, particularly for transition assistance during the mobilization and demobilization process;

• Said that senior leaders at service headquarters and large commands “must be held accountable for the readiness and performance” of reserve component forces “within their purview” and that the responsibilities “must be reflected in job descriptions and performance appraisals”;

• Asked Congress to amend the Goldwater-Nichols Act to require reserve officers to be designated as “joint qualified” and, at the end of a 10-year transition period, to make joint qualification “a criterion for promotion to flag and general officer rank”;

• Asked Congress to direct the Pentagon to simplify the Tricare claims and reimbursement process to eliminate current “disincentives that discourage providers from taking part” in the program;

• Asked Congress to create a single entity that would oversee the entire Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

Army News Service|by Heike Hasenauer

WASHINGTON – Beginning Nov. 1, the Army and its sister services will focus attention to one of the Defense Department’s highest priorities – caring for wounded ill, and injured warriors.

As directed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, November has been designated as “Warrior Care Month.” Each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces has events planned during the month to highlight warrior care.

Since reports nearly two years ago revealed Soldiers recovering from war wounds were living in a substandard facility at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the Army has transformed the way it structures and provides military health care to wounded and ill Soldiers, said Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, Assistant Surgeon General for Warrior Care and Transition.

“We have made great strides in garnering more support and more resources for our wounded, ill and injured Soldiers,” Cheek said. “Our key challenge is ensuring Soldiers and families are aware of the various programs and benefits we have to help them with the unique and personal issues each of them face.”

The general said the month is more than a way for the Army and other services to show how far they have come in taking care of their own — the activities and events during Warrior Care Month also make the programs the Army offers more visible to Soldiers who might need them.

“Warrior Care Month is a way to highlight these programs across the Army so our wounded warriors and their families know what’s being done on their behalf, and how to take advantage of them,” he said.

Cheek said Warrior Care Month is meant to provide a clear message to servicemembers and the public that caring for those who have sacrificed for America is one of the military’s highest priorities.

The Army has unique activities planned throughout Warrior Care Month, which begins with the Department of Defense kick-off event Nov. 5.

The Army’s 36 Warrior Transition Units, in cooperation with Military Treatment Facilities and installations across the Army will be conducting a variety of events and activities to help educate the force on wounded warrior resources, and to thank local communities and elected officials for their support.

Feeling woozy after your latest round of immunization shots? Then you’re probably a male airman.

Ten years of records showed that 2,612 service members passed out cold — and fell down — after a nurse slowly inserted a thin half-inch of steel into their biceps or buttocks.

Data from the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center shows that the rate of airmen who fell out was twice that of soldiers and sailors — Marines fall in between — and that twice as many men as women were among the fainthearted. The overall numbers also are rising; today’s service members are 2½ times more likely to faint from getting a shot than they were in 1998.

Possibly worse than the risk of ridicule is the risk of injury, the report states, “particularly when collapse leads to forceful contact between the face or skull … and a sharp or solid object nearby.” Researchers found 150 examples of fractures, brain injuries, open wounds, contusions, sprains and strains.

Fainting occurs when blood vessels dilate and blood pressure decreases among people who stand for too long, don’t like the sight of blood or fear pain, experts say.

If this is what is going to happen, it is time to get our folks out of that god forsaken crap hole ASAP.  I don’t want any of our folks there if they cannot fire back or carry a weapon. From the AP, Read Below:

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s government is grateful to U.S.-allied Sunni fighters but won’t allow them to keep their weapons indefinitely, the prime minister said Saturday, hinting at a more intense crackdown on the Sunni groups.

In recent weeks, the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has gone after Sunni fighters despite their alliances with the Americans. Some leaders have been arrested, while scores of others have been disarmed and banned from manning checkpoints except alongside security forces.

Al-Maliki’s government has mixed feelings about Sunni tribes that rose up against al-Qaida in Iraq, starting in 2007, and joined the Americans in the fight against the terror network.

The groups, known as Awakening Councils, Sons of Iraq and Popular Committees, have helped rout al-Qaida in some parts of Iraq. But Shiite leaders fear the Sunnis’ switch of allegiance is just a tactic, and that they could one day turn their weapons against the Shiite majority.

The U.S., which put many of the Sunni fighters on its payroll, has urged al-Maliki to incorporate them into his security forces, but the government has been slow to do so.

In a speech to Shiite tribal leaders in Baghdad on Saturday, al-Maliki mixed praise for the Sunni fighters with a warning. He said armed groups, alongside security forces, were tolerated for a limited period because their weapons were “aimed at the chests of the terrorists.”

“So they (the Sunni fighters) deserve our gratitude and the inclusion (into the security forces) because we adhere to a policy that there are no arms but the arms of the government,” he said.

In other developments Saturday, a suicide bomber struck a car bazaar in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing at least five people and wounding at least seven others, according to the U.S. military and Iraqi police.

Among those killed was a senior member of a U.S.-allied Sunni group from nearby Diyala province, said Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir, a senior police official in Kirkuk. The bomber also was from Diyala, which has been an insurgent stronghold and is the site of ongoing U.S.-Iraqi military operations, Qadir said.

In the capital, gunmen killed an adviser to Iraqi Culture Minister Mahir al-Hadithi in a roadside ambush. A bodyguard was wounded in the attack along a main thoroughfare in eastern Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

Two cars were involved in the killing of the adviser, Kamil Shiya, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. One vehicle blocked Shiya’s car and gunmen opened fire from the second vehicle.

Shiya’s death was confirmed by officials at nearby Kindi Hospital.

Something has to be done now. Leave a comment below what do you think?

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Da-Chief

“WARDRIVING”

For those of you who don’t understand the term, picture folks cruising your neighberhoods looking for open wireless network connections so they can leech off of your connection.

This can slow down your system, but worse if they get in, and you do banking on your system either on your home computer or even online, they can get your data and access your accounts.

This is SCARY Stuff.  All they have to do is install to your HD a “KEYLOGGER” which records all your keystrokes on your system and then reports the info to them.

Read the entire article “HERE”

Or the Wikipedia article “HERE”

We are going to be starting a computer / Electronics Geek section up here to help you out.  I will educate you on programs that can help you lock down your system even if your not the “TECH GEEK” like Da-Chief is.

A article will be in this months newsletter as well as on our site.

First assingment though, read the article.

D/C

Myth:  We are a site only for Navy Corpsman.

Fact:   We are a site for “ALL” Enlisted Doc’s from all U.S. Services.

Myth: We don’t like Medic’s from other Nations, I.e Brit’s, Aussies, Frenchies, etc..

FACT:  We do indeed want Medic’s from all Nations to join our site, we are even thinking of starting a forum for Medic’s of all Nations.

We serve more and more togethor, heck we are even moving down to your neck of the woods in San Antonio.  You had better be able to show us Navy Swabbies a good time!  Don’t worry we can put the Air Force Weenies in the closet and lock it.. (I Kiiiid.. I kiiiid, The Air Force has the $$ they can buy the drinks!)
Look like in real life all of us are falling under “1″ Umbrella soon,  Help us make Corpsman.com a place called home for you as well.

I am looking for folks who are in both the Army as well a as the Air Force and Coast Guard who know your systems well enough to join our team and help us help our fellow Soldiers, Airmen, and Coast Gaurdsmen and Guardswomen.

We have also served with other NATO and UN forces.  Our medic’s have cared for Aussies, Brit’s, etc.. And they have taken care of our mates as well.

A Doc is a DOC.

Please Join our free Scuttlebutt forums, then intro yourself in the quarterdeck.

If you want more info, please email 8404 @ 8404@corpsman.com, or myself @ admin1@corpsman.com.

As Uncle Sam used to say..
WE WANT YOU!

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