Wasting the Last 13 Years in the National Guard & Army Reserve.

I graduated Ranger School 13 years ago today. At the time, I naively thought it was the beginning of an exciting adventure in the US Army. In hindsight, I have to confess that pretty much everything since then in the National Guard & Army Reserve has been a dull & tedious waste of time which would have been better spent doing almost anything else.

The privilege of leading Soldiers is still the absolute best job in the world and if I could spend every day leading Soldiers & making things happen, I’d be a very happy man. Tragically in reality, the Army is pretty much life imitating art in a real-life adaption of Joseph Heller’s literary masterpiece Catch-22.

I joined the Army to take on challenges, learn things about life & myself through experiences I couldn’t get anywhere else, and most importantly lead Soldiers & accomplish things. Since that morning at Victory Pond, I’ve merely been what COL Kurtz described as “an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill”.

Though unlike CPT Willard, whose bill collecting involved an epic journey up the Nung River, the bill I was sent to collect was the banality of metrics more akin to Heller’s General P.P. Peckem’s obsession with meaningless bomb patterns, than anything relevant to warfighting.

I’m still glad I joined the Army. I’m eternally grateful to Ranger School for teaching me that you can persevere through pretty much anything by putting one foot in front of the other and repeating as required, which prepared me for the tribulations of entrepreneurship. Armor OBC for teaching me how to plan & execute complex undertakings, which has been vital to running my own businesses. I fully believe that without those experiences, I would not have been able to do any of the things I’ve done as a business owner.

I’m also indebted to the Army for giving me the opportunity to work with so many amazing Soldiers from so many different backgrounds and experiences. In a time when society has an unhealthy obsession with race and racism, one of the redeeming features of the Army is that it teaches you to hate your coworkers based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

What I wish I would have known then; was how little control you have over your destiny in the Army. You can work hard, take care of your Soldiers, be a PT stud, follow the rules, and do all the right things. But ultimately your destiny is controlled by both a soul crushing bureaucracy, and people above you on the totem pole who very rarely are there because of their actual leadership skills, a sincere desire to lead Soldiers or improve the organization, much less because they have a vision for what they want to accomplish as a leader.

Rather, most Army leaders are in their positions because it’s a steppingstone to higher positions and/or after kissing a bunch of ass to summit the greased pole, they want their ass kissed for a change. They got to where they were by being pliant yes-persons who did what they’re told, never tried anything different, and never took risks, and they expect their subordinates to be pliant yes-persons, who do what they’re told, never try anything different, and never take risks.

I don’t at all regret the time I spent planning and training Soldiers on actual Army stuff. I don’t regret fighting the no-talent assclowns at LHI when they’d try to red-flag my Soldiers. I don’t regret making waves by using the IG and going up the food-chain with the Open-Door policy to try to get problems resolved and protect Soldiers from getting screwed. I also found being Casualty Assistance Officer to be one of the few things I did that actually mattered in the Army.

But I certainly do regret the time I wasted on nihilistic conference calls listening to the mindless babbling of leaders who never had an original thought in their life. The countless unpaid hours I squandered as a Commander going into the unit during the week to work on bullshit metrics, could have been much better spent working on my businesses. The drill weekends spent sitting around in cubicles staring at my phone, instead of training or doing something useful, could have been better spent running for president of the local Furry club.

When people ask me if they should join the Army, I generally recommend that they do, as you can learn plenty of valuable lessons. Yet I also try to manage expectations. If you can deal with the bullshit, having your time perpetually wasted, and being treated like a child; it’s a very secure job with excellent benefits you won’t find elsewhere.

But if you actually want to accomplish things which are relevant or meaningful, find challenges to rise up to, and be rewarded for your work and effort; I’d recommend against sticking around the Army longer than the minimum time required. That’s especially true for the Reserve and Guard components, where you’ll waste your weekends doing dumb shit, as opposed to anything useful. You’re better off spending that time starting your own business, getting an advanced degree, finding a new hobby, or even just spending time with family.

To circle back to Catch-22, in the novel, General P.P. Peckem’s remarks that “A bomb pattern is a term I dreamed up just several weeks ago. It means nothing, but you’d be surprised at how rapidly it’s caught on. Why, I’ve got all sorts of people convinced I think it’s important for the bombs to explode close together and make a neat aerial photograph. There’s one colonel in Pianosa who’s hardly concerned any more with whether he hits the target or not.”

That Colonel is COL Cathcart, who ruthlessly chases the meaningless metric of producing tight bomb patterns that look great on arial photographs thinking it will get him promoted, with zero regard for if it is effective or if gets his subordinates killed. All that matters to him are the metrics themselves.

The antics of Heller’s Pianosa come to life on a daily basis in the Army Reserve, as leaders chase meaningless metrics that look very pretty on PowerPoint Slides and anything else they think will make their rater and senior rater happy. Concerns of if a unit can make SP, employ their weapons outside of a qualification range, program a radio, implement Troop Leading Procedures, or any of the other things that actually relate to warfighting; are disregarded in favor of meaningless trifles which can easily be quantified on PowerPoint slides.

The internet is replete with great ideas for how to improve the Army, and I could write a volume of my own ideas. But thinking you can fundamentally change massive institutions such as the Army, are the definition of a quixotic and there’s better windmills to joust. The best one can do is to be realistic about what you’re getting into, use whatever power and authority you do have to protect those you can, and limit your exposure to the toxicity of such an organization.