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I suppose I could have seen that coming. Cook Snuffy is not important, though. He is CRUCIAL. I mean, an Army travels on its stomach. Shouldn't he derive pride from that? Maybe I can't get into his brain, but an empty medal is meaningless. That's why handing out black berets to everyone didn't raise morale - they knew it was meaningless if everyone has one. If everyone has an ASR, how'll that keep morale up?
I agree completely with all you're saying about positive reinforcement, pats on the back (yes we all need them, and the way people treat a guy on crutches yeah does make me feel "special"), keeping morale high, I just don't understand how little ribbons and gleaming things and berets so on so forth can do that unless they mean something. Like, a WWII paratrooper asking a SP4 how many jumps he has. When the young man tells him 37, he replies, I have four with a huge grin on his face, cuz he knows that his jumps mean more than all the training jumps in the world. (Saw this one at Bragg on Division Review Weekend, you could see the air deflating from the kid). And then on the other side of that scale, real deal medals getting handed out like candy make almost all medals meaningless. On Magician's website, he talks about Jim Pickering with the 90 in Grenada, only getting an ARCOM then Battalion staff all recieving Bronze Stars.
If so few can draw pride from within, why not instill it in them? Point in case: Rangers know their lineage, live the Creed and say it every morning, you can see pride radiating from them. Paratroopers too. The elite in general. That's because they are brought up to feel that way and they feel important. Why not raise cooks the same? When you arrive at the 91st Food Service Battalion or wherever, get a letter from the BC "welcome to the finest mess hall in the U.S. Army," know the unit's history, what mess halls it's served in around the world, I dunno, give them somethign meaningful to be proud of.
Why should all the great commanders be Combat Arms, Airborne, HSLD stuff? Why can't a QM corps officer be proud that the best Army in the world depends on him to do his job and his unit as well, then treat them as such? To quote from Patton:
Patton: "Where's you're helmet?"
Cook: (laughing) I'm a cook, sir.
Patton: You're a soldier.
Every solider deserves a tough and fair CO, not just SF & Infantry. When you mess up, a reaming is heading your way, when you serve the entire 1st Army in 10 minutes time with a broken stove and adapt, improvise and overcome you deserve a commendation. A 19 year old truck driver and a 35 year old 18 series guy are both Soldiers. Mind you, we both know who is more qualified, but they are both there to close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver.
Perhaps I am a wet-behind-the-ears optimist, and the best way of summing this up is what you said: the Green Army is different from SF.
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