[lksteve]

Colonel Moroney, i agree with you in many ways, but i offer these arguments...a lieutenant doesn't necessarily have the background to lead men to train, organize equip and advise a light infantry battalion in a hostile environment based on what he has learned in IOBC and as an infantry platoon leader( i was an infantry platoon leader and i graduated from and trained lieutenants in IOBC)...i'm not sure a 23 year old staff sergeant has the background to train, organize, equip and advise a light infantry company based on three or four years in the 3rd Hooah and the Q course, without the benefit of a rigorous selection process that weeds out the immature and the unready...the truth be know, while i graduated from SFQC as a 23 year old sergeant (who made staff sergeant shortly after returning to active duty), i never attended SFOC...at the time, my observation was that they had a shorter Phase II, less time on the Uwharrie treck and they went to Robin Sage, whereas we went to the FTX at the end of Phase III...but alas, i digress...

when i was an NCO, we never had both officers on a detachment...we either had an experienced captain or a novice lieutenant...there seemed to be no middle ground...it seemed, that due to the shortage of officers, the standards at IMA were not the same for an enlisted man as they were for officers...our graduation rate was pretty low, and while the high school to SF route was open for the Idemas of the world, even the prior service graduation rate wasn't that high...the team sergeant i had as an XO explained to me that he was more concerned with the NCOs that went through the course than he was the Os, as an officer rarely spent more than a year or so on a detachment before moving on, whereas an NCO could easily spend 15 years or more on teams...

it seems to me that the major impediment to the selection process that NCOs endured long before it was applied to officers, was the fact that failure to be selected for SF would be viewed negatively for an officer, not unlike an officer signing an LOM in Ranger School or the like...and it seems that in that regard, a different yardstick was used to measure the performance of the younger officers of the 70s and early 80s...please correct me if i am wrong...

as far as the branch and the career issues, i always sort of felt screwed by the branch...i remember an assignments officer telling me i shouldn't have gone SF as an LT, it screwed up the timing on the rest of my career...i remember telling him that i was an SF officer before there was a branch to protect me and someone needed to keep the career field viable while waiting for all the latter day heroes that showed up after April of 1987...

but then, tact never was my forte...