Why nobody wants to join the Army this year

I don't blame them. I'm in the later stages of my career and honestly two things are keeping me in. One I'm a single guy so I can stomach much of the military stressors a bit easier than those with families. Wasn't always the case, I had a family before, long story but I'm single now. If I were still with my family I'd have been gone years ago. Two, I really am holding on for a change. I remember vividly when General Mattis became SecDef and at the stroke of a pen killed most of this nonsense off. We literally cheered when we all got the infamous "increasing lethality" emails from the top of the memo's signed by Mattis.

Overnight virtually all of this crap was dead, the series of memo's basically stated that anything that doesn't directly have to do with making you a better SOLDIER is over. No more dumb check the block training. No more monthly mandated EO and SHARP classes, etc. If the classes or briefings aren't tied to your MOS and making you more lethal or proficient at your job then it's over. He killed all this crap and we loved it.

Then low and behold we get the present Administration and the present Sec Def who then rescinds those memo's and reinstates this stuff with a vengeance and adds tons of other social woke crap and forces it down all of our throats. I'm hoping that maybe there will be another dramatic change in the near future. If not then I guess I'll simply go the way of virtually all of my current peers and just retire and become another statistic on their data charts that they will continue to ignore.

 

Exactly! I miss the days of the O club's and NCO clubs but nope lets take that away from service members as well and increase the DUI's. I was just talking about this with a buddy of mine at lunch last week who is one more great Officer we are losing to retirement because he hates the Army's current trajectory and wants no part of it, his words not mine. We were laughing about the DUI counter that they display on the sign at the main gate. "Days without a DUI incident...2" ALWAYS, it almost never gets above 5 because there are only 5 workdays at once the weekend hits it resets again. We were laughing wondering why the keep that up there, is it supposed to be encouraging or wishful thinking or something? It's embarrassing, I've been here for years and I genuinely don't think I've ever seen it get past 7 days. Hell it's so bad that a couple years ago somebody was so drunk they literally swerved off the road and plowed their truck right through the main gate sign and got it stuck...Not joking, I have a picture of that too lol...And this is not a sign close to the road, this guy drove a good 30 meters or so to Dukes of Hazard his F-150 right through that thing.The most hilarious part was that fact that the DUI counter was still visible in the top of the sign with this truck plowed right through the middle of it lol.

Soldiers have nowhere to go on post to go relax and socialize with their peers. There is one place that serves alcohol but it closes at 2000 I think and it's not a club it's more like a cafe type deal. I figured out that a lot of Soldiers go to the golf course to drink at their little bar during the months it's open which is a very short time and they are not open very late either.

We are at a remote base for all intents and purposes. Tiny town, tiny post, and not a whole lot to do in general. The Soldiers all hang out at one particular bar off post and it's ALWAYS trouble in that place and that is where 90% of the DUI's come from. We are one of the "epidemic" Commands when it comes to DUI's. They try to get back on post from that one bar and get caught. The local PD knows that very well and the running gag around here is that if you want to drive drunk in this town do it on a Friday or Saturday night just avoid that one road outside of the unofficial Solider bar because that's where virtually every single cop in this small town sits on those nights.

This year alone there have been dozens of fights at that bar between locals and service members. Two Soldiers have been shot, one of them from my own unit shot in the leg. And yes unfortunately the predators are out in droves here regarding our female Soldiers. Tiny town, extremely skewed male to female population ratio. Couple young Army girls show up to the bar and bad things sometimes happen, way more often than I'm even comfortable talking about. Give them a place to drink on post so we can take care of them and get them home safe. Soldiers are going to drink, that's what they do, and in a place like this they are REALLY going to drink because they have little else to do. They are either sitting in the barracks room eating pizza and playing video games drinking or out at that bar off post drinking and getting into trouble. I know plenty of folks will say be responsible and get a taxi or an Uber. Well this is a tiny place as i said, no Uber here or MAYBE one dude driving Uber on any given weekend night. And if you want a taxi be prepared to spend $80-$100 for one and wait an hour. Soldiers aren't going to do that, they will take their chances and drive.

These were all concerns that have been formally discussed with the powers at be here on numerous occasions. We too have encouraged the return of on post facilities for the Soldiers to drink SAFELY. After years of deliberation the powers at be finally made a decision on how to address the problem of Soldiers having little to do here which causes them to drink heavily off post and get in trouble....They are going to build a park on post. Yes a park. Construction starts next summer and no I'm not joking. That is their solution to this problem...Because bored Soldiers prone to drinking heavily after a long day of work would love nothing more than to you know...slide down a slide. You can't make this stuff up.

 

Yeah a whole lot of things have changed so fast in the military that even those who remember the military a mere decade ago would hardly recognize the current formation. That's why a lot of these current issues with the Army are difficult for many to grasp because it wasn't like this before. I've had discussions with plenty of people who've served in the past who often try to challenge what I'm saying because they used to serve and it wasn't like that back in the day. I'm like man it wasn't even like this in 2019....let alone 1990. Plenty of folks remember how the military WAS and believe that well obviously a few things have probably changed but overall it's roughly the same Army they left. Nope not even close.

That's why I try my best to give specific examples of things I'm talking about which often times may come off as long winded. Much of this stuff is so outrageous that many believe it's exaggerated and there is no way it's actually going on in the Army they knew and loved. Oh yeah it is. The DoD has just been making dumb decision after dumb decision for years at this point with no signs of slowing down in sight. A part of me honestly feels like this is intentional and there is a shadow goal the government is trying to reach by drastically downsizing without officially calling it downsizing or something. I just find it hard to fathom that the powers at be are actually THIS stupid.

 

It's funny you mentioned this story as I was having a discussion about this very thing regarding alcohol in the barracks with our CSM a few months ago. They have the same policy you described here, no more than a 6 pack if you're over 21 and if your roommate isn't then you have to keep the booze in your own room and not in the fridge which is common to both rooms. Yeah these newer barracks are nice, they each have their own actual room with a common kitchen and bathroom. The problem is these are 18 and 19 year old kids as you said. Kids who can and will absolutely kill an entire 5th of whiskey or a 12 pack of beer in one night if they can. Even for the 21 year olds in the barracks they aren't just going to drink 6 beers...and what happens when they run out of their ration of beer, they go drive to the Shoppette or Class Six and buy more. And they're driving while drunk on their previous 6 beers. I get what the policy is trying to do but as we've stated before these Soldiers are going to drink. They are not going to "not drink" just because CSM says they can only have 6 in their room at any given time. They will just go get more which in my opinion increases the risk.

I've always argued just let them have their booze in the barracks. Yes they will get rowdy and act up and many will likely show up to formation puking on Monday morning but at least they are where we can see them. Back when I was enlisted before crossing over I would always buy my platoon booze whenever I was on CQ shift at the barracks. I told my squad leaders who lived with them in the barracks they could do the same thing for all our guys, I didn't care how old they were. Controversial take I know handing out booze to "underage" Soldiers but my philosophy was and is simple. For one back when I was an NCO this was during the troop surge and we had just gotten back from the most recent Afghanistan deployment and in my book if you can spend over a year in the front line infantry in Afghanistan getting shot at and taking IED's then you are old enough to drink a beer I don't care how old you are. And two, regardless of how I personally felt about number 1 the reality is that is the exact philosophy all of my teenage Soldiers had themselves and they were going to go find booze regardless of what I or anybody else thought and the legality of it be damned. So I'd rather they did it in the barracks with their squad mates and NCO's who could keep an eye on them. I'd rather they do that then go to some house party off post and get piss drunk and get in trouble.

Let the kids party it up in the barracks, that's what we were allowed to do when I was a Private. And back then we PARTIED, these kids nowadays are boring they never get in trouble in the barracks. It was Private protocol back then that we would be in formation on Sunday mornings in the barracks parking lot getting ripped apart by 1SG's for whatever antics we pulled in their barracks the night before. If we weren't getting skull dragged on Sunday mornings then we had a boring weekend lol. But they "tolerated" us acting a fool like that because we were all contained in one building where we couldn't get in actual trouble. And on Monday mornings when inevitably a couple Soldiers were missing from formation their Squad leaders had to simply bolt out of formation and run across to street and drag dumbass Private Nightmare out of bed for PT. Leaders knew where we were and knew if Soldiers weren't standing tall in formation they are simply across the street 99% of the time, not passed out somewhere in town or in jail or worse.

I tried to sell that to CSM, he wasn't having it though. This is a very hard post for young Soldiers. To put it bluntly this place absolutely sucks and it's extremely boring. I love it here because I'm old and boring and I love old and boring now. Private me would have probably went AWOL or started a riot if I was stationed here as my first assignment. All these kids do is drink because they have nothing else to do and they hate this place. And since they can't drink anywhere on post they go off post and drink too much and get in trouble. I say just let them drink it up in the barracks. Yes 1SGG's and CSM you are still going to get phone calls every weekend from the Soldiers acting up but at least then you'd know where they were and you could just go to the barracks and jack them up instead of having to go drag them out of the police station. Your 19 year old Privates are all going to be piss drunk tonight on Saturday anyway, might as well let them do so in their own building so at least you know where they are and they can't get into any real trouble.

 

That right there is the problem that the military has found itself in. Recruiters have to try to sell more "cool" stuff to put in the Pro column to outweigh the negative stuff these kids know about the military. And it's not working. It's primarily the internet and social media. If you don't know someone personally who is in the military to ask what service is actually like then it takes only a few moments on social media to find a whole bunch of prior service members who have no issues telling everybody.

Case in point, Twitter. The Army has an official Twitter handle and it posts stuff every once and awhile. I think it was last year on Veterans Day they made the fatal mistake of posting a question like "Soldiers and Veterans, how has the Army served you?" They got RIPPED APART in the comments section. Thousand of replies from former and active service members and family members sharing everything they dislike about the Army. Even to this day whenever that Army Twitter account posts something it just gets ripped apart. For example last week I was looking up what the current Army recruiting commercials look like as part of this threads discussion and I stumbled across a few Twitter accounts who had posted the video, including the official DoD handle. Once again, brutal.

The most recent commercial is pretty decent, a nice throwback to how these commercials used to look and even when posting something "good" the comments are brutal. For every "thank you for your service" type comment there are like 5 harsh responses. "Oh we must be going to war it's nothing but white men in this one for the first time in years". "Not so inclusive now are you that **** is about to hit the fan". "Whats wrong Army? Couldn't find enough purple haired lesbians?" "Men don't fall for this, they've done nothing but piss on straight white men for years and now they want you back because they can't find anybody. Take it from a Soldier in here, don't go". Etc, etc.

They can't disable the comments when they post because then it just looks even worse. And since Elon has opened Twitter back up folks are now free to rip on the official DoD handles whenever they want. If you have access to Twitter go take a look for yourself, see what happens whenever the Army posts something on there. Yesterday a former service member posted a letter that was sent to him by the DoD asking if he wanted to come back as he was discharged for refusing the COVID shot. Apparently the DoD has begun sending those letters out to a lot of folks who were discharged for not taking the shot. If you're bored on a Saturday night grab some popcorn and go read those comments. They are BRUTAL.

And this is the "world" of the 18/19 year old kid nowadays. They live in social media land. The Army can't compete with that, no matter what they try to do on social media they get ripped apart. No matter how much "positive" recruiters try it gets drowned out by all the negative that is on social media where their recruiting pool lives. The military dug itself into a nasty hole trying to pull this DEI crap and I honestly don't see how they are going to get out of it. People are pissed and they aren't going to let the Army forget it did this and are doing everything they can to make sure everyone knows.

 

No actually he wasn't, he was one of our 1SG's but there's a catch. He had a script. This was during the very first one of these readiness days after it was mandated years ago.

Back then when they were first figuring all this out the units were sent direct guidance on what we had to talk about and OPORD's were published from way up the chain which included scripts or key points on what the briefer had to say. For this readiness day big Army reached out to a bunch of minority Soldiers and asked them to share their stories of discrimination in the Army. They asked some to come and give a recorded testimony about it that they could publish on social media. There is a video on youtube right now of this very day. One of our own Senior NCO's in my unit took them up on that and gave a long winded completely ridiculous testimony about how the Army is racist as hell and hates him because he's black. It was posted to one of the official Army websites or something and then uploaded to youtube. His "testimony" about how all the white people in the unit hate him because he's black became a mandatory viewing requirement as part of that days readiness training. All Soldiers had to watch it and report to their leadership that they did which is why it's on youtube.

I won't direct you to the video primarily because I'd like to keep some form of anonymity. If folks see the video and figure out who the guy is then figuring out who I am in real life could be done if one had enough skill or cared enough since I know the guy. But the video is real, I have the raw video on my phone but I don't know what it was called when they uploaded it on youtube. Search "black army Soldier discrimination speech" or something maybe and eventually you'd find it.

But back to the briefer. Minority Soldiers were directed to go tell this 1SG their so called discrimination stories because he was designated as the unfortunate briefer for the days events for his Company. So he hears the stories of the two lazy clowns I talked about earlier. On his briefing sheet it said he would discuss the stories of the minority Soldiers and then if there were any more minorities in the class to ask them to share any personal experiences as well. I'm not in a "Company" so I just picked a random Company to go sit in for the briefs and happened to pick his. All the Companies were giving the same brief at the same time. I being the only black officer in the whole unit just so happened to be sitting in his particular class so he figured he would ask me.

Being completely honest here my outburst was two fold. For one I just really couldn't stand that 1SG, he had been a royal pain in my ass for months by that time and I had to give way more attention to his Company than I ever should have because he was completely incompetent and had no business being a 1SG. He actually wasn't one, he was a frocked E-7 but still he was arguably one of the worst I've ever served with and I'm not joking. Plus he had an open disdain for all of us at my echelon and had no problem running around trash talking us to both subordinate leaders and Soldiers alike. I sat in their particular brief because they always need extra eyes because they screw everything up in that Company. So in an admittedly unprofessional manner unbecoming an officer of my rank and position I chose that moment to make him look like a jackass in front of everybody.

And two I really was pissed about the whole brief because I hate racism of any kind. And if I can use my skin color to my advantage in this current system that calls me a victim by flipping it around and calling those who promote racism against white people racists themselves then I will every chance I get. That 1SG was one of those people who I think actually believed that self hating white guilt garbage about himself so I made a point to make him look stupid for that as well to hopefully make him think twice about it.

I mean lets be real here. This guy is a white 1SG, I outrank the hell out of him and he salutes me and calls me Sir. No not because of official military protocol to where even LT's are called Sir by CSM's. I'm "actual" Sir to 1SG's at his level. Yet this dummy really thought it was smart to stand there and ask ME of all people how discriminated I am in the unit then argue with me when I say I'm not...He was doing it to piss me off, he did that all the time by making snarky remarks and one liners whenever he was around.

But in his defense no he didn't come up with that whole thing. It will literally mandated in an OPORD that he do that. If I wasn't in there he would have picked one of the Soldiers, there was a black Private in that Company at the time if I remember correctly. But unfortunately for him I was in there and he picked me which was a terrible idea lol....