What the Army is Doing Right Now ...

As a spin of on the post below, I want to talk about what the Army, or at least my Soldiers, have been doing of late.

First there was the post cleanup week. Now keep in mind that there are constantly details fielded from a rotation of units cleaning up the post. But some high ranking person somewhere probably saw one piece of litter and a number of Soldiers from every unit were pulled to wander around post and devote their time to cigarette butts.

The following week. Fort Campbell makes the national news for leading all Army posts in number of suicides. We've had 11-14 this year, depending on the source. The entire post is smacked with a mandatory suicide safety stand down day. Units are pulled in from the field. Training is canned. My Soldiers are pulled out of a civilian taught class they are required to attend before deployment. Suicide is indeed a tragedy, and I can understand that the number of deaths here at Fort Campbell warranted a response, but I don't know that sidelining valuable training for a day of standing on a parade field, waiting for the commanding General to arrive and tell us that "Screaming Eagles don't quit" is the appropriate response.

Let's not forget that the "Week of the Eagle" is fast approaching. I can't plan any training during this time, and despite the fact that it takes place a mere 2 weeks before we are to leave for JRTC, my Soldiers and I will probably spend the week contributing to a clean post, standing on parade fields, "enjoying" the mandatory fun, and going on BDE or DIV runs.

This article that I linked to below, contains a segment towards the end about distractors and enablers. I find myself thinking of it often as I seek to work around the numerous distractors there are in the Army