On This Day...

...Two years ago--September, 11 2006--I received a half-sized manila envelope in the mail.

I was living in Berkelely, CA, and I was just kicking off my second year of business school at the University of California. The night before I had gone to a Silver Jews concert in the city, and I slept in a little the morning of the 11th. I don't think I actually left my apartment that day until 3PM when I had to start heading to a class. I stopped to check the mail on my way out the door, and the manila envelope was inside my box.

The envelope had been forwarded from my summer address in Seattle (I worked at Amazon that year as a Product Manager intern) and the return label was from the Army's Human Resources Command.

This was not the first piece of mail HRC had sent me, but each previous mailing had been a regular letter in a regular envelope. Though I hadn't been expecting to receive anything from the Army, the second I saw that return label from HRC I knew what was inside--and strangely, I wasn't at all surprised to be receiving it.

I never did make it to class that day. Inside the envelope was a set of orders that required me to report for duty on the 3rd of October--about three weeks later. The envelope also contained instructions for how to request an exemption from the call up, or a delayed reporting date, so rather than go to class I called my wife (an Army lawyer) and my dad (a retired Army lawyer) to start figuring out my options.

As much as September 11, 2001 changed our lives and our world in the macro sense, receiving those orders on September, 11 2006 changed my life and Lauren's life even more. We are on a fundamentally different course than the one we had been on, and though I know that we would have married and shared our life together regardless, it's impossible to say how different our lives might have been if this burden had been handed off to others.

The Silver Jews, incidentally, played a show in my native Washington, DC on Wednesday evening--the 10th of September, 2008--proving for the umpteenth time that God is not without a sense of humor. I had hoped to be home in time for that show, but alas, I'm still here in Afghanistan for a while longer.

Not Enough Majors? Say it ain't so!!

The headline for this WaPo article focuses on the deployment cycle has led to a decline in Majors in the Army. Fair enough.

When you read the article, though, the point is raised that many majors are choosing to retire right at the 20 year mark (presumably to avoid further deployments), and this is presented as one of the most significant reasons for the current dearth. To that I say--maybe.***

Remember a couple years ago (and this year, even) when all sorts of fuss was being made about the lack of CAPTAINS in the Army? Well, what happens when you take a Captain, add water, and wait 4-6 years? You get a Major, that's what.

So even if the reduction in Captains hasn't propagated through to the Major ranks yet, it will soon. The Class of 2000 at West Point famously fled the Army in 2005. Assuming we take those folks as representative of Army officers, that particular "year group" will, even with soaring promotion rates to Major, have trouble filling all the spots that need filling. Those officers got their first look at Major this year (which, scarily enough, means I get my first look NEXT YEAR!!1!)

What about the Majors retiring at 20? Well, the only Majors who can do that are those that served in the enlisted ranks prior to being commissioned as officers. When the group of Majors starting to retire went through OCS 10-15 years back, OCS represented a relatively small portion of officers commissioned in a given year. The Army has, of course, stepped up efforts in recent years to commission sergeants into officers (to boost it's sagging number of Captains, of course) but again, this is a recent phenomenon.

Wow, lots of wonky ranting to suck down in this post...sorry 'bout that. The point of all of this is that I don't completely buy the anecdotal evidence being presented in this article. I'd really love to see the numbers the Army's Human Resource Command (no stranger to the 2.0) is looking at as they attempt to manage officer strength.

***Another key reason cited in the article is that the Army is growing itself in absolute terms, which of course means they need more officers to man the force. This fact indisputably affects the shortfall.

Another farewell...

The IRR blogger world said goodbye to Kevin a couple of weeks back.

And today, I'd like to bid farewell to another one of the greats--Jason's Iraq vacation has come to a merciful end, and he is home in Philadelphia with his family. Congrats to you and yours, Jason. I hope that we haven't seen the last of you out here on the IRR-internets.

Jason closed out the blog on a happy note, but not before he laid into our friends over at HRC one last time. In the quote below, Jason is referring to an article that appeared last month in Stars and Stripes.

Money Quote: "I guess it’s funny that despite years of honorable service, we were called up and treated like second class citizens for over a year. Yes, we are the dreaded IRR, and despite having a lifetime more experience than most of the people who thumb their noses at us, we’re still treated like second thoughts."

Sad but true.

We'll miss you Jason, and maybe we'll see you on down the line.

As for me? T-minus 200 days and counting...

IRR Blogger update

On the heels of my O.Y.E update from last week, let's check in with a few of our favorite (and/or most interesting) IRR bloggers. While they tell their tales of war, I will continue to feed you a daily diet of awesome movies, NBA action, and legendary wrestlers.

Kevin took a long break from blogging, and came back to inform us that he's...considering staying in the reserves after this deployment??? Say it ain't so, Kev, say it ain't so...

Jason continues to match his consistently enjoyable content with regular appearances over thunderrun, a war blog roundup. Oh Jason, you rock star you...

And last but not least, Josh has FINALLY reported to Fort Jackson to begin his training...the same Fort Jackson that Chris and I reported to EIGHT MONTHS BACK!!!1! I first reported on Josh last October, and unless I'm mistaken he had the same orders that we did. We got delays to finish school, and then reported in June. Josh got a delay to finish school, then had a family situation that got him delayed even more.

Honestly, I don't think I'd be able to handle it if I had lived w/ the uncertainty of will-I-or-won't-I have to report to Jackson for basically a year longer than I did, then have to deal with just now starting the process in earnest. I think it would be more than I can handle. So everyone say a prayer to the God/Tree/Giant-Spaghetti-Monster of your choice for Josh--his is not an easy row to hoe, not by a long shot.

Another HRC Nightmare Scenario

Check out this blog post from Jason, a fellow IRR draftee who is about 6 months ahead of me.

Money Quote:"When notified to deploy, the 104th scoured their list of qualified candidates and cross leveled and determined that they didn't have enough Captains to fill mission requirements. They put a request into Human resource Command (HRC), who proceeded to fill the unit needs by recalling the requested officers from the Inactive Ready Reserve. The rest is obviously history - I got my telegram and reported as ordered and here I am. Here's the catch, though. After receiving the requested fill from HRC, the 104th realized that they did in fact have enough officers to fill the mission. So, they contacted HRC and told them that the IRR recalls were no longer necessary because they had enough people. The response from HRC: Sorry, too late. You asked for them, so you got them. So what did the 104th do? They sent home their own people."

Doesn't this just fit perfectly with everything else we've been learning about HRC? As I've said many times, I'm happy with Civil Affairs--I think it's the best job out there for someone of my abilities and interests. But to hear these stories about how HRC assigns folks to units...mind boggling.