Military units have many support organizations attached to them. For example, the bomb group I was in had attached to it; Engineer, Ordnance, Transportation, Signal, Medical, Chaplain Corps, Quartermaster, Supply etc. units. The squadrons of the group each had a Chaplain but the attached units are usually too small to have one, or a Medical staff or other such things, so they were supplied to them out of the assets assigned to the group.
It was long ago decided that US funds would be used to provide Chaplains for military personnel so that argument is over. I’m not in favor of it, I think the Chaplains should be paid out of the funds of the church they represent, but I don’t get worked up over it.
My mother worried that I had no interest in church. She warned me that when I got into the Army I would have to go to church. That wasn’t the case. Church, or religious services were only spoken of in the context of them being available to those who wanted them. As far as I was concerned the Chaplain didn’t even exist except as another person I saw around the Squadron.
Our squadron Chaplain was a Catholic Priest and a real nice guy.
Modern armor is equipped with environmental systems that can support the crew in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical warfare environments. It’s actually not the heat, anyway… It takes a huge amount of thermal energy to heat-up a large chunk of armor. It’s the exhaustion of oxygen in the local atmoshpere that did the killing. The engine would stall on low oxygen, and the crew would suffocate. Modern armor protects the crew, and they just drive the tank out of the flames before the engine stalls out. Also, diesel-fuelled systems are hard to cause to stall, while many WWII tanks used gasoline engines (especially US tanks).
A related issue with TO&E is of course money – unit funds are disbursed to purchase authorized items, everything from office supplies (highly pilferable) to paper towels, garbage bags and the ever present Pine Oil and mop heads. Believe it or not mr. and mrs. taxpayer, the military runs on a budget, the fiscal year starts/ends Oct. 1st and the units I were stationed were “Broke” several times. Money gets taken from other units with a surplus I guess.
The strange method of “Spend it now, or we’ll get less next year” is something I never quite grasped, frugality is not rewarded in any way.
Every single item in the military is classified via a NSN (National Stock Number) formerly Federal Stock Number and along with quantity supplied are various designations related to the recovery of the item, i.e. does the issuing agency want it back when you are done with it.
This can cause real problems when accountability of an item is in question, otherwise someone might be required to pay for it. Some items are considered ‘expendable’, I believe calculators and VOM’s fall into this category.
Along with the TO&E, there are strict designations on just what unit can repair a truck, for example. Even though your unit has mechanics, if the repair is listed as a “Depot” level, (as opposed to “user level maintenance” you generally are prohibited from doing that specific, higher level fix. It should also be difficult to order parts for a depot level repair, and the tools necessary are not likely to be on hand, as they are not authorized by TOE.
We ran into this type of problem a lot, whether trucks, helicopters, radios, whatever. Authorization can be made for exception to policy, but is more paperwork.
A flamethrower looks pretty cool in a movie, but was pretty useless outside of certain special situations. It’s big and heavy - too big to march with (the soldier couldn’t carry it and his normal pack, much less spare ammo), and make the bearer really slow on the battlefield, as well as making it difficult to use cover. It’s also dangerous to the user, as the tanks explode relatively easily (would you want to be crawling around a battlefield with a gas tank on your back? Would you even want to be next to the guy?) and enemy soldiers would target flamethrowers first. They’re also very short-ranged, so the slow-moving, easier to spot, exploding bearer has to get a lot closer than the 100-300 yards the riflemen can effectively shoot at. The people who used them didn’t consider them very fun, though they got the job done (and the job wasn’t ‘getting some guys cornered in a cave’).
In WW2 (the last big war where they saw widespread use), they wouldn’t turn up in the equipment of a normal infantry platoon, though engineers had them. They were used primarily for dealing with fortifications, where all of the effective weapons were short-ranged and the benefits of the FT outweighed the dangers. They certainly weren’t used for general combat, though - I suspect that someone equipped with one who found himself in a regular infantry fight would rapidly ditch it and get a normal rifle.
While a flamethrower could kill a WW2 era tank, it wasn’t all that effective at it - the guy carrying the flamethrower was too slow and too unmaneuverable (try ducking into cover with a big, heavy backpack on) to get near the tank most of the time, and in cases where he could get close enough there were better weapons for the job. Low-level antitank weapons included launchers like the bazooka, PIAT, panzerfaust, and panzershreck which had much more range than a flamethrower and were more effective at the job. There were also weapons like antitank ‘grenades’ (which were placed on the tank, not thrown) and antitank rifles (which couldn’t penetrate latter tank armor), and the good 'ol Molotov Cocktail could do the work of a flamethrower on a tank without all of the disadvantages. Also, a FT wouldn’t kill a tank by ‘cooking’ people, the liquid would either come in through the vision slits (either burning the crew or cooking off the ammunition) or the flame would burn off all of the oxygen.
As the estimable David Simmons pointed out, combat units generally have what we call “slice elements” doled out to them to provide logistical and other support. However, there aren’t chaplain slices in the U.S. Army, except under odd circumstances.
Chaplain assignment is generally done down to a Battalion level*, and that chaplain takes care of the religious and other counseling needs of the personnel in the slice elements. It’s one of the only ways that a combat unit supports its own support elements (besides the obvious one of “not letting the enemy kill them”), so it’s frequently delineated in unit capabilities and what’s known as a unit’s METL (Mission Essential Task List).
Note that I mentioned “other counseling needs” up there. Chaplains aren’t just religious figures. In most units, they’re the only professional counselors available, and the vast majority have a large amount of secular counseling training in addition to their religious training. I haven’t met one yet who gave a flying flip about my religious affiliation.
– For combat units, that is. For others, it’s a good deal higher --I’ve been in four different battalions in my career, and not one has had its own chaplain.
I understand that the US has, at various times, taken the position that the GC ban on toxic gases does not inlclude a ban on the use of riot-control agents, and that the use of such agents is permissible in war…at least in certain circumstances which I’m not sure include the rousting of enemy troops from caves. Moreover, I distinctly remember learning from my military instructor (US Army officer) that CS gas was prohibited by the Geneva Convention (a position which apparently tracks the international view).
Accordingly, CS gas can only be used against civilians, not the enemy.
Agreed. I’m not in favor of it in principle, but let’s face it, the chaplains provide a very valuable service in the military. Everyone’s happier when the chaplain shows up; I’ve seen the effects of the chaplain’s arrival on enlisted morale, and it cannot be downplayed.
I’m a big proponent of separation of church and state, but I don’ t know if the army would have a guarateed number of chaplains, which it needs, if it didn’t front the bill.
I was a more regular church goer in the Army than anywhere else. Think about it. What are you doing if you are not going to church when you are in the field or at your reserve weekend? You are working. When else can you grab a chair for an hour and not a single officer will question you about it.
In my next life, I want to be a chaplain. (Not Catholic of course; couldn’t deal with the celibacy thing.) Everyone is happy to see you when you walk in. What a great life. Everyone loves you. You can go to lunch with the highest commander, then spend the rest of the day slumming with the enlisted, chatting it up, generally increasing morale. It always seemed to be an easy, and generally good life.
Someone is responsible for every last piece of government owned military property, at least in theory. This includes stuff ranging from the hull of an aircraft carrier down to the silverware in the mess hall. Usually it is some poor schmuck of a company commander who has ultimate responsibility for all of the organization’s property. A friend of mine was once signed for and personally liable for a classified number of nuclear war heads. He counted them every morning and every evening. He very nearly slept in the bunkers with them.
Some of the situations can be pretty sticky, especially in an over-sized garrison permanent party unit with frequent changes of command. The commanding officer of Company B, Special Troops, Fort Lost in the Woods, was responsible for at least one-thousand soldiers, including a bunch of senior non-commissioned officers, eight or nine barracks with all their furniture and household goods, literally hundreds of vehicles farmed out to the various staff sections, an arms room with weapons, gas masks and the like, a supply room full of camping equipment and several mess halls. The command usually went to some short time First Lieutenant or Captain who was just filling time between his return from SE Asia and the end of his mandatory active duty tour. Every time there was a new company commander there was supposed to be a 100% inventory of organization property and the new guy was supposed to accept liability for the stuff that was there, sticking the old guy with the stuff that was not there. Often, however, there was a certain lack of enthusiasm on one or both sides of the deal with the result that the new guy did not require a count and just signed for every thing without asking questions. When the next CO came in and did the ungentlemanly thing of requiring and inventory all hell would break lose. The departing commander could not be released from duty until his property book was cleared one way or another.
This provided constant amusement for the Supply and Logistics people and the Judge Advocate section. These two staff offices had diametrically opposed philosophies. The Supply people firmly believed that someone was responsible for every piece of property and if it was gone someone had to pay for it. The JAG, one the other hand, was committed to the view that “nobody pays for nothing.” Since any withholding from pay required a legal opinion the JAG view tended to prevail, but not without considerable heat and smoke.
One of the reasons lower enlisted life tends to blow goats is the frequency, in the Army at least, of officer assignments. Since a formal change of command requires a command inventory, this means that in addition to the other tasks required, everything (and I mean everything) needs to be pulled out of storage and inventoried, right down to tent stakes and guy ropes.
Of course, a Platoon Sergeant worthy of the name is going to ensure that all of his stuff is squared away and ready for the actual inventory. This may require one or more “pre-inspections” for weeks. Ugh.
They pulled down all the crosses on the Chapels on Army bases quite a while back. They don’t look right anymore. Why anyone begrudges a Chaplain in the Army (of any faith) really needs to look themselves in the mirror and decide if they really truly in fact have a life.
I can vouch for the PITA side of inventories. On one hand, when on submarines and tenders, I went through numerous changes of command without one major effort to demonstrate that our equipment was all in place. On the other hand, while helping close-down Naval Station Philladelphia, I was responsible for about US$700,000 worth of tools, and the Command (and Navy, for that matter) was seriously afraid that portable equipment would walk-off (with good reason!), and we were constantly conducting inventory.
Yuk.
Later, as SysAd for a Recruiting District, I had responsibility for all computers, printers, faxes, related equippage, and software. My inventory then was on the order of US$2.5 Million, and I was signatory for all of it. You can be d*mn sure that I kept track of that stuff! I was soundly hated three times a year, but when I left, my turn-over of inventory took all of twenty minutes, because everything was accounted-for.