Tag: U.S. Army

It looks like the US Army has found themselves four more volunteers for the drawdown:

Four soldiers from Fort Carson are in custody after a home invasion.

Police said there was a disturbance involving four suspects, one of whom was armed with a gun, at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the 1100-block of Verde Drive in Colorado Springs.

“The suspect with the gun threatened to shot [sic] the family and was demanding property from the victims,” Colorado Springs police said. “After the victims refused to provide the property the suspects left, and threatened to return.”

Instead, police said, the suspects turned themselves in at around 11:30 p.m. Sunday. Dustin Mincy, Mykal Hall, Aaron Hall, Roman Alred were arrested on suspicion of burglary, felony menacing and child abuse, police said.

The family of four, including two small children, were not injured, police said.  [Channel 7 News]

I would not be surprised if there is more to this story considering they turned themselves in right after committing the home invasion.

How would you like to be the commander for the unit this guy belongs to?:

A U.S. Army sergeant stationed at Fort Bliss wore a military uniform bearing his name while allegedly selling methamphetamine to an undercover federal agent in El Paso earlier this year, court documents state.

Sgt. Derek Calderon, 25, who posted a video of himself with a stack of hundred dollar bills on social media, was arrested in connection with the meth trafficking scheme, according to the documents.

Calderon was indicted in a South Florida federal court on June 30 on one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more and two counts of possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more, according to the indictment. He is facing life in prison on all three charges.  [El Paso Times]

You can read more at the link, but my favorite part of the article is that not only did this guy conduct a drug deal in uniform, but then he posted the money he received after the deal on Instagram for everyone to see.

The incident that got the Dallas police shooter discharged from the Army has been disclosed; he stole panties from his officer girl friend in his reserve unit:

But two soldiers who knew Johnson in Afghanistan, who were reached and interviewed separately, said it was an open secret that the pair had a romantic relationship and were publicly affectionate.

In an interview with TheBlaze website, Johnson’s mother, Delphene, implied they were more than friends.

“Before, when they went to drill, during the drill weekends, she stayed here,” she said. “Yeah, they slept in the same bed.”

Gilbert Fischbach, a former Army sergeant who was Johnson’s squad leader, says that the woman has denied being intimate with Johnson and that he believes the two were just close friends.

But, he said, the nature of their relationship doesn’t matter — he was found with her underwear without her permission.  [Dallas Morning News]

After the incident Johnson was supposedly ostracized from his unit and eventually moved to a different base.  When it comes to a sex crime accusation in the Army of course few people are going to want to be associated with someone accused of that crime; especially one caught in the act.  Here is where the reporter states that the ostracizing of Johnson led to him hanging out with “black people”:

“Everybody thought that he was just a person that stole panties,” a soldier said. “He broke down after that a little bit because they ostracized him. All of his friends started unfollowing him on Facebook. They wouldn’t deal with him, they wouldn’t talk to him.”

“He started hanging out with people he usually didn’t hang out with — the black people, honestly,” said the soldier, who is black.

So what is this passage supposed to mean?  That him hanging out with other black people led to him becoming a racist killer? That if he didn’t hang out with other so called “black people” that the killings would not have happened?  I also find it hard to believe he was not hanging out with so called “black people” before this incident happened.  Notice how the reporter had to specify that the quoted person was black; this was intentional because the reporter does not want to be accused of passing on a racist statement if a white guy was quoted as making that statement.

Johnson was discharged for the panty incident in Afghanistan and the article concludes with the reporter insinuating that the Army should have checked up on this guy despite him no longer being in the Army:

One of the soldiers interviewed by The News reported talking to Johnson about a year after they returned from Afghanistan.

“I was like, ‘How are you doing? Has anybody called to check up on you?'” the soldier recalls. “He said, ‘You’re the first person I’ve heard from in the unit.'”

This reporter doesn’t seem to understand that the Army has no obligation to check on Soldiers when they are no longer in the service.  Considering the amount of Soldiers that leave the Army every year this would be an impossibility anyway unless a large unit was stood up to do this.  This article seems like a lame attempt by the reporter to pass blame on to the Army for what happened in Dallas instead putting the responsibility solely on the person that committed the crime.

I guess this guy felt like he had nothing to lose by committing another criminal act while serving time in prison already:

A former state correction officer and lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve was arrested Friday on charges that he collected wages from the state while serving a prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Dennis Dockery, 52, of Bloomfield, was charged Friday with first-degree larceny by defrauding a public community and two counts of second-degree forgery. Dockery, who worked as a correction officer at the Enfield Correctional Institution, was incarcerated for 17 months at Leavenworth after he was found guilty of assaulting a woman in Hamden while on active duty with the Army, according to the warrant for his arrest.

As a military reservist, Dockery was still on the state payroll and entitled to a portion of his state salary while activated for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He was not entitled to any salary while serving time in a military prison, but forged his orders so that it appeared he was serving at Fort Leavenworth rather than incarcerated, according to the warrant. The state requires employees activated for military service to submit his or her orders to the agency they work for to confirm they are entitled to any wages.

According to the arrest warrant, Dockery fraudulently received $5,182 in salary from the state.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

The Washington Post has an interesting article that looks into an Inspector General investigation on why a US Army Special Forces sergeant was denied the Medal of Honor.  In the article it explains the bureaucracy a Medal of Honor packet goes through, but the reason the sergeant was denied the award was quite interesting:

Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Hunter, said that the comments of members on the decorations board show “enormous amounts of personal prejudice” in how valor awards are approved.

“In essence what he’s saying is, ‘If this was a private, it would rate the Medal of Honor, but because we expect our NCOs to do valorous things, it doesn’t,’” Kasper said. “That person should be looking at the actions alone.”  [Washington Post]

You can read the rest at the link.

Is it accurate to say that someone was “forced” into prostitution when the soldier in the below article willing decided to work for the pimp for financial gain?  For sake of argument if a woman decided to break the law by robbing houses while a man sat in the get away car outside would we say the woman was forced into burglary?  To me it seems they are both equally guilty.

A man who forced a 19-year-old Fort Bragg soldier into prostitution last year threatened to tell the soldier’s commander about her exchanging sex for money, new court documents say.

The court documents also revealed that the soldier was the victim of sex trafficking as a juvenile.

Jibri Quandel Thomas, 23, of the 3200 block of Brookemere Place, was charged by the Fayetteville Police Department in connection with exploiting the soldier. He turned himself in to Fayetteville police detectives Jan. 11 and was indicted in federal court Jan. 28.

A superseding indictment in federal court filed April 25 charged Thomas with two counts of transporting for prostitution and racketeering for prostitution.  [Fayetteville Observer]

You can read the rest at the link, but it sounds like this soldier probably should have never been in the Army in the first place considering she was a practicing prostitute at the age of 17 before she even enlisted.  Joining the military was an opportunity for this soldier to turn her life around; it is unfortunate she did seize that opportunity.

Congratulations to First Lieutenant Ji Eun Jeong for being awarded the US Army’s Expert Infantryman Badge.  She is considered the first female ROK Army officer to receive the badge.  Two years ago two female ROK Army NCOs became the first Korean females to be awarded the EIB:

May 26, 2016 – CAMP CASEY, Republic of Korea – Soldiers congratulate Republic of Korea Army 1st Lt. Ji Eun Jeong, a platoon leader in the 115th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 90th Mech. Inf. Brigade, 30th Mech. Inf. Division, on earning an U.S. Army Expert Infantryman Badge. Jeong, a 25-year-old from Seoul, South Korea, is the first female ROK officer to complete the EIB. South Korean officers are not actually authorized to wear the U.S. badge, but were pinned during the ceremony and awarded a certificate of achievement. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Keith Anderson, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs, 1st Cav. Div.)  [PACOM.mil]

Here are some statistics of how many failed to pass the testing:

Included in the final number to complete the challenge were more than 40 ROKA Soldiers, including Republic of Korea Army 1st Lt. Ji Eun Jeong, a platoon leader in the 115th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 90th Mech. Inf. Brigade, 30th Mech. Inf. Division. Jeong was the first female ROK officer to earn the EIB. A female ROK NCO completed the grueling challenge last year to earn her EIB.

“I want a specialty for infantry, and EIB is a challenge for female Soldiers,” said Jeong.

Of the 627 Soldiers who started the EIB testing in South Korea May 22, only 131 finished and earned the honor of wearing the Expert Infantryman Badge. And of those, 29 distinguished themselves as “True Blue” Infantryman by successfully completing every event without retest and receiving first time “go’s” on every evaluation – 18 U.S. and 11 South Korean Soldiers.  [DVIDS]

That is a pretty high attrition rate and thus shows how hard the awardees worked to get the EIB. According to the Korea Times 1st Lt. Jeong did 200 pushups, 200 sit-ups and ran 7 kilometers each day to prepare for the test.  She also qualified for the ROK Army’s version of the EIB in November 2015 which made her eligible to compete for the US Army’s EIB last month.  Incredibly the attrition rate for the ROK Army EIB is much higher than the US Army EIB:

Only infantry personnel are eligible to participate in both the EIB test and South Korea’s equivalent test.

The U.S. military officially opened the door for women on ground combat jobs beginning in January and there were no female participants from the U.S. side this year, according to the South Korean military.

In November 2015, Jeong was the only woman among the four successful candidates who took the South Korean infantry test. A total of 85 soldiers took the test then.  [Korea Times]

Only 4 of 85 passed the ROK Army EIB testing which is pretty amazing.  It sounds like the US Army get our infantrymen to compete in the ROK Army EIB testing for an additional skills challenge.

This is a horrible tragedy for the unit involved in this accident at Ft. Hood.  With that said there had to be some serious lack of risk assessment and leadership to allow something like this to happen:

Five soldiers were killed and four were missing after an Army troop carrier was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned Thursday in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood, the Texas Army post said.

Three soldiers were found dead shortly after the 2½-ton truck was toppled by the swift current of Owl Creek during a morning training exercise. Two more bodies were found late Thursday night, according to a Fort Hood statement. Three soldiers were rescued and were hospitalized in stable condition.

No further details were provided in the statement, but spokesman Chris Haug said the search continued for the four soldiers who remain missing. Army officials planned a briefing early Friday to provide an update.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully they can find the four missing soldiers.  It is just amazing the amount of bad things that seem to happen at Ft. Hood.

Does anyone think two weeks is enough training to make either a male or a female an infantryman?:

A sergeant in the Wyoming National Guard has become the Army’s first female enlisted infantry soldier.

Sgt. Shelby Atkins on Thursday graduated alongside 32 male soldiers from a two-week infantry qualification and transition course at Camp Guernsey Joint Training Center in Wyoming. The course was designed to train soldiers for the Wyoming Guard’s first infantry unit in more than 100 years.

“She’s the first female Army [noncommissioned officer] in the total Army to be granted the infantry [military occupational specialty],” said Jack Harrison, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau.  [Army Times]

You can read more at the link.

This accusation bothers me because the accuser waited until the Plumley was dead before accusing him of stolen valor.  This prevented Plumley from defending himself:

The late Command Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a legend in the U.S. Army and famously depicted by the actor Sam Elliott in the Vietnam War movie “We Were Soldiers,” is under review by Army officials for having worn unauthorized combat and valor awards, according to a report on Military.com.

Plumley died of cancer in 2012, but Brian Siddall, an independent researcher who has devoted years of his life researching Plumley’s service records and the exploits of other service members in World War II, uncovered discrepancies between Plumley’s official documents and widely reported accounts of his service.

In the 1992 book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” co-written by Joe Galloway and retired Lt. Gen Hal Moore and on which the movie is based, Plumley is a central character and is introduced as a soldier who had made four combat jumps in World War II as well as a combat jump in the Korean War. According to Siddall, service records indicate that Plumely served as a scout in a glider unit and participated in two glider assaults during World War II and never deployed to Korea.  [Stars & Stripes]

Here is the part of the accusation that really bothers me:

“I just want the correct information out there because there are so many people that are really heroes, and it is so frustrating when they give the hero status to someone who was anything but,” Siddall told Military.com.

Even if Plumley exaggerated his combat awards he is without a doubt an American military hero based on his actions during the battle of the Ia Drang in Vietnam.

With that said it does appear true that Plumley did not serve during the Korean War which makes me wonder why he would claim something like that?  As far as the other accusations it appears instead of parachuting into Normandy during World War II he landed in a glider which was just as dangerous.  As far as awards earned during World War II I can definitely see discrepancies happening from that time frame so I put little weight in that.