Saturday is for Army

Gonna stay Army-related today.

Remember the husband-and-wife team of O-6s at Ft. Hood Cavazos who got into legal trouble? Both were relieved of command, in a “the family that gets busted together stays together” sort of move. COL. John Meredith was Commander, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, and his wife, COL Ann Meredith was Commander, 899th Military Police Brigade. He he was investigated for allegedly forcibly kissing/groping the spouse of a subordinate officer, she was relieved for interfering into his investigation. Announced this week:

Instead, Meredith is facing a general officer memorandum of reprimand, or GOMOR after it was discovered that the encounter was consensual.

Last month, that commander, Lt. Gen. Sean Bernabe, dropped the abusive sexual contact charge against Meredith. On Oct. 13, the last criminal charge, conduct unbecoming an officer, was also dropped.

The newly discovered evidence was text messages between the accuser and the husband who worked under Meredith, according to Sherilyn Bunn, Meredith’s attorney. Those messages showed investigators that the physical encounter between Meredith and the accuser was consensual. However, the two had a falling out when the accuser’s husband received a lackluster officer evaluation report, or OER.

“Generally, the text messages between the accuser and her husband were about the husband’s OER; how he could ‘blow things up’ if he didn’t like it; and the decision to ‘go nuclear’ once the husband received his OER and decided Col. Meredith’s rater comments would negatively impact his rating and his likelihood of getting promoted ‘below the zone,'” Bunn told Military.com.

She received a GOMOR and was facing accusations she interfered in her husband’s investigation. It is unclear whether she’ll see any ramifications on her record in light of the criminal charges against her husband being dropped.  Military.com

Either way, he was dipping his pen in a subordinate’s inkwell – I can see the GOMOR for that alone. Wife? If she interfered in an ongoing investigation, seems to me they should have a matching set.  If not, and she was relieved as a preventative measure, I foresee some more calls the their attorney and a lawsuit.

Now for news that will not shock ANYONE who ever served in a unit with a motorpool and had to have a ‘maintenance day’ every week.

After a months-long study that began in May, the Army will drastically slash maintenance requirements for approximately 1 million of its wheeled vehicles and rifles by eliminating most time-based service intervals that require soldiers to perform tasks like oil changes based on the calendar rather than how much they use their equipment.

Service leaders, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, heralded the change and said that reducing calendar-based maintenance can save around 632 man-years of effort — or around 230,000 soldier work days — annually.

The joys of physically unscrewing and checking the air filter on a truck that hadn’t been driven since the last time you unscrewed and checked the air filter. Wasting a good chunk of a day, every week, to verify what you had checked out already the week before. I think I saw more screws stripped due to being constantly screwed in and out unnecessarily in a year in a wheeled unit than I did in all the years I spent as a civilian mechanic by at least a 10:1 ratio.  Many times you had a choice: pencil-whip the maintenance or redo it uselessly again and again and again…

None of the officials, some of whom have been in service for nearly 40 years, were certain why the time-based service intervals existed in the first place.

“The [time-based] standards have been in place for decades…and where industry evolved [and] took into account changes in filter technology, we didn’t keep pace,” explained Rick Marsh, the chief maintenance policy official in the Army headquarters’ logistics directorate. “We were doing the same old thing — not sure why.” Army Times

Bet any of us could tell him why.  H/T to Jeff LPH for this one.

 

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Army