Now, That’s REALLY Wanting to Avoid Deployment . . . .
Not that many people in the military actually want to deploy. But when their number comes up most grumble a bit – then go.
Hey, I can understand not wanting to deploy. No one likes the idea of potential unsanitary involuntary random body piercings, or being separated from friends and family for months at a time. But it’s part of the deal you made when you signed on the dotted line.
However, a few actively try to avoid deployments when their number comes up. And some really pull out all the stops to avoid going.
What stops, you ask? Well, like convincing their own spouse to shoot them.
It seems a young USAF SSgt stationed at Barksdale AFB, LA, was accused of doing exactly that the other day. She is accused of having her husband (also in the USAF, and also a SSgt at Barksdale AFB) shoot her to avoid deployment to SWA. She was wounded in both legs – apparently not seriously, since she’s already out of the hospital.
She originally told police that she was shot early Friday by an intruder who escaped before police arrived. On further investigation, local police arrested her husband for illegal use of a weapon – for shooting her. Police also issued her a summons for criminal mischief for filing a false police report.
No word on whether the USAF has preferred charges yet for malingering, conspiracy, or other crimes against either. But I’d guess that’s only a matter of time. Tell your careers goodbye, Sergeants – and possibly all your VA benefits as well.
I will never understand some people. Sheesh, how freaking stupid can someone be?
Category: Military issues, Shitbags
soo… you are afraid of getting shot when you deploy so… you have your spouse shoot you to avoid getting deployed.
I was going to write something clever but my brain just collapsed upon itself.
Shooting, huh?
Usually they get pregnant.
Green: maybe she’s really ugly.
Unfortunately, such incidents appear to happen every year or so. I’ve seen references to this type of incident (self-inflicted or friend-inflicted wound to get out of deployment) from 2008 (LA area), 2009 (Colorado), and 2010 (NC).
I sent a link to this to Jonn then opened TAH and found it already up. What a couple of doofi. They’ve each ended their Air Force careers with this move.
During my first year in the 101st, (1960), peacetime, we had a guy beat his ankle with an entrenching tool to get out of the military.
The stupid shall be punished, and in this case, hopefully it hurt a LOT.
If they don’t want deployment, which is part of the job, then why did they sign on in the first place?
#2 Green: Reminds me of right before DS/DS. Word came down the brigade *might* go, and two of my female soldiers described that night as “hysterics in the barracks.”. Women running up and down the hall crying, wondering out loud who they could get to knock them up.
To their credit, my soldiers were disgusted with them and ready to go.
Not to bag on reservists but in late 90′ we had a reserve battery attached to us in 1/11 at Camp Pendelton. They were either from Louisiana or Alabama. It had been a long time since reservists had been called up as units to serve. These were units where guys were assuming they were going to be able to do 20 years or so without anything longer than annual two week summer drills. I happened to notice two things about them when I happened to be in the Mess hall one day. The first thing was they self segregated…one side of the mess hall was dark green. the other side was light green. The second thing I noticed was damn near every table had one or more guys talking about how they could not or would not be deployed overseas.
Really!!?! You’re Air Force! I’m surprised they even know what a weapon looks like.
HONEY-DO LIST
1. Clean Garage
2. Mow Lawn
3. Shoot Wife
Can be charged with damaging government property?
I have been attending to my yard this afternoon. Cleaned the birdbath, refilled the birdfeeder, whistled for the little flockers “lunch!” Takes them a few minutes to be sure I’m not watching.
Then I executed surgical strikes on the dandelions, etc., in the lawn, observed the need to mow down the overly ambitious upstart blades of grass, and will continue tomorrow with a generalized strike with the mower and carpet bombing with the hose attached to the weedkiller jug. Unless it rains, of course. Then I’ll be in the house.
Heck, I’m ready. Where do I sign up?
Self-inflicted wounds to avoid duty are a very old practice — they get their own subsection of Article 115, UCMJ:
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/punitivearticles/a/mcm115.htm
they’re Air Force. How hard of a deployment could it be? And it’s only for 3~4 months anyway. Suck it up buttercup, the grunts in Afghanistan need some fresh meat, they’ve already burned through the last batch of Air Force chicks….
I just always thought it funny when some Jackass would do something like this. I thought the main reason to avoid deployment was to not get shot.
Slightly OT, but the comments re an AF deployment made me laugh. Today a Cherry Point MCAS the barber asked me if I wanted a Marine or Navy cut? I said Air Force even though I’m Army. Didn’t matter…I got a Marine cut. Barbers at Lejeune and Cherry Point ask what you would want if you had a choice…just a curiosity thing. I don’t care cause I can’t see it and like it short. My bride, of several decades, disagrees.
Not to rag on the AF but I agree with Stacy 0311. I’ve seen the AF up close and personal and I gotta ask the same question, “How hard of a deployment could it be?” if you “sign on the line”, man-up and do your duty. I can only hope they get DDs, or at the very least BCDs, and spend time in the brig.
That’s certainly an interesting way to get out of something. But not quite as interesting as the guy who sawed his own foot off to avoid going to work:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-austria-foot-idUSBRE82P0M920120326
D’oh!
I always thought the AF hired people with higher IQ’s.
My old Nat Guard unit had several folks do all kinds of shit to get out of deployments….which was good really…I didn’t want shit people like that working near me.
As much fun as it is to berate a sister service I have an interesting anecdote that puts the USAF in a better light.
I was in Kabul at a very secure camp in the Green Zone. We had 2 USAF fuelers whose sole job was to fuel our camp and outlying areas. The poor troops left the wire every day to pick up their convoy of 5-12 local national fuel trucks and proceed to fill every tank so that the generators and vehicles ran, sometimes twice a day. They would regularly hop in a LN tanker truck in full battle rattle and do their jobs despite the corruption, the pilferage of fuel, the ANP or their CoC (U.S. Army) who did their best to make their duties more difficult. I tell their story every time someone tells me that the USAF is the easy life.
How many times do I have to say it? Never go full retard!
#22 You’re right. And then there are the FACs that live in the mud with us. As an aside, it would seem that some A-10’s could be nice to have right about now.
As a troop commander in 98 I had a soldier shoot himself in the hand with a .357 to get out of going to (remember there’s no war on) NTC! No shit, missed his hand and blew away his wrist, then told the cops he was cleaning his weapon when an intruder broke in and was shot in his struggle for the weapon. This resulted in a Colorado Springs manhunt with dogs and a “bear in the air” before he broke down and admitted his dumb-assery. So in addition to missing most of his wrist and the having the attached erector set to hold it all together, he had both civil and UCMJ charges. We took him anyway since his profile said only that he had to keep the wound clean. 1SG Grant God bless him wrapped his arm in a trash bag and 100 mph taped it. To top it off this shitbird had his mommy initiate a Congressional. I believe my response started with me thanking his representative for the opportunity to tell “the rest of the story”.
During DS/DS there was a lot of ‘I’m single and can’t find somebody to take care of my kids’ to get out of deploying at the MAC base. After that AF cracked down on the , if you’re single in the AF you HAVE TO HAVE SOMEBODY TO TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS WHEN YOU DEPLOY. Some were separated over it. No loss.
Then there was the USS Knocked Up that had a lot of people deploy who ended up pregnant and had to be shipped home.
What ever happened to birth control pills?
Back to The AF Service debate, I had a friend in the Corps who was prior service Air Force. He said the big difference was even though they let some stuff slide, if they wanted to punish you they locked your ass up, no half measures, epd or NCO counseling.
\
I’ve seen reservists just get up and walk out before we did our first trip to the ‘stans in 05 (wasn’t much of a loss, we still had enough people to cover that and Katrina at the same time), I’ve had a reservist suddenly discover he had asthma to avoid a second rotation to Kuwait in ’02. And I’ve seen a couple of folks over the years take the mental route out. But this?? Wow. Maybe it was a big turn on as well like when Peter shot Lois on Family Guy.
Wonder how careful they were not to hit the Femal artery ? I almost lost a gunner that way inRVN.
@8: Yes, that’s the million dollar question but on my very first mobilization from the USAR we had several troops weasel out of a relatively easy deployment to Hungary – and here’s the kicker: One of the ones who weaseled out was the first sergeant! As the next-senior NCO I had to take his place, and the fact that I had to cover for his sorry ass didn’t piss me off nearly as much as the fact that when we got back 9 months later, this shitbag had resumed his 1sg position. I transferred out of the unit the day we returned.
The news this morning is that SecDef Panetta has announced deployments to northern Africa and the Middle East.
In other news, the Egyptian/Cairo rioters were paid to protest, per news report this morning. Really devoted to their faith, n’est-ce pas?
@32: God is Great, sure, but I gots to get paid, yo!
Aren’t people counseled on the provisions of their enlistment contract (DD Form 4) anymore? For those of you curious to know what I’m talking about, it’s on the back – which reads – in part… “Required upon order to serve in combat or other hazardous situations.” The fine print will get you every time. I would have made a more insightful comment, but it looks like everyone beat me to it already.
Rochambeau: true. But the article indicates she’d been identified for deployment to SWA, not Central Asia. Today, a USAF deployment to SWA would almost certainly be somewhere in the Persian Gulf. Only place in SWA that’s “hot” these days is Iraq – and there’s little chance of getting tapped for a tour in Iraq these days. The rest of the locations there (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, a couple of others) are all quite safe.
Duty in SWA is nasty and isolated hardship duty, yes. But it’s pretty damned safe duty – and except for Iraq, has been since 2001.
My Hubs is AF, and this crap is more common than you’d think. When he was an Investigator, he had a pair of geniuses come up with the bright idea to stab each other in the hands so they wouldn’t be able to carry a weapon and, ergo, wouldn’t be able to deploy. It didn’t cross their minds that it would be smart to show up at different times or go to different ERs to avoid arousing suspicion. Hubs got the call and their story fell apart pretty quickly. And no, the damage wasn’t bad enough to keep them from deploying…if they hadn’t be charged with malingering first, that is.
A couple of years later, in another incarnation (there have been about 8 of them thus far, ranging from patrolman to Phoenix Raven) as NCOIC of an AF Confinement facility, he had a girl in who had asked her civilian boyfriend to shoot her in the shoulder with a .22. He refused, but said he’d stab her instead (which I don’t understand, but there’s a hell of a lot I don’t understand about some of these assclowns). He did the deed with a blunt paring knife, not the bigger knife she asked for, so the result was less than optimal….just enough to get her a trip to the ER, a few stitches, a Court Martial, a couple of months in the jail and ten a discharge from service.