Thread: How many years in?

Originally Posted by ShawnG

Prior Enlisted make the best officers Sir!

And the absolute worst as well . . . very few in between. I'm always amazed how they seem to fall only on the ends of the spectrum.

Here every single officer was an enlisted soldier at one point. The difference is whether they've been in combat units before hand, or went straight from Basic all the way through OCS a year and 8 months later. I've come to notice from my limited experience that an officer that has been in a combat unit before going to OCS will always be better than one that sailed through all the courses without seeing a combat unit.

"limited experience" + "always"= nervous.

I try to stay away from "absolutes". My fifty-five years of living have suggested plenty of outliers to damned near any norm. In this case, each demands evaluation upon their own merits.

When I saw "always", I mean looking at every single officer I had in the 2 years and 4 months in a combat company. In that period I had 7 officers that were my direct Platoon CO's, and 13 others that were other Platoon CO's. We also had one Company XO that had been a platoon CO in the Armor Training School and he had also never seen a combat unit.

Every single officer that had been in a combat unit before becoming an officer (8 of them) was a much better officer than those who hadn't. My proof, aside from my observations? The officers that had been in combat units before were retained for 2-3 times as long as an officer that wasn't. If an officer that hadn't seen combat was with us for a 4 month rotation before being kicked loose, one that had usually stayed for 8 months to a year. We had one officer that was so good the Company XO (him from the Armor Training School) was kicked out after 4 months so this officer could take over as Company XO.

U.S. Army 22 years, 11 days (all enlisted, all Armor with a brief diversion on Strykers from 2002-2004)