The Making of Sand Sailors
Monday June 5, 2006
The crisp staccato of an M-16 rings out, punctuated by the ominous cannonade of several more machine guns and explosions. An Army drill sergeant shouts instructions over the tumult of fighting as armed Sailors dressed in desert camouflage and body armor hit the dirt and prepare to engage the enemy as the serenity of a peaceful spring morning at Fort Jackson, S.C., is transformed into a realistic battlefield.
But, wait a minute. Sailors abandoning the relative safety of their ships to walk around with weapons among improvised explosive devices (IED), ride in convoys and clear buildings of enemy insurgents?
But, wait a minute. Sailors abandoning the relative safety of their ships to walk around with weapons among improvised explosive devices (IED), ride in convoys and clear buildings of enemy insurgents?
Comments
“But, wait a minute. Sailors abandoning the relative safety of their ships to walk around with weapons among improvised explosive devices (IED), ride in convoys and clear buildings of enemy insurgents?”
This article was written by an ignorant moron. Sailors have been fighting on land AND sea almost since before there even WAS a US Army! And they have never STOPPED doing so.
Where do you think the Special Forces got their start? They began as Seabees/UDTs, then became SEALS. Along the way the ARMY saw something that worked and copied it for their Green Beret program.
Now in Iraq the Seabees are again leading the way - when the Marines and Army were approaching Bagdhad, the Navy SERTS (Seabee Engineer Recon Teams - http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Buff_110104-P1,00.html ) were already there preparing the route for them.
You should do more backgrounding before you mindlessly repeat the wrong stuff you read from the PACK jounrnalists.
And if you really think a US Navy warship is a safe place to be… you really ARE a moron, and an uneducated fool to boot.
HooYa !
This article does introduce something different, regardless of the manner that the author elected to protrey it (BTW, the article came from the Official Navy “All Hands” magazine, which means it was approved by Navy Public Affairs. If you have a “bone” to pick with how the article was written, you need to take it up with the Navy News Service.
The change is that the individuals talked about in the article are not sailors who are Seabees, SEALS, or UDT. They are sailors assigned to pretty much any rating, who are being pulled away from their normal rating duties to be voluntarily (and involuntarily) assigned to jobs which have traditionally (in the past) been performed by the Army and Marine Corps, at the rate of (about) 10,000 (or so) sailors at a time. Again, these are not Seabees, UDT, SEALS, nor any other rating who could normally expect to be performing ground combat missions. These are sailors who have ratings such as sonar, cook, personnel, disbursing, ect.
This *is* a change, and I felt that it needed to be reported, even if the (Public Affairs approved) author gave it a little sensationalistic flare (I don’t have the authority to change official articles — If I choose to reprint them, I have to reprint the article, as written, as approved by the Public Affairs Office). Applicants considering the Navy as a possible service, and sailors currently in the Navy need to know that there is an established program which can involuntarily take them away from their assigned rating, and place them into ground combat missions.
I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with the Navy doing so (after all, we take the oath, and sign on the dotted line), but I do *very strongly* feel that potential applicants and sailors already serving have an absolute right to know about the current assignment policies.
Like most other information that appears in this column, this information has already been reported to death, and always with the slant given by the JO1 who wrote this article., “Oh, GEE! Sailors with GUNS! Oooooo!!!”
As to the competence of the PAO, last year I came upon an official publication where the PAO allowed a gross violation of OPSEC to be published in a World Wide medium. After a fast email to the unit’s CO, the OIC was replaced.
As to being required to reprint “official publications” in toto, have you perhaps considered writing your OWN material based on the facts instead of just mindlessly parroting the stuff written by others? Oops. Did I say a bad? Tough. When you put YOUR name on the column, it should be YOUR work. Reprinting someone else’s work and then dodging responsibility for the content is a cop-out.
Actually, if you read the material on the site, you’ll see that I do write my own articles.
About 50 percent of the content on this site (which consists of over 15,000 pages are original content, about 40 percent reprints from official military news sources, and about 10 percent are links to outside sites.
When the article is a reprint from an official source, my name does not appear on the article. The name of the author and the news source appears instead.
Nofluer please rediscover the history of the Special Forces and those within the command. While I agree on the maritime forces being present during the birth of our nation along with a continental army, remember the rangers were first established in June of 42′ and the first naval selected force was in August of 42′, which I might add was formed through selected Army and navy personnel. The concept of Special Forces was did not “get its start” from the navy nor did the idea come from there. It was an idea generated from allies along the line of the British and Canadian commandos. These same commandos trained the first activated ranger battalion. These facts are all listed in the histories of both respected special ops service websites. Remember, Rangers lead the way!
Actually, Rangers go back further than 1942: French and Indian wars come to mind when the rangers were part of the British Army. Roger’s Rangers.