You might want to avoid Starbucks today

[sarisataka]

234. I was quite shocked

at my last assignment. The doctors decided my arthritis was too bad to give me another all expense paid vacation to an exotic country so I was sent to train National Guard troops prior to their deploying to Iraq.

-About half had not had their annual rifle qualification in over a year and for some it had been 3-5 years.
-Less than half knew how to clean or maintain the rifles. I was told they turned in the rifles after shooting and the armorers did all the work because they didn't trust the troops to do it right.
-For things like grenades and machine guns most said they had been shown them in basic training but never actually touched a real one. (This in a transportation unit where using these weapons is considered a necessity)
-Qualification scores were unsatisfactory, to say the least. I had one low score of 4/40. I believe I could have beaten that with a slingshot.

If it wasn't unprofessional I would have cried. I was very busy for the better part of two years and take pride that out of 300+ that I trained, only one family received a flag. Every March 25th I remember that I failed one family and light a candle for the son they will never see again.