Today begins my last week as a commissioned officer in the active duty US Army. I will have served a total of four years as an Air Defense Artillery Officer. My time in service has been relatively tame compared to most, only having served in the States and not having to go over seas. However, I must say that I am ready to be moving on to other things, but my time in uniform will always be something I will appreciate.

I will start with a quick summary of my stint as an Army Officer. I studied at the Virginia Military Institute and graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering and commissioned as an Air Defense Artillery Officer. Following graduation I made my way to Fort Sill OK for my initial officer schooling which was then followed by my first permanent assignment at Fort Hood TX. While stationed at Fort Hood I was a platoon leader in a PATRIOT Air Defense Battalion where I was in charge of a group of around 25 soldiers. I became fairly proficient with the weapon system and also became one of my Battery’s principal trainers only after about a year on station. After spending two years in a broken record training cycle, I decided I have had enough of playing space invaders and decided to go back to Fort Sill to work for the Basic Training Brigade. After a very dramatic couple of weeks where some field grade officers told me I was “dishonorable” for taking charge of my own life and career, I arrived at Fort Sill ready to ride out the rest of my four year commitment. My position at Sill was a Battery Executive officer and I basically handled most of the administrative tasks for the Command Team and Drill Sergeants. It was not a sexy job, but it was predictable. I tried to give the Army one more chance by submitting a packet to transfer to its Network Engineering branch, but despite my relevant degree and certifications the board couldn’t seem to get over the spiteful evaluation written by my former unit. Shortly after hearing back I had my resignation filled out and submitted. About seven months later I am now here writing this blog post, waiting to be able sign at for the last time at the end of the week.

I could go on and on about why many junior officers decide to leave the military service after a short tenure, but I would be beating a dead horse. Most of the same reasons have been written about time and time again by others; more predictability, more time with family, more career flexibility and so on. Most of these factors that many others have described do in fact describe me, so I do not really consider myself special or unique, in fact I’m relieved because I seem to be in good company. So instead I will take this time to write about the parts of military officer-ship that I, Wyatt Raymond, personally despise the most.

The first thing that comes to mind when I reflect on what I can’t stand about the military is how arrogance seems to be often one of the most highly rewarded traits of military leadership. I understand that military leaders must possess a high level of confidence to be able to inspire their subordinates and convince their superiors of their competence in order to accomplish challenging missions. But in my short time in service I have seen these “A-type Personalities”(another word for asshole in my opinion) prance around the unit boasting of their skills and intelligence only to be revealed as competent or maybe less so than the “rest of us”. However despite their performance being no better than others who choose to practice a little bit of humility, superiors are usually quick to hold them in higher regard for seemingly superfluous reasons.

So it is these self proclaimed A-types who more often than not get the better “potential” evaluations from a “senior rater”, who hardly knows them in the first place, go on to “succeed” in the military. Thus the cycle continues and they become the said leaders who will continue to encourage arrogance. One can say that of all professions, one that requires someone to lead others to confront and kill the enemy should have leaders who are confident and borderline arrogant, and I would probably have to agree. Just because I don’t like something about the military doesn’t mean it is not in its best interests, all it means is that me and those who think like me will usually bail out at the soonest possible opportunity, so I guess it all works out in the end.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are a noticeable number of military officers(NCOs too, but for this writing I will stick to my peers) who are grossly incompetent. At the corners of every organization you can find a handful of junior officers who cannot be trusted to do the most mundane tasks just taking up space and creating more work for the rest of the unit. Because of the way the Federal Government employs its military, firing someone who is only “not good at their job” is incredibly difficult, borderline impossible. Those who get kicked out of the military before their contract or obligation expires normally have to do something criminal, and even that process is long and drawn out. So because of this, many officers will, either knowingly or unknowingly, figure out that all they have to do is show up(most of the time), and not break the law and they will be in no danger of losing their paycheck from uncle sam.

How the Army has grown to deal with this issue is they normally place these oxygen thieves in jobs of little or no importance so that they don’t run the risk of them dropping the ball on critical tasks. This sounds great and all except for the fact that these officers still take up manning slots, thus creating more important work for the average and above average performers. This will inevitably lead to those who do all the work to become burnt out and they will end up doing one of three things: Somehow work through the pain and continue to be a valuable member of the team due to only the sheer force of will, realize that their efforts are futile and that they can join the ranks of the do-nothings for the same amount of money, or leave.

When you combine this pool of incompetent officers with the arrogant ones I mentioned earlier, you don’t really have a promising pool to pick from to staff your senior leadership positions. This isn’t groundbreaking stuff, many others have written about this in far greater detail, and they will continue to do so as well. However similar to what I said earlier is that Uncle Sam requires a large stick to enforce his will onto the rest of the planet, if this staffing system seems to work, then so be it.

One particularly frustrating part of being a junior officer is the seemingly non-existent barrier to entry. From what I have seen ROTC programs will seem to take anybody! I had a peer in my BOLC class who gave a power point presentation that an 8th grader could have outdone. This was somebody who was supposedly college educated, what a joke! This has seemingly been happening for decades, because you go up to any random service member and ask them what they think about a 2LT, they will laugh and say something along the lines of “hurr durr, ya can’t spell lost without LT!” The entire reputation of our junior officer corps is forever stained as a group of grossly incompetent nincompoops, and the worst part is , they are not wrong! Some of the stupidest people I have met in my short time of service have been other Lieutenants and it has made mine and any other junior officer who’s worth a shit experience worse.

When any new LT shows up to a unit, they have to spend the first several months basically proving to their subordinates that they are either not a mouth breather or not a stuck up douche. For myself this really impacted my ability to sniff out leadership issues within my platoon and put a stop to them because I had spent four years being told “shut up and listen to your NCOs.” That may be good advice for those who are entering a unit who has working systems in place and strong leadership present, however those two things are not all that common in the “Real Army”. Why would anyone want to willingly become something so universally despised such as a Second Lieutenant? I guess for me personally it was so I could become “one of the good ones” but four years later I can now see that logic is highly flawed.

Okay…that was a lot of negativity, my military experiences were not all for naught though. I have been pretty lucky in my short time in the army, starting with the fact they paid for the majority of my undergraduate education. I also have never had to spend a long time away from my wife, something both of us were dreading before I joined. Perhaps one of the biggest factors is that very few other organizations take a baby faced 22 year old and place them in a team of 20 some people and immediately say “you are in charge now, figure it out.” I definitely learned a lot about both myself and how to work with and manage others from a variety of different backgrounds in ways that no other first post college job could have. So for that I am thankful. I have also met some stellar individuals during my time in service and have made friends with some of the funniest people that I would have otherwise have never met. What I have heard a lot is that “you will not miss the Army, bu t you will miss the people” and I wholeheartedly believe that. There were many Soldiers from my first duty station, Fort Hood, that I already miss and it makes me sad that I will probably never see them again, and I am sure I will have the same feelings about many people I have served with at Fort Sill as well. I am a firm believer that adversity will take complete strangers and turn them into the best of friends in short amount of time, and if you don’t get anything else from your time in the military, at least you have that.