Sixty Years After Integration, Opportunities Abound for Minority Soldiers
Army Staff Sgt. Mike Pryor, American Forces Press Service, July 28, 2008
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By the time the Army was officially desegregated on July 26, 1948, Joe Murchison already was a proud member of the 82nd Airborne Division.
A year earlier, his all-black paratrooper unit, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, had been absorbed into the 82nd at the personal request of the division’s legendary commander, Army Maj. Gen. James Gavin. As a result, Murchison and his fellow “Triple Nickels” were some of the first black soldiers to work and train side by side with white soldiers.
At the time, the ugly racism of the Jim Crow-era South was inescapable, Murchison said. Off post, black soldiers found “white” and “colored” drinking fountains, they were forced to ride in the back of the bus, and restaurants wouldn’t serve them. Even on Fort Bragg, white and black soldiers had separate living quarters, and blacks were barred from the officers’ club.
But in the field, at the range, or jumping out of an airplane, Murchison said, he and the other black paratroopers felt they were the equal of anyone. Their special airborne status earned them respect from troops of every color.
“Paratroopers were paratroopers, whatever their color was,” Murchison said.
In the 60 years since the armed forces were desegregated by President Harry S. Truman’s executive order, opportunities for blacks and other minorities in the military have grown exponentially. In Murchison’s day, blacks often were assigned to menial jobs supporting white soldiers, and there were few black officers.
Today, blacks account for 17 percent of all military personnel, and 11 percent of all Army officers. Black officers hold key positions at the most senior levels of command. Indeed, the man who now sits in General Gavin’s chair as commander of 82nd Airborne Division is a black man, Brig. Gen. Rodney Anderson.
But military leaders acknowledge more work remains to be done. While opportunity has never been greater, black soldiers serving today still face some of the same prejudices Murchison did 60 years ago. But they also share the same pride.
The end of segregation in 1948 did not mean the end of racist views. Murchison said black soldiers during the period of integration knew all eyes were on them, with some hoping they would fail.
“We knew we had something to prove, and we had to be better than the best,” he said.
Walter Morris, who was first sergeant of the Army’s first all-black paratrooper company, recounted the skepticism he and his troops faced in a 1990 issue of Patriots Magazine.
“The entire post was making bets that we wouldn’t jump, we’d be too afraid. The thing that inspired us was that this was the only black combat outfit then, and it was an opportunity for black troops to enter something they could be proud of,” Morris recalled.
Sixty years later, some minorities still feel pressure to be better than their white peers, said Master Sgt. Major Bryant, the equal opportunity advisor for the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team.
“They feel like, ‘I have to go out there and go above and beyond in order to get their attention and respect,’” Bryant said.
But not all black soldiers feel that pressure. Capt. Devin Henry, a staff officer with the 2nd BCT’s 1st Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, said he never felt he was held to a different set of expectations as a black officer.
“I’m just another guy in the 82nd,” he said.
A common saying around the Army is that the only color that matters is green. It’s another way of saying that the shared intensity of Army life tends to break down barriers between people of different ethnic or cultural backgrounds. It was something Murchison noticed back in 1948, and black soldiers serving today see the same thing.
“It’s that common bond that pushes differences away,” Henry said.
Growing up as a black kid in overwhelmingly white Newport, R.I., he noted, he learned a thing or two about overcoming differences, and he brought that attitude with him in his Army career. Henry said race isn’t invisible in today’s military; it is simply irrelevant.
“You have to look past it; you have no choice,” Henry said. “You have to work as a team and put aside your differences in order to get things done.”
That process begins at basic training, Henry said. At basic, whatever biases or prejudices new recruits have are shaved away, just as the hair on their heads that gets unceremoniously buzzed off on Day One.
“It’s like a clean slate. From that moment on, you have to start proving yourself,” he said.
As soldiers progress in their Army careers, they develop loyalty to their units. That kind of loyalty can be a more powerful source for bonding than racial or ethnic associations, Bryant said.
“If I’ve got an 82nd patch on and you’ve got an 82nd patch on, I’m more apt to go and talk to you whether you’re black, green or yellow,” Bryant said.
Perhaps the most important factor in overcoming racial stereotypes is the “foxhole phenomenon.” Soldiers spend so much of their time in such proximity to each other that they can’t help but get to know one another as human beings. Murchison saw it first-hand during the early days of integration.
“What happened was that the individual soldiers—the ‘dogfaces’ and the grunts—started interacting with each other and going home on pass together and meeting each others’ families, and that led to acceptance,” Murchison said. “The diversity you see now comes from that.”
It is not only up to individual soldiers to confront stereotypes. With the advent of the all-volunteer military, the Army as an institution has also made a concerted effort to combat discrimination. Several ugly incidents in the 1970s and 1980s made it clear that discrimination was undermining unit cohesion and overall readiness. The response was to create an equal opportunity program to end discriminatory practices and ensure all soldiers were being treated fairly.
Today, every brigade has an equal opportunity advisor like Bryant, a former infantry platoon sergeant who now spends his days teaching soldiers about the value of diversity.
“We all don’t look the same or think the same, and that gives you different perspectives when you are looking at a problem,” he tells the paratroopers who attend his class.
Bryant, who is black, said he challenges soldiers to confront all stereotypes, not just racial ones. He used himself as an example, noting that as an infantryman, he used to hold a low opinion of support-specialty soldiers. That all changed, he said, during a deployment to Iraq, when his base was attacked and he saw two cooks and an administrative clerk spring into action to secure the scene.
“I never thought those type of guys would be able to perform like that,” he said. Now, he tries to teach others with similar opinions the error of their ways.
Diversity is a philosophy that has backers in high places. In recent comments to the Associated Press, Lt. Gen Lloyd J. Austin, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said diversity is healthy for the military.
“We treasure diversity, because it brings in a lot of different viewpoints and blends in a lot of cultures,” he said. “It makes us better.”
After commanding an artillery battery of mixed black and white soldiers in 1958, Murchison retired from the Army and began a long and successful career as a businessman. Today, he lives in Tampa, Fla., where he is president of the Triple Nickel Alumni Association.
When a reporter reached him to comment on the 60th anniversary of Army desegregation, he was just sitting down to watch presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama give a speech on TV. Having grown up during a time when blacks and whites couldn’t drink from the same water fountain, he said, he was excited about the possibility that a black man could soon be living in the White House.
“There’s a lot of opportunity out there. Much more so today,” he said.
Trail blazers like Murchison deserve at least some of the credit for that. Murchison said the experiences he had as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division profoundly changed the way he thought about race and color.
“I don’t answer to African-American,” he said. “I’m All-American.”
(Posted on July 29, 2008)
Comments
“We treasure diversity, because it makes us better.”
“We treasure diversity, because it makes us feel better.”
Posted by starting to feel like a White man at 6:02 PM on July 29
The Roman army became diverse. That didn’t work out too well for them.
Posted by at 7:28 PM on July 29
“In Murchison’s day, blacks often were assigned to menial jobs supporting white soldiers, and there were few black officers.”
Those are called jobs where you don’t get killed, when the media isn’t spending a half-century telling inverted lies about how black soldiers were more likely to be killed in places like Vietnam.
Posted by at 7:36 PM on July 29
“Today, blacks account for 17 percent of all military personnel, and 11 percent of all Army officers. Black officers hold key positions at the most senior levels of command. Indeed, the man who now sits in General Gavin’s chair as commander of 82nd Airborne Division is a black man, Brig. Gen. Rodney Anderson.”
And the military continues to deteriorate because of affirmative action appointments that have reduced its effectiveness substantially.
This pro-black puff piece doesn’t tell anything close to the real truth, conveniently leaving out important facts and exaggerating others, while blatantly lying in some instances.
The only way we can know the truth from the MSM nowadays is when something, somebody, or some institution, fails or screws up miserably, allowing the cat out of the bag.
It took a collapse of the financial companies to reveal that non-white pressure coerced the banks and mortgage companies to lend money to people who couldn’t pay it back before the real reason for the collapse was known.
And, it will take a horrendous military defeat to finally realize that affirmative action appointments have reduced our military to dangerously low levels of competence. Only in this instance lives will be needlessly lost because of this multicult scheme.
Posted by Ranger at 7:44 PM on July 29
“Having grown up during a time when blacks and whites couldn’t drink from the same water fountain”
To exaggerate some… that’s a bit like saying, about White kids, “having grown up during a time when whites couldn’t own land”. It’s true. There are whites in Zimbabwe who can’t own land.
Posted by at 7:49 PM on July 29
Throughout history, armies have promoted “diversity” at the expense of their original racial base. Persia and the Ottomans come to mind, but even the army of the Roman Empire was more multiracial than the ethnocentric Italian army of the Republic.
This is why any true white patriot should be skeptical to any call to arms for nationalist empire building.
Posted by William Davies at 8:31 PM on July 29
I would give a month’s salary to be able to challenge the General to explain, on the spot and in detail, exactly how “Diversity” makes them better!! Other than the amorphous pablum about allegedly blending cultures and viewpoints, what could he possibly cite? More manure from the top of US military. It probably explains a lot about certain protracted military engagements, failures, etc.
Posted by HH at 8:54 PM on July 29
>>>We treasure diversity, because it makes us better.”
Now just WHY does this come across as phony as a $3-dollar bill? Can this #2 guy reall be serious with a pathetic claim like that? Or is he simply ordered to parrot the official party line?
Posted by Fed Up at 8:54 PM on July 29
As a former officer and 7 year Army veteran, i can tell you that there is more to color than just Green in the Army. What always struck me, as a Combat Arms officer, was how few blacks there were in the Infantry and Armor branches, and espeially in any elite units like Special Forces and Ranger Battalions. The heavy lifting in the Army is done almost exclusively by whites and Latinos, while most blacks are “in the rear with the gear”, in support and supply roles. want proof? check out any photo list of casualties from Iraq or Afghanistan, or compare the rosters of the average Infantry Battalion with that of the average Transportation Battalion. Notice the usual whiners about disproportionate “people of color” suffering in the military like Rep Rangel are strangely silent.
Sad to say, but the vast majority of criminality is also committed by black troops, as a closer examination of the numerous rapes of Korean and Japanese women by US servicemen will show. See also the various Drill Instructor scandals from Aberdeen and Ft Bragg, CSM McKinney, and even the recent notoriety of the soldier about to be executed.
It is true when they say the Military is a microcosm of society: the same groups work hard, the same groups don’t.
Of course, the Army does its best throught its EO Commissars to prevent these facts from getting in the way of their diversity mantra.
Posted by pickelhaube at 9:30 PM on July 29
Today at a movie I saw a preview for some Spike Lee movie about some black company fighting Nazis in Italy. This is going to be the whopper of the century from Hollywood. Of course, there was a flash image of one of the ‘black heroes’ engaged in a passionate kiss with a gorgeous Italian woman. Runs contrary to the record of black soldiers in WWII raping European women, like good old Emmett Till’s father who was executed by the military for raping French civilian women. Be aware, the history of WWII will be rewritten to make it a victory of black American soldiers in support units.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 9:45 PM on July 29
That’s why 90% or better of the dead military personel in Iraq are of white males?
Posted by Whiteplight at 10:06 PM on July 29
“Several ugly incidents in the 1970s and 1980s made it clear that discrimination was undermining unit cohesion and overall readiness. The response was to create an equal opportunity program to end discriminatory practices and ensure all soldiers were being treated fairly.”
For the most part this is a fair article, but here, the double-speak could not possibly get any thicker… I certainly do hope these ugly incidents can be made clear for us.
Posted by at 10:35 PM on July 29
In my experience, many Whites first learned contempt for Blacks when they entered the military. A little face to face exposure corrected a lot of positive preconceptions.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 11:36 PM on July 29
No sir, diversity does not make the army better. It stifles communication and adversly affects cohesiveness of the unit. It never ceases to amaze me when blacks rise thru the ranks it’s always “There’s more work to be done”. In other words, we won’t quit till all Whites are in the back of the bus!
Posted by at 12:08 AM on July 30
“Paratroopers were paratroopers, whatever their color was,” Murchison said.
Okay, let’s take this and similar statements at face value. What this shows is that racial diversity, at its best, isn’t any worse than racial homogeneity. It does not show that racial diversity is a strength.
“We treasure diversity, because it brings in a lot of different viewpoints and blends in a lot of cultures,” he said. “It makes us better.”
Show me a place that blends a lot of different cultures and I’ll show you a place where people are in conflict with one another. How are we benefited by bringing polygamists into our country?
Posted by Heteronormatively Privileged White Male Oppressor at 2:43 AM on July 30
There’s a bit of contradiction.
First, the author states, that in the army, the only color that counts is green, the priority is on getting things done and the loyalty to one’s unit overcomes all differences. So far, so good, that’s probably how it should be.
But then the talk about diversity as strength goes across the previous message about the army as unifying concept…
Posted by EW at 6:26 AM on July 30
Back in my military days, I once had a black subordinate tell me that the only reason I was giving him orders was because he was black.
Posted by at 8:56 AM on July 30
Hello! Our country hasn,t won a war since WW11 (aka white war 2) That is what white people are good at killing other white people. If you you talk to a lot of the educated people the Russians took most of the losses and are the ones who won that War! Really doesn,t matter who won because overall the white people are the ones who lost that war. England was so weakened they lost their empire and as a direct result are losing their country. A lot of people say the Romans lost their empire when they went multicultural. Its like a dark cloud of stupidity has descended on the world and it gets worse every day.
Posted by at 10:49 AM on July 30
If diversity “makes us better” then why did we used to win wars when our military was almost exclusively white and male vs. the new minority saturated “job corps” we have today that can’t even pacify medieval third world quasi-nations like Iraq and Afghanistan?
Posted by at 11:35 AM on July 30
“And, it will take a horrendous military defeat to finally realize that affirmative action appointments have reduced our military to dangerously low levels of competence. Only in this instance lives will be needlessly lost because of this multicult scheme.”
Potentially true, save for the fact that the former african kings rarely serve in combat units. I remember not so long ago that Charlie Rangel was all pepped up about re-instituting the draft, since he noted that statistically blacks were seemingly overrepresented in the armed forces. Much to his consternation, however, he later found out that they rarely serve in line units, thus, are inherently underrepresented from the standpoint of combat losses. So, had we done what he said, it would have actually increased black combat casualties because drafted soldiers are MUCH more likely to be assigned to line units. Needless to say, we stopped hearing from him on this issue.
Ranger, I am assuming that from your name, you served in army special ops. As you and I both know (i was an 18D SpecOps medic) black representation in SpecOps is almost non-existent. There are several, non-waiverable and very rigid requirements, one of which is for them to pass the swim test and another a minimum score on the ASVAB, one of which equates to IQ (min score 110).
Overall, since they rarely serve in key positions in line units, they have very little detrimental effect on combat performance.
As for screwing up your paycheck (they live for the clerical jobs) well, that’s another story.
Posted by Earl K. at 3:03 PM on July 30
All this talk of blacks doing well in anything is just that, talk. There’s never any depth to all the talk. If you just scratch the surface, anyone can see all the talk is just hype. Nothing of substance. Blacks don’t do well in anything they undertake. Just give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves every time.
I’m sure glad I’m not in the service anymore. I couldn’t stand watching this farce in action.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron at 3:23 PM on July 30
“We treasure diversity, because it brings in a lot of different viewpoints and blends in a lot of cultures,” he said. “It makes us better.”
Yes, like animal cruelty, Santeria and voodo, not to mention cutting off people’s hands for stealing, and stoning women to death for adultery, making them wrap themselves from head to toe in suffocating cloth.
A “lot of different viewpoints,” el dorko, is not a plus in the military where obeying orders is an absolute must.
America has always been the 800 pound gorilla in the world being better equipped, more advanced, ALWAYS with air superiority, but times are changing, and we will see…..MARK MY WORDS……in the NEAR FUTURE, forces that will cause a US military defeat of earth-shaking proportions.
You can bet money on it. Like every disaster that has befallen this country people will be saying, “Why couldn’t they see it? The signs were all there.”
Posted by LLRP at 3:26 PM on July 30
“And, it will take a horrendous military defeat to finally realize that affirmative action appointments have reduced our military to dangerously low levels of competence. Only in this instance lives will be needlessly lost because of this multicult scheme.”
Potentially true, save for the fact that the former african kings rarely serve in combat units. I remember not so long ago that Charlie Rangel was all pepped up about re-instituting the draft, since he noted that statistically blacks were seemingly overrepresented in the armed forces. Much to his consternation, however, he later found out that they rarely serve in line units, thus, are inherently underrepresented from the standpoint of combat losses. So, had we done what he said, it would have actually increased black combat casualties because drafted soldiers are MUCH more likely to be assigned to line units. Needless to say, we stopped hearing from him on this issue.
Ranger, I am assuming that from your name, you served in army special ops. As you and I both know (i was an 18D SpecOps medic) black representation in SpecOps is almost non-existent. There are several, non-waiverable and very rigid requirements, one of which is for them to pass the swim test and another a minimum score on the ASVAB, the one that equates to IQ (min score 110).
Overall, since they rarely serve in key positions in line units, they have very little detrimental effect on combat performance.
As for screwing up your paycheck (they live for the clerical jobs) well, that’s another story.
Posted by Earl K. at 7:49 PM on July 30
The day the U.S. military breaks down will be the day white nationalism will break free. It will happen in my lifetime.
Posted by Xenophon at 8:03 PM on July 30
“The Austro-Hungarian army was diverse. The Germans used to say they were “fettered to a corpse”.
Posted by at 8:58 PM on July 30
Wow, I just thought I was a bad and stubborn Marine. I rebelled a lot against poor leadership and had face to face confrontations with many of higher pay-grade (being a junior Marine). I’m surpised I didn’t get kicked out. Now that I think of it, with one exception, they were all black. From black drill instructors cozying up to the low-down brothers to poor morale in certain units on the bases I was at, it was black folk. There’s a saying that you can take the man out of the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of the man. I was with a grunt unit (mostly whites) and then a support unit (mostly blacks) and like the comments above, the difference is night and day.
Posted by at 11:22 PM on July 30
Schoolteacher wrote: In my experience, many Whites first learned contempt for Blacks when they entered the military. A little face to face exposure corrected a lot of positive preconceptions.
That wasn’t the case for me. Perhaps it’s because I was in the USAF, which had relatively few blacks (especially in my specialty). Also, “equal treatment” meant just that in the 1980s military — affirmative action or any other “leg up” for minorities simply didn’t exist. In fact, my 1st hint of black social pathology came about 2.5 years after I enlisted, but it happened off base. And since it contradicted my on-base experiences, I wrote it off as an aberration. It wasn’t until I left the USAF and moved to the Fort Worth-Dallas area that I realized that previous incident was no aberration, but was in fact TNB.
At any rate, I have no “contempt” for blacks. I also have no contempt for rattlesnakes, scorpions, black widow spiders, rats, fire ants or alligators, but I avoid them because they’re inherently dangerous creatures. I avoid blacks whenever possible for the same reason.
Posted by Strider at 12:40 AM on July 31
I read somewhere that when Spartacus led a massive slave revolt in ancient Rome, he ordered that the many different ethic groups. tribes and races of his own army be organized into segregated units with each other. I suppose he did this because he wanted a unified fighting army and to avoid whatever animosities these different groups may have had with each other, from being divided and ineffective against fighting the Roman Legions.
For example, suppose Visigoths, Scythians, and Vandals traditionally hated one another. The last thing Spartactus would have wanted was to have runaway slaves, with more animosity against tribal enemies than even their own cruel former masters, being too divided against each other to be a unified fighting force.
To everyone reading this post, does this example of Spartacus relate to today’s racial situation in our own military?
Posted by Harry at 8:35 AM on July 31
“There are several, non-waiverable and very rigid requirements, one of which is for them to pass the swim test and another a minimum score on the ASVAB, the one that equates to IQ (min score 110).” Posted by Earl K. at 7:49 PM on July 30
Yes, that’s true, Earl. But with the direction the military is now taking by pushing AA as vigorously as the government has been doing administratively, we can unfortunately look forward to the reduction of the minimum score requirements or an addition of points on the test for blacks just in order to force them into other units they don’t belong. Other requirements will be altered to favor them as well, just as has been done to get black officers in various positions they’re not qualified for.
But even if this is done, most of them still won’t be able to read a map efficiently enough to prevent making miscalculations, resulting in the bombardment of friendly forces by our own support units. And learning the tons of other subject matter necessary to perform on a competent level won’t be within reach for them either.
There’s no question lives will be lost. The brass know this, to some extent anyway, but like so many other things, collateral damage to them means friendly troops as well, and they are willing to accept the losses. They regard a few lost troops to incompetent blacks as a small price to pay to keep black mouths shut.
A good example of this attitude is the case of malfunctioning weapons.
As I have, you have probably talked to many Vietnam vets who all have one main complaint about the war back then, which was the constant jamming of poorly performing M-16’s, very often in the heat of battle, which caused numerous US casualties.
Repeated and numerous, constant complaints to the higher echelons were ignored, even though the brass were fully aware that the weapon was costing many lives. The contract between the government and the fat cat suppliers was one they didn’t dare interrupt for fear of going against the Pentagon and creating waves, so the situation continued to cost lives. Many US troops picked up and used captured AK-47’s until they were forced to turn them in.
The diversity at all costs mantra, they now recite as faithfully as any indoctrinated sect member, doesn’t have room for interruptions that point out the folly of allowing unqualified blacks into positions that could cost American lives.
The elites in the military are identical to those in the private sector. They can be counted on to keep up with what they’re doing even in the face of abject defeat and their possible destruction. I have no doubt their dying words after a botched friendly fire bombardment would be, “Diversity is our strength.”
Let’s convince our sons to refuse military service and let the multicult fools sacrifice theirs to their diversity god.
Posted by Ranger at 1:40 PM on July 31
” … diversity makes us better.”
Hopefully, this will one day go down in history as the most deluded superstition of our time.
“EXCELLENCE makes us better. If it is accompanied by diversity, that is merely coincidental.”
Posted by Thorfinnr at 1:45 PM on July 31
“To everyone reading this post, does this example of Spartacus relate to today’s racial situation in our own military?”
Posted by Harry at 8:35 AM on July 31
Well, I think you know the answer to that is “no,” Harry. In fact the fools constantly laud the fact that they believe the military to be a successful multicultural society.
Hard feelings between the races are common, but not overtly noticeable most of the time. As the poster above pointed out, he really didn’t get an idea of black animosity until he encountered it off base.
Another way it is revealed is in the field under combat conditions.
Posted by Ranger at 5:13 PM on July 31
My question is to the guy who said you don,t get killed in menial support jobs. In the usaf we had guys get killed by highlifts loading planes, having planes blown-up while being refueled.(by static electricity, i still have the news clipping).Don,t matter how you,re killed you are still dead. On tv they showed a guy in the navy getting sucked up in a jet engine. As i look back i kind of wish i could have standed the military for a career but it seemed like you were on a leash and to much pressure. The auto plants was where i found the bad blacks but the white people acted just like them in my opinion. Auto workers were all over the news because of the mitsubishi plant but in my opinion it was the perfect discription of the plant i worked at. nuff said
Posted by at 5:46 PM on July 31
“We treasure diversity, because it makes us better.”
Can this #2 guy reall be serious with a pathetic claim like that?
Or is he simply ordered to parrot the official party line?
Posted by Fed Up
———
If he were white, then that would doubtless be true.
But in HIS case, he thinks diversity is good, because diversity has been good for HIM.
Posted by voter at 10:19 PM on July 31
“Back in my military days, I once had a black subordinate tell me that the only reason I was giving him orders was because he was black.”
And because you were white!
Not surprising. I’ve had the same experience. Various times. But in my case it wasn’t in the military.
Posted by at 11:01 PM on July 31
“Overall, since [blacks] rarely serve in key positions in line units, they have very little detrimental effect on combat performance.
As for screwing up your paycheck (they live for the clerical jobs) well, that’s another story.”
Posted by Earl K.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ha! So typical. Though it’s slightly off-topic, I can’t help observing that it’s the very same situation in the large metropolitan police department where I serve. Though you’re probably seeing more of them on the street every year, the inside office positions are overwhelmingly staffed by black and Latin female “officers.”
Some of them literally wouldn’t know how to make an arrest if they had to. In my PD it is required for them to make at least one arrest per year. So they are GIVEN an arrest. Someone goes out and makes an arrest for them and then steers them through the paperwork. Thus, they have nominally made an arrest, at least on paper, and so they have complied with the requirement.
Posted by at 11:19 PM on July 31
The M-16 was not a poorly-engineered weapon. The problem was that it was sold as a self-cleaning rifle to the conscripts, while the long-serving professionals knew there was no such thing. The other problem was that the contractor producing the ammunition changed the propellant without bothering to tell anyone. This, of course was made worse by the direct action of the gas on the bolt carrier. Three other rifles used direct gas action that I can think of offhand: the Swedish Ljungmann-42 (and the Egyptian “Hakim”, a copy in 8mm X 57 Mauser,) the French FN-49 and -49/56, and the Egyptian “Rashid” carbine. I have shot grunge-grade Chinese 7.62mm X 39 ammo in my Rashid, and while afterward the inside of the receiver looked like I had been burning charcoal and bacon grease in there, the little thing worked flawlessly, as did the other rifles - I have never owned an LG-42, but the others I have mentioned were “keepers”.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 3:59 AM on August 1
We haven’t won a war since 1948 when Truman integrated the armed forces.
Posted by at 2:37 PM on August 1
“one main complaint about the war back then was the constant jamming of poorly performing M-16’s…Repeated and numerous complaints to the higher echelons were ignored, even though the brass were fully aware that the weapon was costing many lives. The contract between the government and the fat cat suppliers was one they didn’t dare interrupt for fear of going against the Pentagon and creating waves”
Ranger
— — — — —
Thanks for that. I would love to know just WHO those fat cat suppiers were! By name. THOSE are the people who should be lined up against the wall, someday, along with the groveling enablers who supported them.
Even if it was not a poorly engineered weapon, there was obviously a very severe problem with communication, with people who were fearful to rock the boat and rile the Pentagon by telling it bad news that it didn’t want to hear. Have all our wars, lately, been conducted mainly for the benefit of the suppliers? Well, I think the answer to that has become obvious.
There was just recently, in the past month or so, such a case exposed in Florida, with arrests made. Profiteeers and leeches like that we don’t need. They are the millstone around our neck.
Posted by browser at 4:35 PM on August 1
“EXCELLENCE makes us better. If it is accompanied by diversity, that is merely coincidental.”
Posted by Thorfinnr
— — — — —
One could even say, if it is accompanied by diversity, that is entirely in spite of it.
============
“MY QUESTION IS to the guy who said you don,t get killed in menial support jobs. In the usaf we had guys get killed by highlifts loading planes, having planes blown-up while being refueled.(by static electricity, i still have the news clipping).Don,t matter how you,re killed you are still dead.
As i look back i kind of wish i could have standed the military for a career but it seemed like you were on a leash and to much pressure. The auto plants was where i found the bad blacks …. the mitsubishi plant … was the perfect discription of the plant i worked at. nuff said”
5:46PM
— — — — —
The description you give above does indeed say enough.
There’s no denying that you can get killed in ANY sort of job. True enough. You can get killed, accidentally, just walking down the street or sitting in a chair. A pencil pusher in an office can die from a paper cut that gets infected and develops into blood poisoning. Does that mean that office paperwork is highly dangerous? Several thousand office workers, waiters, and shop clerks working in the World Trade Center were killed from out of the blue, just going about their daily business. Life doesn’t come with any guarantee!
But that’s not the point. The earlier poster’s point was that SOME jobs are far more dangerous than OTHERS. And so they are. It shouldn’t be difficult to see that.
You couldn’t have “standed” the military because of “to much pressure”? In just a few sentences of your “discription”, the quality of your writing reveals why you didn’t make it — either in the military or out.
And Btw, just what IS your question? You never asked it.
Posted by browser at 4:50 PM on August 1
In my experience, many Whites first learned contempt for Blacks when they entered the military. A little face to face exposure corrected a lot of positive preconceptions.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 11:36 PM on July 29
BINGO-in my unit EVERY black under age 30 or below E-5 cheated on their black wives with white women at every opportunity.
Posted by at 3:46 PM on August 2