Army Offers Big Cash to Keep Key Officers

All this policy does is give money to officers already willing to stay in. The amount of brain drain and combat experience that has already left is incomprehensible, and it seems that the Army has cooked the books based on the retention number this article reports - just as most battalions cook the books on their unit status reports in order to be deemed "trained and ready to deploy." Officers from Harvard, Yale, and USMA, are not staying in, only officers from less prestigious institutions are. (See also: Galloway column: Asking too much of too few)

For example, one brigade in Germany lost virtually all of their junior captains after rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom 05-07. The field grade officers (Year Groups 92-97) these captains worked for failed them. Rather than continue to execute their flawed plans they left the active Army. These captains watched as the field grades took the credit for anything good, and put the blame on them for anything bad. These captains had to continually look into the eyes of young soldiers and order them to execute the flawed plans from above. If the Courtney Massengale field grades had actually cared about the development of these captains when they were young lieutenants, taught them, and listened to them (and maybe even learned a thing or two from them) more may have stayed in. Instead, the field grades, only a few of which participated in Desert Storm as platoon leaders, happily went along worrying about themselves. Their evaluation reports, their own career progression, and their own families were the most important things to them, not the safety of their soldiers. They forgot all about their young lieutenants and captains, let alone the young troopers that actually executed their yes-man/career officer channel plans. I see these field grades continuing to beat the drums of war as they progress up the ranks with one command assignment followed by multiple year plush staff assignments... all the while young troopers continue to go to fight and die in the mismanaged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.