Lunch at Chili's...Southwest Eggrolls, Santa Fe sizzlin' Quesadillos. ( By the way, adding cilantro to something doesn't automatically qualify it to be called "Santa Fe" or "Monterey" or "Southwest".  I don't like cilantro).  Anyway,  while we were eating, MamaCharlie pointed a woman out to me, discreetly of course, and I casually glanced over my left shoulder and, discreetly, spewed some precious eggroll onto my shirt.  She was seated a couple of tables away.  She looked to be about 5' something,  dark hair,  early twenties, and she must have weighed at least 300 lbs.  Her thighs were as big around as my waist.  She had butt cheek hanging over both sides of her chair.  Her shirt strained to contain melon-sized breasts (a necessary counter-balance to that booty).  As she waddled out of the restaurant later, I couldn't keep my eyes off her.  My blood boiled.  I was angry...sooooo angry.  What right do I have to be angry at some woman's weight?  She was in BDUs (or whatever they are called nowdays).  My first thought when I glanced back at her was how many really good soldiers  I had had to put out of the Army because they couldn't lose a few pounds.  And here is the Big Mamoo waddling around in my Army. 

The rest of the lunch conversation between MC and me was a trip down memory lane.  MC has been having some difficulty since our grandaughter  married a GI who is now in Afganistan.  Watching what our girl is going through has brought back a lot of old painful memories of waiting around for news, good or bad, from the front.  We went over some of those times and the effects they have had on our family.  Since I retired from the Army and have had to watch my son head off in Harm's Way three times, I have a better understanding of what it must have been like for her. 

Some of the discussion drifted into the area of standards and the way the Army has adopted "situational" ethics since DESERT STORM.  The weight control issue is a great example.  The whole idea of it was political from the start.  General Bernard Rogers went all draconian on weight standards in the Army as soon as he became the Chief of Staff of the Army.  Several attempts were made to find a "fair and equitable" means of enforcing the new standards and were implemented and rejected with time.  They finally settled on a method employing a formula for determining body fat percentage using neck measurement, waist measurement, height and weight.  But it was mostly bogus and didn't turn out to be fair at all.  Consider:  a soldier with a 16 1'2" neck who wound up on the weight control program could gain weight and get off the program if he increased his neck measurement to 17 1/2".  But a soldier could lose 40 pounds and not get off the program if he didn't get his body fat below the max allowed (by the formula).  This  actually happened at Fort Leonard Wood;  an E-6 lost almost forty pounds, putting him twenty pounds below his allowed weight but was discharged, because the way the reg worked, once a soldier got on the program the only way off was to make the body-fat standard, even if he were below his max allowed weight.  I was once ordered to shut up ("Be at ease!!!") because I pointed out that half the NFL couldn't pass the Army's weight standards...but who would you rather share a foxhole with...Warren Sapp or some beanpole who smoked three packs a day and made weight at every check?  Sigh...

In the late sixties and early seventies, every NCO in the Army played hide-and-seek with his soldiers, following the burning rope aroma through the barracks and work spaces (unless, of course, the NCO was burning a rope, too).  Then, when Vietnam wound down, the Army adopted an apologetic stance on drugs.  So many users were blaming their habits on the war that if we caught someone smoking or snorting or shooting up, we couldn't put them out of the Army until they had the opportunity to de-tox for a couple weeks, then go into group therapy and counseling for weeks, then a year of probation and re-hab.  If the soldier came up hot on any of the dozen or so surprise whiz-quizzes required by the program, he would start all over again...up to three times...before putting him out of the Army could even be considered.

In the eighties, the drug tolerance program changed.  Under the new program, a soldier got one chance to straighten up...without mandatory help...second hot test, you were gone...period...unless you were an NCO.  Any NCO who came up hot was processed for discharge immediately.  That constitutes a significant change in attitude, wouldn't you think?  Seems like there's a few NCOs in our current force who have been popped for weed but are still going strong. 

Well...times change and I know it is hard to keep people in the Army nowdays with wars and deployments and all.  But it seems like things that are necessary to keep a fighting force ready to fight...like not being high and being able to waddle two miles in less than an hour and a half...should remain constant.  But noooOOO.  Here is how it works in practice:  The first item on the agenda in our command and staff meeting the morning we were notified that we were going to be part of DESERT SHIELD/STORM was called "Stop Loss".  Everyone has heard of this recently in connection with our current wars...but at the time Stop Loss hadn't been used much at all and most folks had never heard of it.  What it meant was that any soldier who had been on his way out the door was stopped and returned to the barracks...he wasn't going anywhere for the duration.  That included those who were being discharged for not meeting weight or PT standards.  In my unit, that meant that a half-dozen soldiers who had thought that they were getting on a plane soon,  ...weren't...and two or three who were about to be discharged for weight/PT  would also be sticking around for the war.  The rest of the story is that the week we got back from the Desert we were told to re-instate all of those discharge proceedings immedieately,  even if the soldier was now within the weight standards.  "It was okay for you to go to war, fatty;  we didn't mind using your skills and bravery for a while, but the war's over and you're too fat again...even if you aren't"

In the middle of the fight to overturn this stupid policy, I (and a large number of other First Sergeants) found out we were going to have to retire in ninety days, as well.  We were no longer of value to the Army, apparently.

Well, isn't it amazing what kinds of memories and emotions one fat soldier out in public can muster?  I still love soldiers and I do know that life isn't fair so why should I expect the Army to be?   I think that standards are necessary but shouldn't be so flexible as to erase the purpose of the standards in the first place.