Well, how old were they when they joined up? But I get your point. Not exactly a hard charger...
@Smokin Joe I never tried to run a survey,but almost ALL the 0-3's I knew in the army were all in their mid-20's. By the time you were in your 40's you were either a 0-4 or a civilian. Granted,I spent almost all my time in Special Forces,which may tend to distort the picture some due to all the Type A personalities that found a home there,but I am guessing the competition in Big Army for 0-4 slots is pretty intense due to the huge number of 0-3's and the relatively fewer available 0-4 slots.
And it goes without saying that in Big Army,the prime 0-4 slots are in command positions and reserved for the Ring Knockers. Anybody that thinks Affirmative Action is new to the army is obviously not aware of how West Point graduates are treated compared to "outsider scum".
Back when I was still working as an advisor with SFTG I once entered the base camp after midnight,and caught a perimeter guard sleeping in his sleeping bag with the mic from his radio ran inside the bag so he could hear the radio and wake up. I unplugged the mic,and stole his rucksack with his radio,and his SAW,and went on my way back to my tent without even waking him up. I DID wake up the senior SFTG NCO at the camp and tell him what I had done and gave him the classified radio,the rucksack,and the MG,though.
Come to find out this guy was a WP grad and a 0-3. He was looking a mite sheepish when he woke up the next morning and walked into camp after sunup and had to report his radio,his rucksack,and his M-249 missing,though. You ain't seen panic until you have seen a classified radio and a machine gun disappear. The SFTG cadre acted shocked and panicked,and I thought the guy was going to have a stroke due to panic before they admitted the senior NCO had all that stuff in his tent,and he could have them back right after explaining how and why he lost them to the Colonel coming up that morning to visit with him.
We all just KNEW he was going to get booted out of the program,as he should have been. Falling asleep on guard duty while on a combat mission is about as serious as screwing up gets in the army,but they ended up recycling him by letting him join a fresh student class getting ready to enter the final field test phase of the program,and damned if he didn't graduate and get assigned to a team. Or so I was later told,anyhow.
I am sure what happened is the WPPA got their heads together to make sure a fellow ring-knocker graduated,and to preserve the honor of WP,had him assigned to a training team for a year that didn't go anywhere,and then got him transferred to a conventional non-combat unit where he could do no harm.
Or at least I hope that is what happened.
The youngest and least experienced Private in the entire US Army KNOWS the biggest sin is to fall asleep on guard duty.
