I've seen so much of this **** from reservists that aren't properly trained or held to account when they are called out.
Ack,
...but it is an open forum and although we are not privy to the inner sanctum of this trial we should open this up for healthy debate.
I'm not tarring all reservists with the same brush, but lets be honest the D and S Platoon on KAF was pretty much a reservist run CoC. I have seen time and time again 18-19 and 20 yr olds who just don't have the maturity that their reg force peers have.
Not to say that regs don't have discipline probs by any stretch, but that have more consistant supervision and tighter control by more experienced leaders, not summer PLQ wunderkinds.
I'm going to take a another crack at the point I was trying to make sans having a nerve hit.
Jammer I really respect your service record and you've obviously must have worked with reservists a lot in your career but I still can't even come close to agreeing with your comments.
Your first comment about reservists not being properly trained. If that were the case, who is responsible for training reservists going overseas, their home unit or the regular force? Work up training is now in excess (stupidly) of a year. A year isn't long enough for regular force types to bring their reserve counterparts up to speed?
Arguing the maturity level of 20 year old privates doesn't jive. There is no difference between them.
I've been overseas to Afghanistan with a full reservist platoon twice including a few months D&S.
At the platoon level at least half of our platoon were university and college educated, among them professionals such as police officers, firemen, paramedics electricians teachers, even a doctor. More than half the troops being PLQ qualified.
One platoon walked away with 2 medals of bravery a meritorious service medal and bla bla BBQs and meetings with generals to the flavor of 'wow how are you doing so well being reservists?!' I'm told we had the most contacts out of any C/S including battlegroup which at the very least means we weren't picking our nose feeling balls on gate the whole time.
To address the PLQ summerkids comment. Running concurrently with my PLQ course was a regular force course. On the weekends they would dress up in stealth suits with masks on and run through out tent lines flipping cots and trashing crap. The whole summer we had to lock everything we had in our cars or in a sea can so it wouldn't get ruined or stolen on weekend leave. They would drive by our course and shout out go home ******* tunes rev the crap out of their go fast cars and peel away. Future leaders indeed.
We've all seen troops doing stupid things when their bored overseas. It's not that we're not professional, it happens. You're right in that it's a leadership responsibility to combat it, and it does get combated. My (reserve) platoon WO was terrifying. You step out of line a little and you might as well burn a Canadian flag on July 1st on parliament hill, this guy didn't piss around with discipline.
How would you stop to troops from playing quick draw (or whatever) while off duty in their own tent? Tricky.
It's a challenge being based in KAF when it comes to finding training and stuff to keep troops busy. For example, we were told we weren't even allowed to use the ranges there for gunfighter training. Only units coming in and special forces were allowed on the range.
You go to the medics or rad ops and ask for a couple of soldiers for a day or two to give your platoon some extra training and see the faces they make.
