General Discussion

as an active duty artillery officer during the months leading up to my own orders to Vietnam. Elements of the Kansas Guard's 69th Brigade were deployed to Vietnam in 1968. My job as a Second Lieutenant fresh out of artillery school was to ready artillery battery personnel for close support of infantry units. What I quickly found out is that those guard enlisted men and officers were mostly too incompetent to successfully carry out their upcoming missions. And compounding this problem was a prevailing attitude that overseas deployment was "not what we signed up for". Too many had expected that their National Guard enlistment would shield them from seeing duty in combat zones.

The first battery that I took out for trials on the Fort Carson, Colorado firing range failed miserably. That would set the tone for what was to come in the following weeks. The unit leaders were given maps of the location to set up their guns and the coordinates of their assigned targets. The objective was for the battery personnel to correctly lay in the guns and put fire on those targets, mainly old tanks and other equipment placed out on the range. Our job as safety officers and supervisors was to check their work as they set up and prepared to fire. We were not to interfere if mistakes were made, unless those mistakes would endanger lives and property on the base.

To make a long story short, the battery set up 180 degrees out...in other words, they were preparing to fire in the opposite direction from their designated targets. We halted them as they prepared to fire, since their guns were aimed back at the base instead of down range. Naturally, their officers were embarrassed to no end. What's more, the fears of many of the Guard members that their meager training back in Kansas had not been adequate for what was to be expected of them in Vietnam. And we as trainers had too little time to work with them before they were to be deployed.

Later Army Reserve experience in training other states' Guard units during two summers after my own discharge from active duty confirmed the problems Guard members faced. These issues were systemic. Their training was inadequate. Fast forward to present day and our National Guard units are being pressed into service for other jobs for which they are not adequately trained...as law enforcement in this case. They are being misused...criminally...by the Trump Administration.