THE US Army is struggling to find recruits, according to the New York Times and other outlets. Only the Marines are meeting their targets.
‘It’s dark days for the Army, Navy and Air Force’. They have tried almost everything to bring in new people. ‘They’ve relaxed enlistment standards, set up remedial schools for recruits who can’t pass entry tests, and offered signing bonuses worth up to $75,000.’ Yet, despite all these efforts, the three services together have fallen short by more than 25,000 recruits this year.
This crisis explains, in part at least, a letter sent out by the US Army earlier this year that has come to light. Confirmed as authentic, it informs nearly 2,000 of the former service personnel they fired under the Biden administration’s Covid vaccine mandate that ‘as a result of the rescission [or cancellation, as most of us would say] of all current Covid-19 vaccination requirements, former soldiers who were involuntarily separated for refusal to receive the Covid-19 vaccination may request a correction of their military records from either or both the Army Discharge Review Board (ADRB) or the Army Board for Correction of Military Records (ABCMR)’. How very magnanimous.
Brigadier General Hope C Rampy, Army Director of Personnel Management, its author, also directed the former service personnel to some easy-to-find military recruiters. How thoughtful! Didn’t she think they deserved something of an apology first? And what about a personal offer for each of the job or position back?
More than 8,400 service members were kicked out of the military due to the vaccine mandate. Thousands more had their requests for religious exemptions rejected. According to the military news website Task and Purpose, 8,945 soldiers, 10,800 airmen and guardians, 4,172 sailors, and 3,717 Marines were denied these.
I met one former senior army officer this summer who’s suffered the consequences of refusing. Her stellar career was brought to a brutal halt because she stood her ground, both on her right to medical autonomy and her religious freedom of conscience. She told me the vaccine mandate had stripped the army of a cadre of its best people. It had left her and many others high and dry, without livelihood or compensation.
It was hard not to see that the experience had shattered her confidence, as well as her confidence in the country she had made it her career to fight for. She and her fired former colleagues deserve far better than this letter. They deserve an apology, their former position back and back pay for the intervening period. This is money Joe Biden would have far better spent than the $4.1billion he’s directed to LGBT initiatives had he any sense or moral conscience. Unfortunately he has neither.