Angry Planet - The Unsung Heroes of the National Guard

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

The National Guard gets a bad rap, but they’re an important part of the military that’s little understood.This week on War College we try to change that.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. You know, maybe 40, 50 years ago when we had the draft and someone joined the guard, it was kind of like a way to avoid, you know, getting sent overseas. And that's really not the case anymore. You know, a soldier who joins the National Guard in 2019 has a pretty good chance of being deployed.

You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. America's National Guard is always there, always ready. For one weekend a month and two weekends a year, America's stateside soldiers are its militia, ready for the president to activate them at a time of trouble or act as a reserve force for ongoing operations overseas. The Guard is one of the oldest military branches, predating both the Army itself and the American. Revolutionary War. These days, it's a misunderstood part of America's military might and sometimes derided in pop culture. Here to help us better understand the Guard is news rep reporter Joseph LaFaveaveave

LaFave is a journalist who spent the better part of a year following the second of the 108 cavalry squadron of the Louisiana National Guard as it trains for war. Joseph, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. All right, so how did you get onto this story? What interested you about the National Guard? Why follow them? So I was a rookie reporter in Shrewport, Louisiana, and I was desperate for stories. My first story I covered up here was about Wiener Dog races at the casino, believe it or not. And another one I did was about a playground that had some graffiti. And I just happened to be driving by the armory, and I said, I don't know anything about what these guys do.

So I went ahead and called Louisiana National Guard's PAO office and was like, hey, can I come to see what you guys do? And I said, absolutely. So they had me out for a weekend. And I really just clicked with the guys in the unit. And I really got a sense of how special and how cool the unit's mission is, especially being in Louisiana where they're activated a lot for natural disasters. Okay, that's a good. That kind of leads into my next question. which is what, I don't think most Americans really understand what the guard is for and what they do.

So can you kind of get into the mission for me? Yeah, they have three basic missions. They have a local mission. They have a state mission and they have a national mission. So the local mission is every community has what's called an emergency preparedness council or, you know, something along those lines where it's groups of people and health care and law enforcement and fire and utilities and the National Guard sends a representative to those little councils and they all plan for local disasters. The National Guard's local mission is also to support funerals, military funerals and recruiting and different outreach activities like that.

Here in Louisiana, the National Guard does a lot of programs with dedication and getting Kate Diderston, the STEM. At the state level, they call their state level mission, the all-hazard mission, which means the guard is available to respond to any kind of disaster, whether it would be natural or manmade, to supply manpower, equipment, know-how. So here in Louisiana, we flood a lot. So the guard is always available to help sandbag, to evacuate people, and then they have a search and rescue mission.

And also with Louisiana, we have a lot. of petrochemical plants, the oil industry is huge, and we have nuclear plants. So they have a big mission in preparing for that kind of danger and that kind of environmental disaster. Then they have a national mission, which is they can become federalized and be sent over to war. So the unit that I follow, the second of the one of eight, they've actually made two wartime deployments with their parent outfit, which is the 256, Invertry Brigade Combat Team.

to Iraq. So they were there, no four or five as a armored battalion. And then they went back in 2010 as a reconnaissance scout battalion. So they're very, very flexible. They kind of, they meet whatever, whatever's demanded of them in the moment. Yeah. And it all depends on who they're working for. So when they're working for the governor, because that's who they report to directly. So they're doing that state mission, but they, the president can call upon them to go fill a need overseas. And, you know, with the war on terror and a two-front war, the U.S. Army kind of found itself in a position where they didn't have enough manpower in the active duty army.

And, you know, we don't have a national draft here in the U.S. So the president and the Secretary of Defense looked to the guard to fill that need because, you know, the state national guards are the reserve components of the U.S. Army that does all the combat. So your Army Reserve, they're going to be your engineers and your medical guys, but the National Guard is the one who has infantry and armor and artillery. How do you train when you need to be ready for anything? What's a good question?

And they kind of work in cycles. So every five years, different state national guards go into what's called the ready year. And during that ready year is the year that they're supposed to be, are they deployed or available for deployment. So depending on how far they are out from that ready year is the mission they're training. So the unit that I'm with, or the unit that I follow, they're about to go into their ready year. So right now they're focused on combat and, you know, their federal mission. But during the other years, they put more of an emphasis into their all-hazard's mission.

but they train at least once a year for that state mission as well. And it all depends on what's needed at the time. But it makes guard soldiers kind of special is they go to regular Army basic training so they get their soldier skills. And then when they come back to their state organization, that's when they get the all-hazard's mission. And that's when they get that training. So it's an ongoing process.

And something that the guard has been working on is getting more, of their soldiers full-time to be able to work on things like that. Here in Louisiana, there's a guard unit that is a full-time, you know, the guys show up for 40 hours a week, and their mission is to respond to chemical disasters and the CBRN mission. So the guard's really trying to bring more of its force into a, we're here all the time stance instead of a, we're here one week and a month stance. Are they stretched thin at all? It seems like they're doing an awful lot. Yeah, they definitely are, and they definitely have a variety of, you know, the different missions they have, they are stretched pretty thin.

And, you know, just like with the regular Army, they're kind of facing not a recruitment crisis, but it is, you know, recruitment and retention is something that they definitely focus a lot on. And I've seen them just a couple months ago at one of their home station drills. You know, that was kind of the focus of the weekend, was trying to give as many soldiers as they can that were about to separate to stay, you know. And they're able to, because they're the guard, they have a lot of flexibility in the kind of contracts they can offer. But, you know, the entire army is having a issue, you know, fill in their ranks. When you say flexibility, meaning that depending, like, you can meet the needs of the different people that you're recruiting. Like some people may have come in for just, you know, typically the one week into month, somebody may come in for two weekends a month. How does that work?

Yeah. So they have a lot of, like, for example, The one I saw, the soldier signed a one-year re-up contract that would extend until next summer, basically to get the unit through their annual training next year, which will be JRTC. And they can work out deals where, because a lot of the guardsmen actually live out of state, and they can work in deals like, hey, you know, you only have to show up for, you know, every other weekend, or you can do a bunch of drills back to back to back. So they have a lot of flexibility

How they can allow their soldiers to meet their time And who are the soldiers that sign up for the guard? Who are these people? Where do they come from? That's an interesting question because it's really all walks your life So about 30% are soldiers that are coming off active duty That have done their active duty commitment And they want to stay in to meet their 20-year requirement But they don't want to do it full-time.

the other third would be soldiers who want to serve but they either have prior commitment so they either have you know families especially in Louisiana where like family is really important here you know a lot of guys don't want to move away from from their family so they want to stay local and you know there's a lot of students a lot of people that work in like the oil field and stuff like that so traveling all the time but they still want to serve and then the last third especially in here Louisiana is soldiers that genuinely just want to serve their community and they want to serve their state. You know, with all the different hurricanes that we've had in Louisiana and the damage done,

it's not a theoretical admission. It's a very, it's almost a guarantee that if you join Louisiana National Guard, you will be responding to an after disaster, and it probably will be either in your community or in a community that you know. So last summer I asked some of the soldiers, some of the infantrymen, you know, because they were talking about how much they'd like being infantrymen. I said, well, you know, if you like it so much, why did you decide to do the guard and not active duty? And they said, well, you know, we really want to serve our state, too, you know, because they had out of lost homes or new family members of lost homes. And a lot of them have that memory of a National Guard soldier coming up the street, the flooded street, and a big MRAP or a big Humvee and pulling them out of the house or handing out in MREs.

that's a big reason why, at least in Louisiana, a lot of people are drawn to the guard. Do you think the culture is different state to state, then? Yeah, I'm sure. I haven't spent a ton of time with other states' national guard, but I talked to a lot of guards from Puerto Rico over the summer, and that was, they kind of echoed that sentiment with that they like the all-hazard mission. I think in other states, for that mission, more theoretical, you get a lot more people that are either students or a lot more people who are coming off active duty but still want to make their time.

That's interesting to me. I would be really interested to know what the different guard cultures are state to state. But I mean, that's a whole other conversation. Who are some of the personalities that have really stuck out to you? Who are some of the soldiers you've met that have made an impression? Definitely the squadron executive officer, Major Steve Liebert. He's one of the most squared away individuals that I have ever met and just funny and very good at what he does. You know, he's done two wartime deployments, the first as a platoon leader of an armored, you know, of an armored platoon in Iraq. And one of the soldiers, his name is, I would just give his first time, he was the

infantryman that I, that I talked to. He's very proud of an infantryman. And he comes from a long lineage of military. He comes from a long military family. His dad was a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam, and I think his grandfather served. And he takes a lot of pride in being infantry men. He's very squared away.

At the same time, he's one of the funniest guys I know, and he has this running joke where he'll see a soldier either slapping off or doing their wrong thing, and he'll come up. And they go, hey, man, who's your recruiter? I want to talk to him. He's a really funny guy. I, the HHT first sergeant, Sergeant Brandon Lee, or Sergeant Lee, he works full-time as a firefighter paramedic, and he's also the first sergeant. And, you know, I was down at AT, at 18th annual training at XTC last summer.

You know, it was 108 degrees. It was just miserable, and I'm not, I'm not a soldier. I don't have any military training, so I'm just out there suffering. But every time I saw Sergeant Lee, because he's just this big gregarious. like he's just a present. Every time I saw him, I just started smiling and we laughed. And I haven't really met a lot of people in the guard that are standoffish or that are kind of like angry or mean.

Like they're, it's a really good group of soldiers that, and that's one of the reasons why I keep going back is because I just enjoy spending time with them. Do you think that's different from, do you think the culture there is different from, say, just the regular army? I think it's probably, so I, again, I haven't spent a ton of time with the regular Army, but I would imagine it's a little bit more laid back, especially when they're not in the field. And that comes from not so much the fact that they only do it one month or one week in a month. I think it comes from the fact that because they all serve in the same community, a lot of

people have developed 20-year friendships and relationships. And like, for example, Master Sergeant McNight was talking to me. He's the troops, or he's the squad. He's a squad. Squadron's readiness NCO or he's the operations NCO for the squadron. And he was telling me, you know, I remember some of these guys when they joined at 18 and now they're almost 40. I've been to war with them twice. I know their wives. So because they stay in the same geographical location and because they stay in the same unit, I think that the bonds between the guardsmen really develop over the years.

And that's something you kind of don't see in the regular army because they move around so often. So it's kind of a small little family and even across different units in Louisiana National Guard. You know, a lot of guys know each other. And it's because of that closeness and all the time they spend together over the years. They really develop, you know, good rapport with each other. And that's definitely apparent. I think that's what comes across to me is why they're so they kind of appear laid back and having fun. But at the same time, you know, when they're.

lose somebody or someone gets hurt or someone gets killed, I think it's felt, you know, a lot harder, or maybe not a lot harder, but just as hard as anyone else. What about the soldiers that were veterans of more traditional branches? Do they have a different attitude when they're in the guard? What do they bring to the table? Well, they bring that wartime experience, and they seem to jump riding the leadership roles, and they are eager to pass that, that wartime experience off to the junior soldiers. And at the same time, the junior soldiers know, like, oh, that's Sergeant So-and-so. He's been downrange, you know, four times, and he's squared away.

And he's a good guy to go to to talk to about, you know, if I need help with this. Or, you know, the second O'W is really working this year on field craft, you know, surviving out in the environment. So they turn to these guys who have done multiple deployments to kind of teach the younger soldiers, hey, this is how you stay clean when it's 108. this is how you can make your MRE taste a little better. This is how you can keep your clothes a little bit better. And a lot of the veterans, especially active duty guys or guys who have been in a long time,

they have different ways they wear their uniform, or they have different ways they wear their helmet or different ways they wear their plate carrier. And a lot of guys try to imitate that because they're trying to gain that knowledge, that institutional knowledge. So what I've seen is almost like a coaching environment. you know, where the veterans will kind of take some of the younger soldiers,

I mean, their win. It's a very, it's a very positive environment. You know, there's not, there's a little bit of hazing, and I've seen a couple guys get smoked, you know, maybe do push-ups for them. For the most part, it's a very, it's a very positive organization, and they're all about development within the organization. And that's why the second one of ways does such a good job when they go out during training missions.

So you've been, how many, How many months have you spent with this cavalry squadron now? About 18. Okay, so it's been more than a year. Yeah, so I started following them in, I think, October of 2017. And then I did four days with them at Camp Shelby in May when they were out there doing gunnery training. And then I went back in July, I think it was August. I think it was July, in the July when they were doing their rotation at XC.

which is the exportable combat training capability, which is essentially just a large brigade-sized training event where they have, you know, they're out there for three weeks and it's a simulated combat environment. So I was out there with them for four days while they were doing that. And then after XCTC, I decided to do a long series of articles about, okay, how does the Guard Commander come out of annual training and spend the next year? getting their soldiers ready for JRTC this year. And JRTC is the Joint Readiness Training Center down at Fort Polk. And that's a simulated deployment for, I think it's three or four weeks.

And what the Guard unit will do is they'll show up to Fort Polk and they'll be in a simulated, it's a simulated deployment. And there'll be three weeks to have a mission to execute. And they'll be fighting against an opposition force that's played by active duty soldiers there at Fort Polk. And once they complete that JRTC rotation, they'll be certified for deployment. So they're looking at a deployment in 2020. But to get there, they have to train up and successfully complete their JRTC rotation this year. So my pieces are focused on, okay, how does the commander take his soldiers and get them in shape and get the unit

ready to go into JRTC and go on deployment? So what are some of the challenges that come up during that there's a lot of unique challenges uh one of the biggest that i've seen so far is readiness so ready as being uh soldiers health physical fitness soldiers getting all of their administration stuff administration stuff ready like i was talking to some of the squadron uh you know the senior officers and they kind of said you know we want our soldiers to be prepared to go to war but our biggest challenge, or our first challenge, is getting the soldiers healthy and it's been a straight-up ready to go to war. So once, you know, when they're at there, when they're at, when they're state side,

you know, their biggest challenge is maintaining that readiness. Now, if they get called up to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, you know, they're going to have four months straight to get them trained to go fight. But it's that in-between time, they're just trying to maintain that readiness and that standard. And that's a lot harder for guard units because commanders only have eyes on their soldiers two or three days out of the, out of the month versus an active duty unit. You know, soldiers live and breathe and work all together every day at the same base. So the guard commanders don't have as much direct control over what their soldiers do and what

they eat and, you know, how much they exercise outside of drill. So that's a big challenge that I think, you know, I've seen. Another challenge is, you know, a lot of the guys are real, you know, real busy. There's a lot of students, a lot of guys working, so it's hard to get them to come in and do extra training or do extra details. And it's just a different organization. And it's, you know, that time constraint produces different challenges for the guard that the active duty component doesn't have to deal with. But at the same time, you know, the guard soldiers are required to meet the same standards as an active duty soldier. So they have to qualify with their weapon. They have to qualify with their crew serve, their crew surf weapon. They have to pass their PT test. They can't promote. You know,

They have to pass their medicals. They have to pass their drug screens. So they're held to the same standard. The commanders just have very little time compared to their activity components to enforce those standards and make sure their soldiers are meeting the requirements that they need to. It's interesting, though. The responsibility is more on the individual soldier in those situations, especially like, you know, you're in Louisiana where even the food and gas stations is amazing. Yeah.

Trust me. I've gained 40 pounds. It's Louisiana. You can't not eat all the amazing stuff that's there. Yeah, we've got a culture here. What happens when a guard, a soldier's, what I'll call their civilian obligations, butts up against their National Guard obligations? So, like, what if a student has a test that he has to take or a project or something? That's an excellent question.

I'm glad you asked it. Because the Guard is really focused on supporting and, you know, working in partnership with those civilian organizations. So a guard soldier can be called up and taken out of work or out of school. And by law, you know, I don't know how it works for school, but I know that for work, by law, when a soldier is called up and is on active duty orders, whether it be for a state mission active duty or for a federal mission active duty, you know, they have to, that employer has to hold that spot open for them to come back to. At the same time, the Guard understands that the huge burden on the employers. So what's interesting is I spend a lot of time with the squadrons operation officer who works full-time with the State Guards organization and does a lot of their policy and a lot of their administration stuff

as far as rating this goes. And there's a big push in the Guard to recognize the sacrifice that not only families and soldiers make, but also that the employers make to support this mission. And that kind of goes back into the fact that it's a community organization. It takes the whole community to support the guardsman, just the way the guardsman supports the community. It goes both ways.

And that's something that when I spend a lot of time, a lot of commanders will say like, hey, you know, I just want to know, I just want you to know that, you know, we understand that this is a big burden on the community and the employers to take these guys out. And, you know, we want to show our thanks and show our recognition for that. So as you've been doing this, and you're, you know, you tell people that you're, you're essentially following the National Guard.

What has the reaction from the community been like? And, you know, what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions in the public that the public has about the National Guard? Yeah. So the United States, it's not a history of some, of some poor optics, you know, like Kent State and things like that. So there's a big misconception about what their mission is. You know, that law enforcement mission, that crack control mission is not, that's not their forte. You know, here in Louisiana, the chief law enforcement officer in every parish, like, we don't have counties, we have parishes. And the law enforcement responsibility is all to the parish president and the head of the parish.

They can call in the guard. You know, you've heard that expression call on the National Guard. Right, right. As police have become more militarized, you know, for better or for worse, the Guard has really stepped aside from that crowd control mission. So that's really not what they do anymore. You know, they're more focused on the all-hazard's mission. And when I was talking, because I went down to Jackson Barracks, which is the National Guard, we're the National Guard headquarters. And talking to the officer who oversees that stateside mission.

He was very adamant that the guard is there to support. They're not there to direct law enforcement operations. They're not there to direct, you know, local emergency missions. They're there to support and support only. You know, they can be asked by the parish president to do things, but they're not going to roll in and say, hey, we're taking over this scene and we're taking over this incident. Another misconception that I've heard is, you know, people think that they're somehow less professional on the rest prepared than their active duty counterparts.

And I haven't seen that. And like I said, I haven't spent a ton of time with the active duty side, so I'm not an expert on it. But from what I can tell, when the guards soldiers put on their uniform, they're very serious about being soldiers. And there's not a lot of taking it, you know, not taking it serious and joking around. I mean, they're acutely aware of the fact that if they don't, that these skills that they're learning here could be necessary to stay alive.

And that comes from the fact the units had two war time deployment. So that, like, that, you know, maybe 40, 50 years ago when we had the draft and someone joined the guard, it was kind of like a way to avoid, you know, getting sent overseas. And that's really not the case anymore. You know, a guard, a soldier who joins the National Guard in 2019 has a pretty good chance of being deployed. And it's not really like a, and the guys know that. You know, last year in May, I was down there on an artillery range. while the guys were shooting borders and the news came in that

the U.S. had just struck targets in Syria and the mood got very somber because it was the first time these 18 and 19 year old kids realized like hey we could be sent over there you know in the next couple of years and it's not really that theoretical oh you know if the Russians invade will be called up I mean you guys know that the army is going to look to them

to go overseas just as they are their active duty counterparts. And Secretary Mattis, before he left his position, was very adamant about bringing the guard into the total force of the U.S. So that when the commander-in-chief asked the Secretary of Defense, how many soldiers can you send me? You know, he's going to include those guard soldiers in his estimate. Do you think the spirit of the 60s, not just Kent State, but like as you said, people kind of using the National Guard to duck active military service, does that kind of haunt them? Do they consider that?

Is that something that they're aware of? I think that the senior commanders are aware of those optics. I think that the more junior soldiers aren't really, number one, because they're so young. And number two, the fact that the Guard has been such an integral part of the war on tear and has gone overseas and fought and died, just like their activity counterparts, that's kind of what the everyday National Guard soldiers

thinks about themselves. So while at the state level, those bad optics might be in the, in the background, and they're, you know, they're definitely aware of how they could become perceived by the community. The fact that they've had such an important role in the war on terror, and, you know, the fact that a lot of guardsmen have died overseas, you know, fighting, I think those optics have kind of been replaced. And I think that it's not something that the everyday, you know, junior level National Guard soldiers going to think about if that makes sense. If you could make the public understand one thing about the National Guard, what would it be? I think if I can make the public aware of one thing about the National Guard, it would be that

they're very involved in the everyday lives of the community. And when a lot of, especially here in Louisiana where there's a lot of rural towns and and, you know, by U-towns, you know, the public's main interaction is going to be with guardsmen. And these guardsmen are not guys looking to skate out and take a, quote, unquote, easy way out. They're guys that really, guys and women that really want to serve their community, and they're proud to do that. The guard is the primary point of contact that most civilians will have with a military unit. Joseph Lefebvre covering the National Guard for News rep. And how many more pieces are coming out in that series, do you think?

Probably five or six. Excellent. It's quite a big piece of work that really tells a story that I don't feel has been told before, especially with the National Guard. Thank you so much for coming on War College and telling us all about it. Thank you, sir. That's it for this week, War College listeners. Thank you so much for sticking around with us.

This is the last episode that I will be producing and hosting by myself here in the next 24 hours or so. Another episode is going to hit. It's going to introduce you to some of the new voices, and you'll get an idea of where we're going in the future. And then next week, an interesting discussion about what the hell is going on in Syria.