Word: units
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...case, armor. It's an indication of the strains on today's military that West Point has changed the rules surrounding branching. Starting with the class of '02, anyone who chose to specialize in back-office fields like finance would still be required to serve first in a combat unit. Not coincidentally, the number of finance officers graduating from West Point this year matches an all-time low: two. Cadets get to pick their branches in order of their class rank; once the most desirable fields, like aviation and Medical Service Corps, are filled, the other cadets are assigned...
...Firstie Club, a rarity for him. He sips his beer as others gulp. Cadets from his company squeeze into the booth and talk excitedly. Some look back: Remember the kid who brought a skateboard to Air Assault School? Others look ahead. Pae is looking forward to posting to his unit in Germany. Great weekend trips. His parents had wanted him to post to Korea, but Pae resisted. Units in Korea are just as likely as units in Germany to deploy to Iraq, he told them. What Pae didn't tell his parents was just how ready he felt...
...then she fell in love--with the sky. After three years of summer war games, she got to spend time with an active-duty unit in Washington, flying Blackhawk helicopters--in her case, the deluxe, leather-seated, air-conditioned kind used to ferry VIPs around. She saw in the members of the 12th Aviation Battalion a value system that more closely mirrored her own. "Those guys are deadly serious about the important things. They really look after the safety of their crew and their aircraft," she says. "But they also know what's not important, and I think in aviation...
...been brought to West Point to teach Fundamentals of Tactics. His easy ferocity inspires wide measures of terror and devotion among cadets. "I just hate that guy sometimes," says one, "but I would feel safest going into combat with him over my other instructors, definitely." To Zielinski, whose unit at Air Assault School had to withstand McKinney's withering inspection, the weakest instructors are the ones who act like your buddy. "When I see someone being tough with me, like Captain McKinney," he says, "I think it's a good thing. You only learn more that...
When he graduated in 1993, Amerine was commissioned a lieutenant in what had essentially become the world's most muscular police department. His first taste of combat, during a Cuban-refugee riot in Panama in which every member of his unit was wounded, was not even labeled combat. None of his men got Purple Hearts. He was in a hotel in Kazakhstan when word came of the 9/11 attacks. Within weeks his team of 12 special-forces soldiers was dropped behind Taliban lines with little more than weapons, cash and a mission to start a Pashtun insurgency. In one fire...