Deplolyment to Dwell Time

I recently attended the 18th Airborne Corps Engineer Conference at Fort Bragg, NC. It was an inspiring visit, not so much by the things I learned while there, but from the looks of determination I saw on the faces of those in attendance. You see, these warriors are preparing (again) for a new "road to war" later this year. The main engineer unit involved is the 20th Engineer Brigade, but the Corps staff will be deploying as well. To get a feel for the sacrifices these Soldiers deal with every day, you had to see the number of hands that went up when the Commander of the 20th Engineer Brigade (Colonel Peter DeLuca) asked for a show of hands from those who had been to either Iraq and Afghanistan three times or more since 2003. Lots of hands were raised. In 2003, Army objectives for the active force was to have a ratio of 1:3 for years deployed to dwell time (back home). The objective ratio was 1:5 for reserve component Soldiers. Today, for a large percentage of Soldiers assigned or attached to the Corps the deployment-dwell time ratio is 1.3 to .5 (that's "point" five!). Talk about being motivated and willing to serve! If we saw such motivation from the average American civilian, we'd have a a bunch doing something more inspiring than sitting in front of their wide-screen HD TV sets worrying about who the next "American Idol" is going to be.