Shake & Bake.
This is coolbert:
“A Shake ’n Bake sergeant was one of the lesser known evils to come out of the Vietnam War . . . These twerps would attend NCO school for eight weeks and come out buck sergeants. No experience, little skills, but a great big attitude.” - - by James Janos ( Jesse the Body Ventura).
Here is a web site for the Vietnam era "Shake ’n Bake" program for infantry sergeants.
The type of program that would be useful if the draft was reinstated. A limited draft that would induct only the best and brightest.
A program that would provide numbers of "instant" leaders that would be infantry squad leaders. Draftees to lead other draftees at the most basic level. The best leading the best. It CAN be done!!
From all accounts I know of, this program WAS a success. I have an informant who commanded an infantry platoon in Vietnam. He DID encounter some Shake ’n Bake sergeants and said THAT THEY WERE VERY GOOD!
Keep in mind that to achieve the rank of sergeant E-5 or even Staff Sergeant E-6 in six months of service was UNHEARD OF. Normally it would take an enlisted man four to six years to become a Sergeant and then maybe eight to ten years of service before being promoted to Staff Sergeant!!
It seems that Jesse the Body, the great professional wrestler, ex-Navy SEAL, has done a great injustice to these volunteers. And that is what they were. Volunteers who knew what they were getting into from the start.
According to this web site, the famous Army Colonel David Hackworth was the one who designed the program. David recently passed away. Perhaps the most skilled and able soldier of the era from World War Two through Vietnam.
That in itself says a lot about the Shake ’n Bake program. NOT just for show. WAS for real.
Could work again if needed.
[I have been in contact with Dr. Horton and another ex-Shake ’n Bake regarding the details of this program. I hope to blog further on Shake ’n Bake.]
coolbert.
1 Comments:
It just goes to show,that when the promotion process is not frozen for despicable egalitarian racial quota reaons, as currently is said to be in force, there is no shortage of capable, intelligent nd otherwise qualified material. One complaint that I've found is almost always made by military who otherwise have no other complaint, is that the rich do not do their share, do not fight, will not send their children into peril, and the equivalent. Thus arises the discussion of conscription, and, as here, it is not about numbers so much as how to get the quality or the fairness of all classes doing their share. This requires really, though, that we not place obstacles like racial quotas in the way of the participation of the ambitious; i.e. the ambitious for promotion on a merit basis. In the racialized anti-merit society of today, even the military in wartime is drawn into the vortex of randomizing the informatiom provided by the merit criteria.
8:04 PM
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