Before deploying was "cool"

We were in Panama 1975, running around in the jungles for three months, 2/505Inf, 82nd ABN.

We didn't have "deployments" in my days, overseas assignments even in combat were just regular individual tours -- the only difference between an overseas tour and a PCS was that the tour had an EXPECTED return date. Whole units only moved during a large build-up or draw-down of forces.

My first was to Vietnam, 23 July 1968, returning 22 July 1969.

Personally I think the system of individual replacements was more effective than unit deployments during a protracted situation. Of course when a unit initially arrived there were the same learning problems that come with deployments, but after those first few months the unit would remain effective as old hands got short, then left, and new replacements trickled in -- there were generally enough old hands to take care of training the new guys. With unit deployments, the whole unit starts out as new guys, learns how to operate in the area, then everyone gets short, an entire unit of new guys arrives, and all the old guys go home, leaving the new unit to figure it all out on their own. And with the shorter length of deployments, a unit is getting short quite soon after they actually know what they are doing.

And, of course, in our last prolonged situation the Army fell into the ridiculous assumption that all Brigade Combat Teams are interchangeable -- "A Brigade is a Brigade" -- which ends up being awful for the units and for the Army as a whole. Perhaps even worse, that attitude spread down within the units so that battalions and even company-size units were considered interchangeable.

OEF and OIF started in 2003 for me.