Comment on the soldier introduced by Obama at SOTU

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. "Deployment" means different things at different times

We're used to thinking of the Vietnam deployments (tours) of 1 year (or 13 months for Marines), and you were limited to one unless you voluntarily re-upped, but that was also because of the conscript military, where many soldiers were in for three years at most. Even then, additional deployments were not necessarily another year; you could re-up for four months, and that would be considered another "tour." Incentive for doing so was often reduced time in when you DEROSed. Even troops who did a year in Vietnam had to serve out the rest of their commitment stateside. If you were offloading freight for your tour and seeing no combat, you'd certainly re-up for four months to avoid a boring-as-fuck year getting yelled at by stateside junior officers at Leonard Wood. Even troops in combat units chose that route some times. In WW2, you were generally considered deployed for the duration, but that didn't mean at the "front" the whole time. Even in WW1, units would be rotated in and out of the firing line, even if it was deployed for the duration. That said, ten deployments is still a shocking figure, even if some of those are two months at such-and-such a place, and the like.