Accountablity

The Importance of Keeping Appointments

Article eighty-six of the Uniform Code Of Military Justice. This Article covers appointed place of duty. That means from physical training formation to close of business that is where you will be. What a lot of Soldiers do not understand that includes appointments made by them or someone else.   We have appointment times, starting point times, formation times and many other start times that dictate we will be there. If a Convoy has a starting point time of fifteen hundred hours and the Soldiers decide to show up late because they did not feel like getting ready on time people could die. If they rolled out on time, they may have avoided the ambush or avoided the vehicle born IED that hit them in the bottleneck. It sounds extreme but time management plays a critical role in the Army. When you make an appointment that spot has been reserved for you. That means if you have been given the last slot someone else is going to have to wait for another one to open up. This could be one day or one month. And because you missed it someone else is still going to have to wait when they could have had that spot and been there. If you are going to miss the appointment or cannot make it due to mission they do allow us to cancel the appointment with in twenty four hours. The Army allows us to make appointments for whatever we need. Be it for a medical appointment, house hold goods, central issue facility, smoking sensation, behavior health or whatever we need, all types of resources are available to us. But when Soldiers start missing those appointments, the system starts to become inefficient.   What a lot of Soldiers do not realize is that when they miss an appointment it does not just affect them; it affects the entire chain of command from the Squad Leader / Section Chief all the way to the First Sergeant. When a Soldier misses an appointment the Squad Leader / Section Chief must answer for the Soldier, the Section Chief must answer to...