Holiday changes for Great Lakes sailors

[unhappycamper]

Holiday changes for Great Lakes sailors
By Mark D. Faram - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Nov 20, 2007 17:47:56 EST

Thanksgiving and Christmas for sailors is changing at Naval Training Center Great Lakes, Ill., and some of the locals don’t like it.

For the second straight year, officials will not allow recruits to be taken home by locals and instead 1,500 sailors in training from Recruit Training Command will have the chance to have turkey dinner at one of 20 churches and civic organizations.

In addition, any sailors assigned to “A” schools on the base will be allowed to go home for Christmas if they choose.

“We stopped allowing recruits to go to individual homes last year,” said Todd Willebrand, spokesman for Navy Service Training Command, which overseas Recruit Training Command.

“It’s not 1950 anymore and given the world situation, we have to be very careful who we entrust these recruits to.”

The decision to nix private citizens from being able to check out recruits for the day has proven unpopular for the second straight year.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/navy_recruit_holidays_071120w/



uhc comment: These fuckers make it sound like checking out a book from the library.

[DemBones DemBones]

1. that's weird. when we were stationed at great lakes,

many years ago, my dad brought home three argentinan sailors for dinner. it was interesting because he spoke some spanish and they spoke some english. he met a lot of men at work and often invited one or two, or three in that one case, home for dinner: guys he worked with who were young and far from home, older guys with no family, and foreign sailors who were definitely far from home. we enjoyed meeting new people and hearing about their homes and they seemed to enjoy being with us and eating my mom's home cooking.

it's not the same to have turkey dinner at a church or civic organization as in someone's home; you might as well eat in the chow hall.

somebody needs to say it: paranoia will destroy ya.

i wonder if "locals" includes military families like ours, who are only temporarily local? and i wonder why they want to discourage locals from offering holiday hospitality to servicemembers. based on my memories of discrimination against military, even by teachers and schoolkids against us Navy brats, anytime locals are friendly to military personnel, it's a good thing.

i guess they think al qaeda members are going to pose as local families. but what would they do? pump recruits for info? all that classified info that every recruit gets in his first months? :sarcasm:

there were probably KGB agents around every base in the Fifties. i'd think spies would do better chatting with guys in bars, in vino veritas, and i'm guessing they're not going to try to keep personnel out of off-base bars. :shrug: