The book entitled The Kinder, Gentler Military by Stephanie Gutmann while offering some interesting insight into some of the legal and gender integration issues the military has had to deal with in the past decade or so, is so filled with half truths, misinformation, and outright lies that it could barely be called a work of non-fiction. Most of the information Mrs. Gutmann presents is either taken out of context or outright wrong. I will look at some of the statements Mrs. Gutmann makes and look at their credibility as compared to my experiences and official Army policies and procedures. .
One of the first glaring mistakes that Mrs. Gutmann makes involves the relaying of a conversation between a recruit and a drill sergeant. On pages 33 and 34, she reports that the recruit addressed the drill sergeant numerous times as "sir". As anyone who has ever been through Army Basic Training can most certainly tell you, a drill sergeant is addressed only as "drill sergeant". There are those that address them as sir on the first day of training, but that is the last day they will ever do it. Such a form of address is met immediately with corrective statements and physical measures. By the second day, no one would dare address them as sir, as that form of address is only appropriate for officers. I find it very hard to believe that a recruit would continue this behavior into the third and fourth week of training (in fact, if one can not show proper forms of address by the second week, they are recycled to the beginning of the training). .
Another glaring inaccuracy is present on pg 31 where she refers to many drill sergeants an "involuntarily assigned" to their training duty. This is patently false. Attendance of the drill sergeant training course to become a drill sergeant is completely voluntary. One cannot be forced into the duty, but specifically apply for it. .
On page 37 Mrs. Gutmann addresses the issue of recruits being referred to as soldier rather than recruit or private.
