Showing posts with label safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label safety. Show all posts

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Reflective Belts and Winning Wars



"Past conflicts have had iconic symbols associated with them. For World War II, it is the flag raising on Iwo Jima. Vietnam has the UH-1 Huey helicopter." The symbol for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) will (for some folks) be the yellow or orange reflective belt. The Army knows it as the "Belt, High Visibility" and it had its place at its very beginning - wearing it on post while running on roads during hours of darkness. But, unfortunately, it morphed into something much bigger. You know that things are out of whack when you can't get into a chow hall during daylight hours on a large FOB in Afghanistan without your reflective belt. In probably one of the most absurd regulations out there is the requirement by 10th Mountain Division prescribing different colored reflective belts based on rank. You can't make this stuff up! Read more in "The Reflective Belt: An Icon of The Global War on Terror"Task & Purpose, October 26, 2015.