Battaglia: Leaders Will Keep Faith With Troops, Families

By Claudette Roulo
American Forces Press Service

NAVAL CONSTRUCTION BATTALION CENTER GULFPORT, Miss., Jan. 17, 2013 – Service members should know that, despite ongoing fiscal challenges, their families are cared for, the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told an audience of soldiers, sailors and airmen here today.

Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Bryan B. Battaglia said Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey’s promise to keep faith with the military family gives him confidence that his family is taken care of, even while he is away from home.

Speaking at the home of the Atlantic Fleet Seabees and more than 45 tenant units, including several service schools, the sergeant major said taking care of families is just one part of the chairman’s promise.

“There’s another side to that as well -- keeping faith with you, his uniformed family,” he said. That includes making sure service members are properly trained and educated, he explained.

In return, Battaglia said, service members should periodically renew their commitment to the military profession, noting that he uses the oath of enlistment to remind himself of his military obligations.

“[It’s] such a powerful paragraph,” he said. “I’m so passionate about the oath of enlistment that I think every enlisted service member in the entire military should know the enlistment oath by heart.”

Service members already have demonstrated the quality of their character by enlisting while the country was engaged in armed conflict, Battaglia said. They each may have joined for different reasons, but the oath serves as a common thread linking enlisted service members, regardless of branch, he added.

Linking services and their capabilities helps to make the joint force a multiplier, he said, adding that he includes coalition forces as part of the joint force.

“I don’t think we’ll ever fight a solely conventional war again,” Battaglia said. The first goal of the military is to prevent and deter, he added, and one way to do that is to build capacity in partner nations.

“We can expect to see … continued joint training, from the combatant command level down to the individual service school level,” he said.

The service branches are stronger when they work together, the sergeant major said. “The last thing we ever need to do is return to our four corners,” he said. “That would be a setback to our military after all these years working together.”