An Interview With The Chairman

Day 874, 15:29 • Published in USA USA • by Army East Public Affairs

Dateline: Day 874
Reporter: Pvt. Savage Potato
Location: Narnia, USA

The mission of the eUS Army is to extend and enforce American political and military power by following the doctrine of "peace through superior firepower." Army Group East and our brothers in Army Group West continue that mission today as two branches.

I'm here today to help explain to the eUS what this whole “Army Group East” thing is. Why do we have two groups called the “Army” now? I recently sat down with the great Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) himself NXNW for an interview. He surprised me a little, asking the first question: How much do you know about eArmy history? Well, not much as it turns out. I've been playing eRep for about three months now and I haven't been in the Army nearly that long. So I'll let NXNW take it away:

NXNW: Alright, so about a year ago the army was split into two groups: the Airborne and the Army. At that time the Army had ~120 active troops, only 1-2 ranked General and was on the verge of being disbanded. A lot of dedicated people stepped in and help build a good foundation. Knojerakk & Tremaine (former CO & XO) in particular did a lot of work. I took over as acting CO in August of 2009 (Knoj was still CO but was very busy with RL). I was really happy to build on the foundation that had been laid and along with a core group (Jameson L Tai, Aang Airbender, Jason the Great to name three – the list is pretty long), we really started to build momentum.

Along the way the active head count had grown to 200+ and people were ranking up like mad. I developed an idea to expand the force to 300 troops. This meant adding at least 2 more divisions in addition to the Ranger unit, Media unit and RECBN groups that I had created. An organization with six divisions, Rangers, HQ, RECBN is pretty unwieldy and it burns out leadership. Plus we had a lot of people eager for, and deserving of, promotion

So I developed the idea of having the Army form itself into two equal, free standing branches following the old Army tradition. If you look around some of the most effective units (in the eWorld) are ~120-150 strong. The bottom line is trying to run a 300 strong virtual organization is a monster of job and very hard to do but two organizations of ~150 each, that is very doable.

Savage Potato: So, the reorganization was announced almost two months ago. How do you feel it's gone so far?

NXNW: The army has ~100 Field Marshals, an average strength of 15+ and strong deployment rates. I think those numbers speak for themselves but I will say I think things have gone well.

Savage Potato: Has your original plan changed at all since the announcement was made?

NXNW: Yes. I had originally envisioned more shared services between the 2 branches but it seems like as things have developed there was a need to divide, and in some case replicate certain functions like RECBN, the media operation and the Ranger units.

Savage Potato: What do you feel like is left to be done in this reorganization?

NXNW: At this point? Not too much. The fundamentals are getting done and done well (hats off to the leadership for both groups.

Savage Potato: Are you worried that recruiting for each Army Group will be harder than it was to recruit for “THE Army”? Or is recruiting still going to be a shared job?

NXNW: No, in fact I think more exposure is good for both groups. As each command gets its name out there more people will want to join "the Army", at that point it is a matter of which branch has an opening. And the expansion has added 100+ troops and ~125k of damage, overall I think it has been a win-win.

Savage Potato: And I suppose that leads to one more question on people's minds: Have you thought about sexier names than “Army Group East” and “Army Group West”?

NXNW: Oh boy! We talked about that for months. Every suggestion included one or more of the following words: “Special” “Forces” “Cavalry” and “Legion”. So that lead to “The Legion of Special Cavalry Forces” which was a no-go. I'm kind of joking here but we tried a lot of things and at the end the agreement was that people wanted to keep the Army name and the heritage that goes with it. The Army branches have a long and proud history that would be a bummer to throw that away.

Savage Potato: No one wants to be the Navy, eh?
NXNW: Navy? We thought about it....but in the eWorld only the britf*gs have a navy 🙂

Army Group East, with its brothers in Army Group West, will continue the great tradition of those that came before us!

A big thanks to NXNW for giving time out of his busy schedule to sit down with a lowly Private for an interview. Thank you to acg515 for helping me set it all up. And a thanks to This We'll Defen😛 The Official Newspaper of Army Group East for publishing my first article!

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