Army commander-in-chief General Ho Shou-yeh (霍守業) has made it his goal to assess the nation's combat troops by inspecting every brigade in the country, army general headquarters said yesterday.
Because of his tight schedule, Ho has only inspected two brigades so far, the Taoyuan-based 269th brigade and Pingtung-based 395th brigade.
Ho spent a whole day with each of the two brigades.
In the past, Ho's predecessors also had the habit of inspecting units on a regular basis but they never stayed for the whole day at any single unit.
In his two-year term as the leader of the army, Ho plans to visit all of the brigades, over 30 in number, the army general headquarters said.
The reason for Ho to make such a comprehensive and lengthened tour of all the brigades is to find out the unique problems of each brigade, a spokesman for the army said.
"Ho spent a whole day at the inspection site so he would have more time to understand the real conditions of the brigade. In the morning, he would observe the brigade's routine operations. In the afternoon, he would meet with brigade leaders of all levels," the spokesman said.
"Ho could have chosen to sit in his office reading reports submitted to him on the conditions of each brigades. But reports of the kind tend to be more concealing than revealing," he said.
The official declined to confirm whether Ho's effort to examine each brigade has anything to do with two recently published books that criticize army life.
Both A Jordan madman in Ailiao (約旦狂人在隘寮) by Wang Yu-ming (王裕民) and A test of the Chingshih project (驗證精實案) by Yang Wei-tchung (楊維中) examine the lives of the authors, both college graduates, when they fulfilled their compulsory military service.
In both books, the army is portrayed as a world of deceptions and illusions, where career officers cheat and use conscripts to advance their careers.
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