2023 Issue 1

The following members of our Regiment, in alphabetical order, passed away in 2022.

Since its inception in 1971, The Army Lawyer (TAL) has served as a premiere messaging platform for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG Corps), providing practical how-to articles alongside items of interest to the field. That has not changed. How TAL accomplishes its role, however, does change.

We dedicate this article to our beloved friend, colleague, and fellow Soldier, Chief Warrant Officer 3 (CW3) Melanie Sellars, who left this life much too soon, near the time this issue was going to print. A full memorial will be published in a future issue, but we would be remiss if we did not honor CW3 Sellars’s leadership and service as a key member of our Leadership Center team.

On 5 August 2023, the Environmental Law Division (ELD) commemorated its thirty-fifth anniversary as part of the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency. For more than three decades, ELD has advised Army leadership on environmental matters, litigated both defensive and affirmative environmental cases, and provided guidance to the field of environmental practitioners.

This article aims to serve as a guide to first-time individual deployers, particularly those who are relatively new to the Army and might not know what to expect. The observations in this article are drawn from several recent individual deployers.

Mr. Fred Borch has done it again. More than twenty-five years in the making, Judge Advocates in the Great War: 1917–19221 masterfully shepherds readers through the history and evolution of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps during its critical development more than a century ago.

Why does the Army have a Judge Advocate General’s Corps today? Or, to phrase the question another way: Why did Congress abolish The Judge Advocate General’s Department (JAGD)—which had existed since 5 July 18841—to create a “Corps” of uniformed lawyers on 1 February 1949?

It is frequently said that “the principles of leadership are timeless,” meaning the hallmarks of good leadership today are no different from those of fifty or one hundred or two hundred years ago. The Guide for Armor Leaders, published by the Seventh U.S. Army for junior leaders in the 1950s, illustrates this notion that leadership principles then, as now, are essentially the same. 

Financial independence retire early (FIRE) has gained an almost cult-like following in recent years due in large part to internet forums¹ and millennials’ dissatisfaction with their current working life.² Confronting the challenges of the pandemic and coming to terms with our mortality has only served to accelerate this trend.³ This article will seek to explain what FIRE is and, conversely, what it is not, and offer some insights on how to leverage military service benefits to achieve it.