The labor counselor down the hall from you is perhaps the best student of the on-again, off-again relationship between managers and employees. In fact, I can recall commenting to my wife, after surviving my first labor counselor action as a young Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps captain at the Presidio of Monterey, the labor counselor’s role felt like a 50/50 split—half-lawyer, half marriage counselor. And, sure enough, more than twenty years later, with most of those years spent practicing labor and employment law, I still believe the vast majority of problems managers have with civilian employees are related to a breakdown of the relationship between the two.

On 27 September 2019, the Secretary of the Army (SA) signed a memorandum, subject Non-Tactical Vehicle (NTV) Policy Guidance, which clarified Army policy regarding the use of NTVs to transportation terminals, including those located in the National Capital Region. It affirmed the capacity of approving officials (AOs) to assess whether such use is appropriate and necessary on a case-by-case basis.

The nature of war is never [going to] change. But the character of war is changing before our eyes—with the introduction of a lot of technology, a lot of societal changes with urbanization and a wide variety of other factors.¹

“That’s not a knife . . . THIS is a knife!”¹
—Crocodile Dundee

While lawyers have been in the Army from the days of the Revolution, there were no female judge advocates until 1944, when Captain (CPT) Phyllis Propp-Fowle, an attorney serving in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), traded her WAC branch insignia for the crossed-quill-and-sword worn by all officers in the Judge Advocate General’s Department (JAGD). In the more than seventy-five years that have followed Propp-Fowle’s trailblazing career, hundreds and hundreds of female lawyers have served as Army lawyers, and what follows is a short history of their exemplary service in our Corps.

In 1997, local school teacher Susan B. Dyer was out for a long Sunday afternoon drive when she spotted the Holt family mansion. Dyer decided that her mission was to bring awareness of the historical importance of Joseph Holt and the Holt home to people all across Breckinridge County, Kentucky, and all across the nation. As she tells all who will listen, her “heart was touched” by the sight of Holt’s boyhood home. For many years, the house had been vacant and had deteriorated badly.

The following members of our Regiment, in alphabetical order, passed away in 2019.

An Army leader is anyone who, by virtue of assumed role or assigned responsibility, inspires and influences people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.¹

In the Army, the concept of Good Order and Discipline (GOAD) began, perhaps, with its first commander in chief. While commander of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War, then-Lieutenant Colonel George Washington wrote in a letter to his regiment captains, “Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.”¹

While judge advocates (JAs) are familiar with the Army’s policy and process for handling equal opportunity (EO) and sexual harassment complaints, many are unfamiliar with the procedures for handling similar complaints by Department of the Army (DA) Civilian employees, which may be available to non-Army personnel, to include contingent workers.¹ As JAs potentially advise on both military and civilian personnel law, understanding these basics, along with how leaders may unwittingly and substantially increase the Army’s financial liability, is imperative.