To improve soldier’s quality of life, Secretary of the army Christine E. Wormuth and Sen. Jerry Moran arrived Wednesday at Fort Riley. They toured the installation, amenities and facilities and viewed the soldiers’ living conditions.
Wormuth said she and Moran had the opportunity to spend time with Fort Riley soldiers and military personnel to discuss their perspective on quality of life issues.
“‘The Big Red One’ has been incredibly busy,” Wormuth said. “You all know that they have been deployed to Europe. I wanted to hear from our soldiers and NCOs about how they’re feeling, how they are handling that and how the deployment has been. I wanted to come here to talk about quality of life.”
Command Sergeant Major Clarence Raby said improvement of the barracks benefit the soldiers’ quality of life in Fort Riley.
“The army’s initiative to decrease isolation but also increase connection among our soldiers — this is how we get after it,” Raby said.
Wormuth said the Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention Fusion Center is improving the lifestyle in Fort Riley.
“Here at Fort Riley we have seen a consistent drop in a lot of what I would call harmful behavior, so the stats in the last few years have been getting lower and lower, and that’s what we really want to see,” Wormuth said.
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While the visit to Fort Riley was focused on quality of life, Moran said the country is undergoing challenging times, particularly with military recruitment.
“Fort Riley is the number one installation in the country for retention,” Moran said. “But the army and the military generally have a lot of recruitment efforts to do to get the strength of the army to sufficient size in this difficult world.”
Wormuth said good quality of life with good places to live, good pay and good health care provides peace of mind and support from families of military recruits.
“There’s a lot of work, but some of what I’ve seen here at Fort Riley is part of the solution,” Wormuth said.
Wormuth said while improvements of quality of life are a top priority, there must be a balance to ensure the advancement of the military state.
“We have to strike a balance between those new weapon systems, maintaining the ones we have like our tanks and our Bradleys, refurbishing barracks, soldier pay— so that’s a long way of saying it’s going to take us a while,” Wormuth said. “We have a fifteen-year facilities investment plan for the whole army that we are working our way through slowly.”
