How do you feel about writing your own awards and is it fair?

Those that submit the award recommendation simply have too many other things to track or do. Awards are not an administrative priority. So if you personally want one you better make it as easy as possible for the recommendation to be submitted. If you are given guidance to submit or process an award on your own behalf you better jump on it.

When I was deployed, it was a full time position assigned to a WO4 to track awards and their approval .
Now, in your defense as a PFC, it's too much to expect you to actually fill out a DA638 and remotely think it will pass muster the first go around. There is an "art" to it, and each approving authority has a threshold of what level of achievements justify various levels of awards. Those closest to knowing that process are going to be BN staff level and higher. If the system is working correctly the threshold of expectations and narrations will be pushed down to the companies.

At the very least at the Jr Soldier level your PSG or squad leader should give you guidance to keep track of various things you accomplish and they should submit that list to someone at the company staff level (or write the DA 638 themselves) with the expectation they know what Battalion wants to see.

Anytime I've written an award I've bent over backwards to write it strong enough to be approved, and with the internet as it is I would have thought my research would have been sufficient, but it never fails something has to be changed in order to jump through the hoops the end approving authority has to meet their standards for a various awards.

Should a PFC write their own award. No............. they should be mentored to track their personal accomplishments and start to learn the DA638 process so when they become NCO's they are ready to participate at the next level of the process.

Regardless of the systems we put in place, it will always come down to leaders doing their jobs. While I appreciate you sympathizing with leaders who have a lot of Soldiers, at the end of the day everyone has a first-line leader, who is only directly responsible for a few Soldiers. Really, how hard is it to know what 4-6 Soldiers have done? Between counseling packets, NCOERs, OERS, how difficult is it to put together four short paragraphs? Even when I was a company commander, I only directly supervised a few Soldiers. My XO, 1SG and four PLs. Even with the PLs, I made the XO draft the awards. And the 1SG oversaw the PL drafts for their PSG. At the end of the day, it’s just leaders being lazy. Amazing how we expect Soldiers to perform on command, but we as leaders can’t be bothered to do our jobs? Just my 2 cents...

Ah. You touched on a subject that is near and dear and sore to my heart, As you touched on, Leaders are busy with a multitude of things up to and including awards. Now, do I feel that Soldiers should write their own awards? Well, that is not an easy answer. As you mentioned, what if the Recommended Soldier is at a far away location where they are not being directly observed by their command? This can be accomplished by either the Soldier taking all that they have done and send that information to their Leader or the Soldier writing it themselves and sending it to their Leader. This scenario is one of those gray areas. Case in point, I was in KSA for most of my current tour, so I sent all my data of accomplishments to my XO for him and the CDR to write up the 638.

BUT....what if that Leader just sucks at writing awards and the Soldier in question is phenomenal at writing them? What then? Obviously, the Leader should be mentored on how to write effective award recommendations. But at the same time, in this case I feel the Soldier should write it up with assistance from others. And, to be honest, I have written my own 638s a time or two.

Now, let us come to the area of what award should be recommended. Of course, if the Soldier in question is writing their own, naturally they are going to write themselves the highest award possible (within reason, of course). You could very well see PFCs, SPCs, and SGTs submitting themselves for MSMs all around when in reality their work was not that much of an impact. Those recommendations will not pass muster. Whether it be because their impact did not merit an MSM or that higher commands gave directive that no one below the rank of (for enlisted) SFC will not receive an MSM. Or that only a % of specific awards will be given out. But the other side of that coin could be that the awards are being written up by Leaders but at a recommended level below the actual level of impact. Let us also touch on the window of awards being submitted. In Kuwait, my Command gave guidance that all EOT AAMs had to have 1-2 bullets and be submitted NLT 60 days out from end of tour. ARCOMS had to have 3 bullets and submitted NLT 90 days out. MSMs required all 4 bullet blocks filled and submitted NLT 120 days out. Which, if you look at it, is insane to submit an MSM for an EOT award half way thru the rotation without capturing EVERY BIT of impactable actions on the 638. Now you have Leaders and Soldiers scrambling to figure out how to fill all 4 blocks with enough quantitative and qualitative data after only 4 months of being in theater.

Then...after all that is said and done....the 638 is written up and submitted....it all boils down to the approving chain and approving authority as to what award you finally get based on their interpretation of the 638.

As for what can be done to improve the process? I'm not really sure. We could always have a massive OPD/NCOPD where we beat people over the head until they grasp the concept that its the level of impact on the mission and not soley their rank that should determine their EOT award. We could bypass eLAS and hand carry all 638s around to the intermediate and approving authorities and sit down with them face to face to state the case and get their signatures in person. Or, we could simply carry on the way we are, watching deserving Soldiers get ripped out of the award they deserve, where rank is the sole basis of an award and where Leaders still don't know how to write an effective recommendation.