One of the less fun aspects of being in the military is the way you will be utilized on a day-to-day basis, while in garrison. For instance, you may have just finished training on a new high-tech computer system. Or learned how to speak an exotic and obscure language. You might even be qualified on some sort of armored killing machine capable of destroying and terrifying the enemies of our nation.

But at the end of the day, a normal day, you are a grounds-keeping specialist.

I, myself spent six months doing my initial entry training, Basic, Illustrator training at Fort Mead, followed by jump school. I was a lean, mean, Photoshopping machine, who was also able to jump out of airplanes for no suitably explored reason. And I had been assigned to PSYOP at Fort Bragg where I would use my newly acquired skills to help craft propaganda to confuse and demoralize our enemies. And on my first day at my brand new unit, they told me I was being assigned to “Post Beautification Detail”. This turned out to be Army-speak for “Here’s a weed-whacker. Have a nice month doing lawn care.”

And so I spent the next 30 days taking my frustrations out on the various North Carolina weeds. During this time, one particular incident does stick out for me. At one point, me and my elite post beautification team were handling the grass near the Special Operations Command building and we came across some device on the ground. It looked like a little tiny radar installation and was presumably some sort of high-speed communication device. It looked like someone had being using it and just wandered away. I noticed that it had some sort of yellow and black warning sticker on it, maybe the size of a pack of cigarettes. I wondered what it said, and got close enough to read it.

“Danger. Non-aligning isotopes. Do not approach closer than 10 feet while in operation.”

“Hmmmm,” I though to myself, standing maybe two feet away from this device, “I think I will run away screaming like a little girl now.”

To this day I still have no idea what that device was.

A fun tradition at Ft Bragg was that once a year they would have Post Clean-Up event. This meant that for a week, everybody got to help with the lawn care. And by everybody I, of course, mean the enlisted along with a few unlucky officers who had evidently pissed off someone important.

One particular year my unit got assigned to clean up the Mata-Mile.

For those of you that are not familiar with Ft Bragg, the Mata-Mile is one of those general purpose areas which gets used by different groups for different activities. For most soldiers on the post, it was a path through the woods, suitable for running or ruck-marches.

For every person living in the nearby town it was a path through the woods suitable for dumping things like old washing-machines, tires, dead hookers, and boxes of unlabeled urinalysis samples.

And for high ranking officers, it was a path through the woods, which needed to be cleaned on a yearly basis. To hear it told to us, the cleanliness of this path had a direct and urgent effect on our nation’s ability to defend itself, even if no one could ever explain why.

So one week we are out there, raking the dirt path. Not raking things out of the dirt path. Just dragging a rake through the dirt. Not my idea, just following orders. So my unit is out there, industriously raking the dirt when a Captain came out with a new assignment. He wants us to go into the woods around the trail, and collect all of the pine needles and pine cones. And then to make them into piles under the trees. To make the area look more natural.

I will repeat this, and highlight a few points that might not be obvious.

This Captain, who is a grown man, who has graduated from college, and presumably came from some sort of officer training program. A man who has been in the military for at least five years or so. And he orders us to go make piles of pine cones and pine needles under all of the trees. To make the woods more “natural looking”.

After issuing this order he wandered away. Presumably to dispense his wisdom to other needy soldiers. One of my NCOs scratched his head and went, “Natural? Do piles of pine-cones ever happen naturally?”

And I decided to be helpful.

“I thinks so Sgt. Squirrels do that sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Yep. It’s how they bury their dead. You know, when they’re not burning them in little tiny long-ships.”

One morning while I was still in the Army we got to do sports day PT. So instead of running or doing push-ups we got to play sports. Usually sports consisted of either football, or some other game that always started as a recognizable athletic competition, and would devolve into some sort of rugby/Ultimate Fighting hybrid. One thing was for sure, we felt pretty strongly that all sports were improved with the addition of tackling. And we tended to take a very liberal definition of what constituted a tackle. Good, if occasionally painful, times. To this day, I think that if Ultimate Frisbee was actually played the way we did it you would have a serious contender for a new Monday night sport.

Well on this particular morning we were playing soccer with our usual rambunctious glee. When suddenly, a few feet away from me, two soldiers collided. I will refer to these two soldiers as Boots and Nosy.

Boots had started out as an infantry NCO and had reclassed into PSYOP. SO he was a fairly big and imposing guy. Nosy was a particularly tiny female solder. And the bridge of her nose went into Boots’ forehead. Hard.

We all heard a loud crack and Boots staggered around comically for a few seconds and then collapsed. A few people laughed and he was told to get up and quit screwing around. And he kept laying there. It slowly dawned on us that he was not goofing off, he was hurt. A tiny female soldier half his size had just head-butted him into unconsciousness. We didn’t think of it this way at the time, but upon further reflection at a later date, this was determined to be freaking hilarious.

The game was halted and some of us began to give Boots first aid, while some other ran for a pay phone to summon an ambulance. I noticed that Nosy was standing over to the side, bleeding profusely from her face, with something poking out of her nose. She had a compound fracture. Nobody else was paying any attention to her and she didn’t even seem to realize that she was hurt.

I looked around for something to try to stop the blood and realized that the only cloth readily available were the PT uniforms we were wearing. I quickly reasoned that if I tried to take off her shirt to use as a pressure bandage, people might take that the wrong way. So I grabbed mine, looked for a spot without too much sweat on it, and tried to stop the bleeding. I didn’t even take it off first, I just kinda pulled it away from my torso. Eventually, someone showed up with an actual first aid kit and I got my shirt back. Once the paramedics showed up they looked over both our injured friends and determined that they would both be okay, but would probably need some stitches. The rest of PT was canceled and we were dismissed.

I was walking back into my barracks, and I was in a really good mood. You know that rush you sometimes get when you think something really bad has just happened, but it turned out okay? That’s how I felt. Just as I arrived on my floor, my roommate who was in another company, was leaving our room. Here’s how he described to me what he saw:

“I open the door, and here you are, coming down the hallway. You have a big, happy expression on your face, you’ve got a cigarette dangling out of your mouth, and you are whistling cheerfully. And your shirt and arms were covered with blood. I thought to myself ‘Oh crap. Schwarz has snapped and killed everyone at PT.’ ”

Which is probably why he ran back into the room and locked the door.

A few weeks ago I posted a few stories that showed some examples of bad Army leadership. One of the readers, Fry, suggested that I post some examples of good leadership.

At one point during my military career we had several days of maintenance-type activities that had to be done in the vicinity of the motor pool. During the summer in North Carolina. Basically we got to spend several days in a row doing heavy work in a giant parking lot. It was hot and unpleasant. So another Specialist and I came up with a great idea. We’d stop at the PX on the way to the motorpool and buy a cooler and fill it with ice and drinks. We’d just ask people to pay what our costs were so that we didn’t go broke providing drinks for our company. We made the purchases and brought them to the motorpool, cheerful and anticipating praise from our chain of command for our thoughtfulness. Since this story is on my site, you can probably guess that this is not how things turned out.

Several NCOs approached me and my friend over this. Did they thank us for thinking of our comrades? No.

Did they comment on how we went out of our way and spent our own resources to take care our buddies? Nope.

They screamed at us. For about ten minutes. It seems that me and my friend, by bringing cold drinks for everybody, had succeeded in making our NCOs look bad. Because we had done more to take care of the soldiers in our company than they had. And they felt that we had done it deliberately.

About half an hour after this happened one of the NCOs came back. She wasn’t mad any more and, in fact, she looked ashamed.

She told us that if we made our NCOs look bad by helping out our buddies then that was a poor reflection on them, not us. She apologized for taking part in the NCO lynch mob and asked us how much we had paid for everything. She then handed me that amount of cash and just gave the drinks away to her soldiers.

Step 1: Be this person. If you screw up and one of your soldiers pays for it, have the decency to admit it, and if necessary, go back and make amends.

Another time I was asked to go to 4th PSYOP Group headquarters. Apparently there was some kind of meeting going on to determine what the new product development workstation was going to have. This was a laptop that would be used by an illustrator to create propaganda. And since I was an illustrator, someone thought my input might be helpful. When I get to the meeting I discover that I am the only enlisted person in the building. So there I am, in a room full of officers, who are very opinionated, and more or less totally ignorant about what the soldiers who were going to use the equipment actually did. So being in possession of more survival instinct than most of my readers would ever give me credit for, I sat very still and tried not to attract any notice. Eventually I failed.

“What are you doing here, Specialist?”, asked a Major with the almost exact tone of voice that you or I would say, “Ewww…I got some of that on my shoe.”

“My team SGT told me to come here, sir.”

“What unit are you from, and why did they send an E-4?”

“Because I’m an illustrator sir.”

And with that, a Colonel sitting on the opposite end of the room took notice. “You’re a 25 mike? Why didn’t you say so earlier?” And he then proceeded to direct all suggestions for the equipment through me because I was “The only one here whose ever gonna actually use this stuff”.

Step 2: Be this person. Sometimes your soldiers will have specialized or specific knowledge that you lack. It’s not beneath you to listen to them when that’s the case. It’s generally a good idea to be on the lookout for lower ranks that know things; they can help you make informed decisions.

And lastly, there is this story that I call “The Best Sergent Major Story Ever.” I did not serve under this particular NCO but I had this story relayed to me by a soldier who did. The chain-of-command had recently held several inspections on the barracks. And many soldiers had been dinged for various infractions. Dust on top of the blinds, shoes not neatly lined up under the bunk, clutter on the furniture. The sort of thing that soldiers get gigged on during an inspection. When it was done, many of the lower enlisted who lived in the barracks were getting reamed out for not having their living areas up to Army standards. During a formation afterwards the SGM gave a speech stressing the importance of always keeping your living area up to inspection standards. He then asked for a show of hands of those who had a cell phone. Confused, the soldiers that did, mostly officers, raised their hands.

“Please bring you cellular phones up here, and leave them with me for the remainder of this formation. Now, everyone who lives on post, you are dismissed, have a great weekend. Everyone who lives off post, please stay here. I will be carpooling out to your homes with you to inspect them. I’m sure that all of you are keeping your homes to the sames standards that you hold you soldiers to. And if any of you call home to have your wife, girlfriend, or pets start cleaning up I will have your ass. I can fit five at a time in my car; who wants to go first?”

Step 3: Sometimes it’s just awesome to fuck with people.

My first MOS in the Army was 25M, or Multi-Media Illustrator. For those readers who are not Army, that was my Military Occupational Specialty. M-O-S is how soldiers say J-O-B. Now for some strange reason, the Army felt that the only possible use for Illustrators was in Airborne units. So all 25Ms had to go to jump school after their MOS training. So just imagine my surprise to find out that I was the only one who was going to jump out of planes. It would appear that my recruiter had lied to me.

Step one: Don’t be this guy.
Don’t lie to your soldiers to get things that you want from them. Your soldiers remember what you do, and they can talk to each other. You don’t want your troops to feel like you’d sell them out.

Nonetheless, I went off to jump school. I did promise to do so when I enlisted, and the extra money looked nice, so I kept up my end. The especially fun part was that I went during the summer. Which is when the cadets also attend jump school. This is significantly less fun than it sounds. Some of these cadets were from military academies, like West Point. They were generally pretty squared away and at least knew how to act like they were in the military. But many were ROTC cadets. Which meant that they were college students wearing a uniform. I have nothing against college students per se. But if your well-being depends on them not acting like college students, well, you might start to have some issues. The problems ranged from the comical, “Hey look…one third of the formation went the wrong way”, to the significantly less comical “Everyone is restricted to the barracks because one third of the formation went the wrong way”.

Here is one incident that stuck in my mind. At one point a bunch of us were on an assignment stacking reserve parachutes onto a storage rack. We were passing them in bucket-brigade style. One of the cadets near me said “One of these just came open, get a SGT Airborne quick”. So another private and myself ran off to grab an authority figure to report the problem to. All three of us returned to discover that all of the reserves chutes are fine. The SGT Airborne was angry. “Why did you waste my time Private?”

“That cadet told me one of the reserves came open.”
“SGT Airborne I have no idea what that Private is talking about.”

Step two: Don’t be this guy either.
My buddy and me wound up doing roughly a bazillion push ups over this. To this day I have no idea whether this was an accident or just a dumb punk kid’s idea of a funny joke. But in any case, don’t let your soldiers take the fall for your mistake. And if you do, try to have the decency to not look surprised when you discover what they did to your toothbrush.

But the worst offender is a guy who I will refer to as Cadet Snowflake. When I arrived at Ft. Benning, my luggage didn’t. Two other soldiers and one cadet where in the same fix as me. At one point after a formation, those of us that were missing our luggage were taken to see the Sergeant Major. He asked us a few questions about our luggage and which barracks we in so that he could make sure that we got it when the airline delivered it later. He made sure all of us had access to toiletries and that no one was missing any critical items. He summed up the whole thing by assuring us, “Don’t worry boys, Sergeant Major will get you squared away!”

“You’d damn well better!”

Four faces, totally incredulous, slowly turned to look at Mr. Special Snowflake.

“What. Did. You. Say. Cadet?”, asked the very senior, and should be noted, incredibly huge and scary NCO.

“I said you’d better get this taken care of. I’m going to hold you personally responsible for this.”

At this point the other soldiers and me tried to very slowly scoot ourselves away from Cadet Snowflake. We knew what was coming was going to be bad and we certainly didn’t want to get any of it on ourselves.

“I think I may have misheard you cadet.”

“I made myself clear. You’d better do what I say. I’m going to be a Lieutenant soon and then I’ll outrank you.”

For those of you who have not been in the military, I will give you this analogy. Imagine walking up to Chuck Norris. Now imagine telling him he’d better treat you nice because someday you’re going to start learning martial arts. And as soon as you train up enough to hold multiple black belts you’re going to kick his ass.

Now, a cadet mouthing off to the Sergeant Major is about a hundred times dumber than that.

Step Three: Definitely do not be this guy.
In fact, try to not even know this guy.

The lower enlisted were released and we got to hear the opening of a Grade-A ass chewing as we hurried away from ground zero. I never found out what happened to Cadet snowflake, but I strongly doubt his military career lasted for much longer. I do know that he didn’t attend jump school with us.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/01/andy-olmsted.html?cid=95886692

Edit: By now my regular readers have all looked at this.  First of all, I’m sorry for the lack of warning.  I tried to write a some form of introduction for this and it just didn’t work.

I couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t just feel hollow against what Andy Olmstead wrote.  Plus I felt anything I said would just take away from it.  I’m still not sure that I feel qualified to comment on it at all other than to say that I think everyone who has anything resembling an opinion on this war should read it.

The military needs more leaders like him, and I’m sorry for what it took to bring his writing to my attention.

It’s Wednesday, and I’ve decided to update on Wednesdays from now on, whether I want to or not.

And since it is the also the day after Christmas, and I have no other ideas running around in my head, I’m going to relate the story that I have taken to calling “Worst Christmas Ever”.

For a while I worked with a soldier, who I will refer to as PFC Kringle.  He was always a little “off” (And yes I realize that means something different when I say it.)  Shortly before the holidays one year he told me the following story from his childhood.

His step-father was a ranger. The kind that works in a national park.  Not the kind that stormed the beaches of Normandy.  One of the tasks his step-father had to take care of was road kill.

Well one morning, a few days before Christmas Eve, when PFC Kringle was a little boy, his step-father came across a small deer that had been run over by a car.  Instead of doing, well, whatever the heck it is that park rangers normally do with a dead deer, he came up with a clever idea.

(Side note: What the heck do they do with dead deer? Is there a road kill graveyard somewhere?  Do they use the meat to feed the homeless or something?  Perhaps there is a special deer furnace for burning them?  The furnace seems the most likely, but it does seem like a bizarre and somewhat creepy career choice.)

So he brought the deer home, and made an improvised harness for it out of some leather straps.

Then he spent all Christmas Eve yelling about how much he hated Santa Claus.  “That red-suited bastard had better not show his face around here this year!  If he does, I’ll kill him and all those darn reindeer.”

Eventually PFC Kringle and his little brother were sent to bed.  And that’s when daddy-dearest hauled the deer up onto the roof, and attached one end of his new dead deer harness to the chimney.  He then pushed the deer off of the roof.  There was now a dead deer in a harness, swinging past his children’s window.

Next he went down to the yard, and fired a shotgun into the ground several times, while yelling, “I got him! I got him!”

The kids, of course, open the curtains just in time to see Rudolf go sailing past.

So at this point the unit decided that a little off or not he was remarkably well-adjusted, all things considered.

Soldiers typically have things showing on their uniform. Their names, their ranks, their unit, and sometimes even their country of origin. This is done so that you can instantly tell vital information about the other people around you such as who’s in charge, who possesses specialized skills, and who can be safely turned into a scapegoat for anything that happens to go wrong.

In the US Army, rank goes on the collar. And only the lowest of the lower enlisted, the buck private, has no rank symbol to display. Buck privates are generally considered to be slightly less valuable than dirt, receive absolutely no respect, and basically spend their time hoping that no one notices them long enough to make them go and clean something.

Please remember this, because it is important later.

So one evening right after we got to Bosnia a bunch of soldiers were drinking in the barracks. Because this was during a multinational task force we had several different uniforms present. And as it usually goes when you have a bunch of soldiers, alcohol, and no serious adult supervision there is a variety of good-natured smack-talking going around. Generally along the lines of who beat up whom in a previous war, or which countries military could get France to surrender the quickest, that sort of thing. It was fun and I got to meet foreign soldiers for the first time. But then out of nowhere we had that guy.

If you’ve ever been at a place with young men and alcohol, chances are you’ve met that guy. Too loud, too aggressive, and probably too drunk. Instead of good-natured ribbing he’s offering personal insults. He’s yelling and generally making a tremendous ass out of himself. Normally when someone behaves this way he gets shouted down, or one of his friends takes him away to go sleep it off. But in the case of this one particular British soldier no one did anything. Everybody just let him keep on acting like an ass and ruining our night.

So I looked a little closer at him and noticed that he didn’t have any rank on his collar. (Note: Where I went looking for it was important.) This guy is a buck private and everybody is taking crap from him. This makes absolutely no sense; the world has gone crazy. So I did what any PFC whose judgment was seriously impaired by alcohol would do when a guy twice his size was acting up.

“Hey asshole! Why don’t you shut the hell up?!” I was, as always, a master of witty banter.

All conversation halted. Several soldiers near me began to edge way slowly.

“What did you say, Yank?”, he asked me in a very incredulous tone of voice.

“I’m sorry do I need to put that into British for you? I said: “Be quiet you bloody wanker”.”

He stood up and asked very quietly, “Do you want to go outside and talk about this?”
I glanced up to see one of my Sergeants standing behind him clearly signaling through hand gestures: “You can take him and I’ve got your back.” Which to sober people might have actually appeared to be: “Are you insane? This guy is going to murder you!”. But I had consumed enough alcohol to know what he really meant.

So I looked this guy square in the general direction of his head, weaved a little, and boldly announced, “I sure would. Let’s go.”

He looks stunned for a few seconds, and then just starts laughing. Crisis averted, he decided that I was his friend now. He shared some strange licorice tasting booze with me and acted decently for the rest of the evening.

The next morning my sergeant sat down with me in the chow hall.

“What on earth made you think you should start a fight with that guy last night?”

“You saw his collar Sergeant, he was a buck private, and I’m not gonna let a private talk to us like that.”

“British uniforms are different than ours. He’s not a private. He’s an NCO and he’s in the SAS. You’re only alive because he thought you were funny.”

“Oh.”

And if you’ve read the list, you can pretty much guess what the next two instructions were.