I was waiting in the eye doctor's office the other day and picked up one of those retired officer magazines. I'm a retired officer but don't belong to any of these lobbying organizatons, although I might agree with some of their positions.
This particular magazine ended with a nice little article about "lessons learned" while the writer was in the military. His lesson learned recounted an event when he was a junior pilot. One day, he tried to mimick what his instructor had done - something about a full stop on the runway and engines revving up, sparks flying, or some shit like that. Well, he thought he was in big trouble when the captains glared at him and were shaking their heads. Turns out the squadron commander called him in his office and basically said, "Lieutenant, you were a bad boy." His lesson learned? Something profound about leadership styles.
Okay, so that's kinda interesting. It started me thinking about some of the lessons I might have learned during my un-illustrious career. I was somewhat of an irreverant officer. My Division Artillery commander saw me walking down the sidewalk one day and said, "There goes a civilian in uniform." I took it as a compliment.
My first assignment as a second lieutenant was with an 8 inch artillery unit. I was the battalion signal officer. This artillery unit was nuclear capable and, as such, had to complete all the inspections and programs designed to ensure it could adequately store, load, and fire tactical nuclear artillery shells. While we didn’t have nukes at this post, once deployed overseas, we had to be ready to go nuke capable. To be a nuclear unit, most of your troops had to be in the Personnel Reliability Program (or PRP). That meant, in addition to your regular security clearance, the battalion commander had to certify to the nuclear folks at HQ that his people were sufficiently trustworthy to carry out nuclear release orders. As one of my extra duties, I was the battalion calibration officer. All kinds of things need calibrating in the military (electronic test equipment, such as multimeters, scales, etc.). Some of the items needing calibration every month were the numerous torque wrenches used to affix nuclear warheads to an 8” shell, among other tasks. For about a year, I took these wrenches down to post once a month and got them calibrated. At the time, I had no idea what they were used for; the XO gave me the duty and said, “Here’s the printout. You can’t be delinquent on any of these wrenches. This is a 100 percent mandate to have these wrenches calibrated on time.” That’s all I needed to hear. What was good about it – after getting assigned this duty, no one checked on me. That’s what I liked. I was getting checked constantly on every other thing and it was suffocating – I’d make mistakes, get flustered, and make more mistakes. The more you check on me, the more I screw up. Don’t check on me and I get the job done. Well, we had this nuclear inspection coming up where the report was rendered all the way to the Defense Nuclear Agency and Secretary of Defense. Failure could mean relief of the battalion commander. About six hours into the inspection, I see the XO and battalion commander about 400 yards from me in front of HQ. The battalion commander starts yelling, “Lieutenant, lieutenant!!” Then, I see him take off in a sprint toward me. I couldn’t fathom what made him do this, thinking maybe he’s gotten a little too much coffee that morning. He comes within about 10 yards of me, stops and says with his eyes as big as saucers, “Lieutenant! The inspectors are going to look at our torque wrench calibration. If any have been delinquent in the last year, we could fail the inspection!” I said, “We don’t have any delinquent torque wrenches.” He seemed relieved, but I could tell he didn’t quite believe me. The XO finally got up to me and the battalion commander and his face was white as a sheet. “Come to my office and show me your printout.” I said, “Sure, I’ll be right there.” The XO and battalion commander pored over the calibration printout and noticed no delinquencies. “Let’s hope they don’t find any,” said the battalion commander. After the inspection, the battalion commander sees me walking by HQ. He stops me and, somewhat reluctantly, says, “Lieutenant, thanks for keeping up with the calibration of those torque wrenches. You had me going there for a while.” I said, “No problem, sir. The XO said it had to be 100 percent and that’s what I did.” (Never mind that getting these torque wrenches from the various battery NCOs was a royal pain in the ass. Half the time, they couldn’t find them and I’d have to root around and find them myself.)
Lesson Learned? If you don’t want to be a battalion commander, don’t fucking be one.