From the Soldier side: The American Army has been calling on the Reserves and National Guard more since 9-11 than they have since the Korean War and WWII. Now as most of my readers know, when I was in Iraq, we had a total "mix" of troops. At some points I had National Guard, Reserve and Regular Army soldiers that I was in charge of. Never once did any of them question me or doubt my leadership, even though I was only a National Guard Soldier.
We looked at the individual soldier and how well he or she could do their job. If they could do it well, then they were part of the team. If they couldn't then we still had them along as a boat anchor.
One of the things that kind of bothered me during our training, to get ready for both the Bosnia and Iraq deployments......Even though we were on Regular Army post....we were in the older barracks and the older mess halls. The tray of food above was an actual meal served at Fort Mc Coy before our Bosnia deployment.
We could have walked over to where the "real Army" troops were and see that they were eating decent food.
The same thing happened at Ft Lewis. They stuck us in the WWII barracks that were supposed to have been torn down years before...but they had to wait to figure out how to dispose of the toxic materials in the building. But, they were OK for us to live in before and after our deployment to Iraq.
We ate really crappy food in our mess hall, but sometimes walked down the street to eat in the "real Army" mess hall and had really good food.
Our leaders for our Guard unit were living in the regular Army barracks and ate in the good mess hall. We didn't know this until we had been there for a few weeks. We kept wondering why we never saw most of our leaders eating with us...they wouldn't eat that crap we had to eat. The Sergeant Major would eat in the good mess hall...then come over to ours and annoy us by checking our uniforms and silly shit.
The bit thing our useless Sergeant Major came up with...when we got to Ft Lewis, we were still wearing the old BDU uniforms. He said that we couldn't put on the issued DCUs (Desert Combat Uniform) until we had passed most of our training. He was making the DCUs seem like an award. The stupid part was, most of us were told we would be issued DCUs right away, so don't bring too many BDUs. This created a big problem as we had to keep washing the limited number of BDUs we had.
Most other units were putting on the DCUs as soon as they got them...but not us. Then when we were authorized to wear the DCUs, our dumbass Sergeant Major told us to keep wearing our beret. We looked like retards.
That was the same Sergeant Major who later in Iraq, had a few Negligent Discharges on the M2 .50 Caliber Machine gun that he assigned himself to on convoys. He was never qualified on it, but thought he'd play Rambo or some shit. What a totally useless, POS, retarded, scumbucket, asshole, turd, waste of O2, dipshit.
11 comments:
Dude, I love the discriptions you come with for the men you served with... it cracks me up!
You could have signed my name to this post and I would have never doubt I wrote it and would have only wondered,"How did THAT get on HERE? and "When DID I write this?"
Red,
I was trying to be nice to the overpaid, food wasting, walking pile of shit, slimeball, dirtbag, puss pocket, puke-let Sergeant Major.
Chup,
Daja'vu all over again?
Good leaders live the experience with their men. Sad that yours let you eat $h(t.
O#6,
Lead, Follow, or get out of the way. I was taught to lead by example. That Sgt Maj deserves a special chapter in the book I'm going to write. The chapter will be titled:
The Turd that didn't lead the way.
But did you like him?
CP,
Did I like the Sergeantasshole Major?
Oh yeah... he was the absolute most useless pile of DCUs I ever saw. I was very happy when a bunch of us got given to a regular army unit before rolling into Iraq.
My "home" unit had more article 15's than the rest of the entire army in Iraq put together...because the Sgt Maj like to screw the troops over.
...but you know you'll have to have a special section to your book where you can list all the special words for Sergeant Majors.
There are ways to deal with people like the SGTMAJ. Too bad nobody managed that for you.
There was a Master Chief at NAB, Coronado who was an AH. Coffee medically drugged. He went to sleep. Medically approved hotshot. He slept on the trip. (regular clandestine flight out of Luke AFB, AZ) Arrived in a South American country hours later.
Woke up on a ridge by himself with strange stars overhead.
He made his way back to the US through the Embassy. (Nobody reported him AWOL) Upon arrival at NAB, Coronado he changed his way of dealing with others, having realized he was RF'd (rat fucked) from way over his pay grade. In fact he was downright polite.
The suggestion was made to the Master Chief by some that there were people who were all for dropping him a few hundred dozen miles off-shore to see how long he could tread water.
In a different time and a different war there was a thing called 'Fragging.' Maybe with a grenade in the shitpot as he was taking his 'morning constitution.'
If I had actually had to spend my whole tour with SGTMAJ dipshit.... I think I would have found a proper way to help him understand life better. But, lucky for me I was attached to a reg army unit and I only got to see our SGTMAJ when he came over to annoy us.
I had a guy on my team from the FL guard. They had given him the rank of CPL instead of SPC (same pay, just a wierd army thing).
The dipshit SGTMAJ was bothered with this and wanted him to wear the SPC rank. The CPL had orders form his home unit for the CPL rank, so he stood by it.
When the dipshit SGTMAJ came over one day and asked me in front of the REG ARMY SGT MAJ what I thought about the CPL rank, I said he was totally correct, the guy shoudn't be wearing CPL rank...I paused and said I was getting him promoted to SGT like he deserved.
That SGTMAJ never thought of actually taking care of the troops, only fucking with them.
The REG ARMY SGT MAJ like my idea so much, he made it happen.
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