04 May 2010

"With That Said"...arrgggggggggg!!!!

From the Soldier side: There are some things in any organization that those who pay attention start to wonder out loud: “Why do we have that? It’s a waste of money.”

                                                    The US Army actually put the CI Roller Dude to work in Iraq


The larger an organization, the greater chance this item is not an item but a human. In the United States Army, there are many such persons. They may be in a position of authority, leadership or some private who just can’t seem to get anything done. With privates, a good NCO figures that there is always hope. That hope may come from the thought that: “We’ll get him/ her to understand how to do this and become a good soldiers” or “We think he/she is just too retarded, so we need to kick them out of the Army.”

In either case, I figure that there is some hope. Some chance. Some glimmer of something to make things all better…since we can no longer do “Wall to Wall Counseling.”

But, as a soldier stays in the Army, they are expected to move up in rank. As they move up, they take on more supervisor and leadership duties--- in most cases. There are some soldiers, who have obtained a certain rank where they seem to be totally useless….and not only useless, but actually make others waste time, and do many things to make the job or mission actually harder to do.

Take the case of an Army Sergeant Majors…one in who keeps coming to mind…and after this last weekend National Guard training, I heard even more sad stories of him when he was in Iraq . He was one person, who if we had not taken him along, the entire deployment would have been much safer and less stressful… maybe even “fun.” I have to say I was amazed to hear all the stupid stories of stupid things he did….(you see, a bunch of us who were “organic” to that battalion, were attached to a “real” army battalion just before we landed in Iraq—so I didn’t get to witness the stupid stuff this stupid ass did in Iraq.) He was the dumbass who decided that on a few convoys, he would man the .50 caliber Machine Gun--- even though he was not really trained on it.

(Note: In the US Army, a Sergeant Major can be put into a unit where he is not qualified to do the main jobs of that unit…because he is supposed to be some sort of super boss. However, in our case, his lack of even the basic understanding of what we were supposed to do in Iraq, really made things difficult. He was too low of an IQ to even qualify for our MOS—and that is no shit.)

And he had multiple NEGLIGENT DISCHARGES because he is so pampas, arrogant, stupid and un-trainable-- he wouldn’t ask anybody how the weapon worked…

Oh and how loved the new Army Beret. When were going through all the useless silly training at Fort XXX, he wouldn’t let us put on our issued Desert Combat Uniform (DCUs) until we had “passed” all of our training. He decided to allow us to wear the DCUs like it was a friggen honor or something…like passing some school and getting an award. WTF was he thinking…we were going to have to wear that friggen uniform everyday for the year we were in Iraq.

But to top off all the stupid things I’d ever heard of…when we finally had the “honor” of getting to put on the DCUs, we still had to wear the stupid black army beret—which I hate and think was some Public Relations idea to make everybody in the Army feel elite or something--- like the special units who were the only ones allowed to wear a beret before. (like the Rangers, Special Forces and Airborne).

When we returned to the States after Iraq , he continued to muddle through being our battalion sergeant major. About a year after we’d been back, we went back to good old FT XXX for our two weeks of annual training (AT). We would go to training all day long and come back to our barracks with stuff to study and work on for the next day---while the Sergeant Major sat on his ass all day and had nothing to do.

Then, one night he decided that all the Non Commissioned Officers (NCO- aka “Sergeants”) needed to be trained by his royal dumbass on how to properly fill out a NCO ER (Non Commissioned Officer Evaluation Report)…which was a topic that would normally take a person with half a brain about an hour to do…

Nope. It took over 3 hours. The one thing…actually the only thing I remember after this torture was the Sergeant Major said over 20 times the phrase: “With That Said….”

He would try to explain something while using a Power Point slide showing the form for NCOERs. He went over each box…even explaining how to fill in the NAME, DATE and shit like that like we were children. Then, after explaining what he thought we’d know, he’d say: “With That Said…. Let me go over that again…”

At that point I understood why soldiers who are not in a combat zone are not given loaded weapons. Then…after this friggen retard went on for over 3 friggen hours, the Battalion Commander got up and said: “With That Said…”

We never knew what “THAT” was because all of our brains had gone numb. If the Zombies had invaded at that point, we all would have just sat there and let them eat our brains.

                                                            Room/ bulding clearing training aka MOUT

Now, With That Said, let me tell you about…….


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4 comments:

Momma Fargo said...

Super great post! Love it! I just want to know how in the world you managed to do your job with that black blindfold on your face the entire time. Amazing! LMAO!


PS. Ingonito..

Coffeypot said...

Dude, what is strapped to your leg? It doesn't look like a hand weapon.

And in the last pucture, isn't the grass a little high for a Army camp?

Anonymous said...

1. Everyone who has worn the uniform shares your frustration.
2. The beret was GEN Shinseki's gift to the USA. The rangers are still fuming about losing their black beret.
3. Talked to a newly minted Ranger School grad last weekend. Infantry SGT, 2 tours in Iraq, decorated: still made cracks about the tan beret and he'd only been tabbed for 3 days. Guess attitude comes with the tab.
4. My smart mouth made me eligible for wall to wall counseling, but my football background and size led the people I PO'ed to put up with me.
5. As an officer, didn't allow it.
6. Probably could have salvaged some of my dumbass PFC's and LCPL's, but I couldn't trust my NCO's.
7. Every time it happened behind my back, someone wound up in the hospital.
8. Old Army and Old Corps NCO's knew how to do that stuff.
9. When it happened in my units, wound up on the carpet, explaining to my superior why PFC so-and-so fell down the stairs in a one story barrack.
10. Exaggeration, for comic effect.
11. Did not lie to my superiors -although sometimes I think they wished I had.
12. Many times had to counsel a young troop that his next offense was going to lead to a general discharge.
13. After numerous iterations, could spot they exact moment they tuned me out. Wished mightily for some means of holding their attention.
14. This was early eighties. The Commandant, GEN Barrow, visited my regiment and was apprised by a Capt in my BN that the percentage of Marines using drugs wasn't 15% like the staffer had briefed, it was more like 85%. And that we had troops with 8 or 9 Article 15's that we were not allowed to discharge.
15. We got the green light and my company processed almost 40 troops for less than honorable discharges in about 3 months.
16. Standards are much higher today. The institutional framework is also much tighter -it's harder to get into the type of problems that undid my young men.
17. That Captain that stood up and gave the Commandant the word is now a Major General.
V/R JWest

CI-Roller Dude said...

MF, we had special training and X-Ray vision to see through the black out cover.

CP, It was just my M9 pistol in a high tech, fancy, geewiz, highspeed-low drag holster.
That was a training area, so they let the grass grow...

Mr West, We kicked at lot of soldiers out in the old days.