First of all, I’d like to finally congratulate
the Marine who used to be “America’s First Sergeant” and is now “America’s
First Sergeant Major.” I know from my correspondences
with him, that he will be the new standard for what all E-9’s should be like.
I’m
pulling up a post I did back in 2010. This
was about one of our Sergeant Majors from my old Battalion. He IS NOT what other E-9’s should attempt to
be like. He was and is a retard. I’m really glad that when we got to Kuwait for
prep before going into Iraq, a bunch of us were given to a Regular Army unit
and didn’t have to be under this retard.
(God I’m glad I’m retired and can say what I really feel now.)
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 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 the case of a new private, 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 a certain Army Sergeant
Major…one in who keeps coming to mind…and after this last weekend National
Guard training, (this was originally posted in 2010) 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 leader. 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… and we're talking about the M2 .50 Caliber Machine gun that he was having problems with--- almost hitting US Army Soldiers with the rounds he cranked off.
Oh and how he loved the new Army
Beret. When were going through all the useless silly training at Fort Lewis, 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 Lewis 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.
To this day, whenever I hear anybody use the words: "With that said" I become ill.
Now, With That Said, let me tell you
about…….
4 comments:
Hey, I think your SGT MAJ was a Sergeant I once worked for. (In a joint billet.) Terrible leader. But he motivated me to get rank so I would not have to deal with his type.
Yep, there is pretty much one in EVERY command, but they're NOT usually the SarMajor... Just sayin... :-)
Hey thanks CI Roller! Er...I think? I figure my role now days is to walk around with a coffee mug in my hand poking things with a stick while I say things like: "This ain't right."
Navy One, You "beat" they system then by getting promoted. I remember that SGM trying to tell a WO3 what he should do one day. The WO3 just looked at the SGM and aaid: "why don't you go back to driving trucks?"
OldNFO, no, they are usually 2nd LTs.
America's SGM, I can't help it if I had High Standards. Poking things with a stick will be good...as long as you don't give a 3 hour lecture on something that should have taken 20 minutes.
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