Foxholes and Dogtags

Chain of Command

One of the things I've discovered I'm weak on is the concept of a chain of command. I kind of got the gist of it in Kosovo, but with an NCOIC who was lazy as all hell, I've adopted in my military career the philosophy of 'if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself'. Being in a unit that was almost quite literally an Army of One didn't help matters much either.

Truth be known, I came from a broke unit where I didn't have a stable mentorship. Don't get me wrong, I've had some excellent NCOs in my time, but they generally had other plans or something came up and they didn't stick around very long to really provide the mentorship that I needed to really succeed. All in all, in my military career within one unit was rather unstable, to put it lightly, in five years within it, I was the most stable person within the unit.

I had a grand total of six commanders within the time I was in the unit.

I had eight seperate NCOICs, of which at one time I was even one. Being in a unit with that high of a turnaround didn't bode well for my leadership skills, so needless to say, I was never very strong in that area. I tried my best to be a motivated soldier and get the job done, but often times I was in over my head. With no stable chain of command in sight, I was used to getting things that needed to get done on my own time.

My first real consistent chain of command was when I deployed (and we went through four Task Force Commanders in theater so that's not entirely true), and coming from a broke unit, what I needed most was a mentor to show me how to get back into the mentality of a soldier and provide me a way to develop my Leadership skills. I'll admit, I needed work. Within my new unit which is not broke, this is more apparent then ever.

On my deployment, what I got was a man who was very adapt at giving up on me (though he would undoubtedly say different). When I first showed that I had a problem early on in the deployment, instead of sitting down with me and trying to work with me on fixing the problem, my chain of command called me into their office and basically teamed up against me to tell me that they wanted to send me home and replace me with another soldier.

This brought the respect of my chain of command down a few notches. Who in their right mind tells their soldier to quit? That's what they did, however, they must have underestimated me because I refused to quit.

That didn't stop them from firing me from any possible job assignment before the deployment was over. If I proved to have an issue in an area, their solution was to fire me instead of work with me. By the end of the deployment, I didn't even do my job anymore (with an exception of the DNBI report, which I might add they tried to fire me from doing, until they sat down and tried to do it. They let me continue doing it because they knew it would give them more work if I didn't, and they knew I hated doing it.)

Actually, instead of getting me motivated, which I was very much so upon entering the army, I was very adament about getting out of the military all together by November of my deployment. In fact, I was pretty certain that this was the end of my military enlistment altogether. That mentality made me make one mistake that I deeply regret, and that was signing my NCOER (that is another rant altogether).

My last couple months got me back on the right track again, and one of the things I did do was I gave up. . . on my Chain of Command (and most specifically my first line leader). He was good at Preventive Medicine, heck, I would still recommend going to him on any matter related to preventive medicine, but as far as leadership was concerned, he quickly proved to be one of the worst leaders I have ever had in my military career. And that's saying something, I've had a lot of leaders. I can think of only one person that was worse.

Which brings me back to my current predicament. I'm in a unit that is made up of primarily NCOs (and unlike a certain hospital that promoted everyone to the rank of sergeant and above regardless of their skills, in order to succeed in this unit you have to have strong leadership skills). And this is a unit that is built upon Leadership. In fact, that is one of the reasons why I chose this unit. I know I have issues, and this is the type of unit that can fix them, something my previous unit never took a bother of doing. One thing I can say about my former leaders, I learned a lot from them, and this Sergeant in question I learned a lot about what not to do as a Leader.

So in regards to the Leadership lessons, I've got the 'what makes a poor leader' down pretty well. Now I need to focus on what makes a strong leader.

Right now, before I'm ready to go to school and get into the mindset of what I need to accomplish the mission in this unit, I need to get back on task, regain my motivation, professionalism and military bearing, and recoup my soldiering skills. I'll know by November if this is the route I want to take or not, and so far I'm very impressed with the unit and the people within it. I can only hope that I can attain the level of soldiering I require to succeed in this unit and I know its possible.

Because once upon a time, I was at that level of discipline required to do this mission.