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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 29, 2024

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It’s a pretty big deal whenever someone becomes a Non-Commissioned Officer. When I became a Corporal in the Marine Corps, I had to ‘run the gauntlet,’ which meant having all of the NCOs in the unit get in two lines facing each other, and then walking between them. I had to stop between each pair of NCOs to let them take turns kneeing me in the legs. Most of the Marine NCOs kneed me as hard as they could.

When a Marine becomes an NCO, they also get a red stripe on the pant legs of their Dress Blue Uniform. This red stripe is called a ‘blood stripe,’ and running the gauntlet is how the new NCO earns it.

> Read the entire series of posts here: My Journey to Jesus.

The Army has no such ritual. You simply get called out of formation, your promotion orders are read to the unit, and someone pins the new rank on your collar.

New Sergeants in the Army are sometimes called ‘Buck Sergeant,’ the word ‘buck’ indicating a lack of experience.

By the time I was promoted, I’d won division tables (best in division) on two separate vehicles, and been a Distinguished Honor Graduate at the Army’s Primary Leadership Development Course. Normally I’d have been made a Tank Commander on an AVLB, with just one soldier (the driver) underneath me, but the other NCOs in my platoon thought I was a little too cocky and wanted me humbled, so they threw me into a situation they did not think I could handle, moving all of the soldiers’ nobody wanted into the M9 ACE squad and making me the squad leader.

The M9 ACE was the only one-person vehicle we operated. It was essentially a combat bulldozer and was used primarily to dig hull-down positions for tanks.

Luckily for me, a Corporal in the Marine Corps is usually a squad leader, and I’d actually done a stint as a platoon sergeant. I pulled my squad into a storage room and let them know that we’d all been put together to fail. “You are all here because you have a bad reputation,” I told them, “But I promise you that if you are loyal to the unit and to one another, I will be loyal to you.”

As a Marine, I believed in leadership by example, so on Fridays, when it was time to sweep the motor pool, and all of the NCOs huddled together to chat while the soldiers swept, I grabbed a broom and swept along with my squad. If my guys were doing vehicle maintenance, I did it right alongside them. Whatever I asked my squad to do, I did as well, except on those rare occasions when I had parts of my squad doing things in two separate locations such that I had to go back and forth between them.

My squadmates responded, and we very quickly became a cohesive team. We later went to M9 ACE Tables, and I won tables in that vehicle as well.

The 12F MOS had three vehicles – the AVLB, the CEV, and the M9 ACE. I was very proud to have won tables in all three.

Once it became evident that I was a competent squad leader, the platoon reshuffled, and I ended up on an AVLB with PFC Hitch. A Staff Sergeant took over the M9 ACE squad.

I was only a tank commander for a short time. I’d been on staff duty quite a bit, particularly with SFC Davidson at the brigade level (sometimes with different Staff Sergeants at the battalion level), and had a habit of taking in my computer, which the unit was OK with as long as I was doing something related to the Army.

Staff Duty is a 24-hour rotation – having a computer helped pass the time.

I did a lot of work on that computer. I made a ‘new’ 82nd Engineer Battalion unit crest in Corel Draw 3.0, using a clip-art of a bull as a base (Paul Bunyon’s ox, ‘Blue Babe’ being the unit icon) and wrote a vehicle maintenance tracking program for the brigade. Perhaps more importantly, I got a reputation as being a computer ‘whiz kid’ and became far more valuable to the unit in that capacity than I was on a tank.

CPT Feigenbaum (our commanding officer after CPT Jones left) took me out of the A&O platoon and put me in charge of the company barracks instead, which was the same job SGT Urich had when he picked me up in Frankfurt when I first joined the unit.

Being in charge of the barracks is pretty easy work, and it takes very little time. I had an office in the basement filled with blankets, sheets, pillows, furniture, and everything else a barracks might need, but for the most part, unless someone was coming to or leaving the unit, there was nothing for me to do, freeing me up to act as the unit Automations NCO and Security Officer.

CPT Feigenbaum wanted me to secure laptops for each platoon, and, eventually, each squad within each platoon, and our company Supply NCO, SSG Martinez, quickly became my best friend.

We were a combat engineer unit, and as though we rated computers, we were about the last unit in Germany that could look forward to getting them. There were other units that had vastly different roles for whom it was very easy to get computers, and SSG Martinez knew every other Supply Sergeant in Germany. If we had something off-books someone in a non-combat field might find ‘cool,’ it was not hard for SSG Martinez to find a unit that had extra computers and that was willing to trade, so we’d trace all over Germany carrying training mines, Leathermen (the multi-tool), or whatever else we had that was easy for Combat Engineers to get, and trading them for computers, computer software, and whatever else we thought the company might use.

When the 16th Engineers came home from Bosnia, it was time for my unit to go, but the battalion decided to keep Charlie Company in Bamberg, as ‘Rear Detachment.’ Alpha Company, Bravo Company, and Headquarters Company (HHC) all packed up to go a week or two apart, and as each unit was set to go, Charlie Company was hallowed out, with the best soldiers in Charlie Company replacing the worst soldiers in other companies.

I think Bravo Company left first, and Bravo Company wanted me on an M9 ACE, so I packed up to deploy and showed up one morning to get into formation to go to Bosnia with Bravo Company. Suddenly I’m called out of formation – CPT Feigenbaum fought to keep me, and I was staying in Bamberg.

HHC went next. The Department of Information Management on base had begun to use me for computer support when they could not figure something out, and HHC really wanted me for my computer experience. Sure enough, I packed up and showed up to deploy, only to be pulled out of formation again.

SSG Phipps wanted me to be his CEV Gunner in Alpha Company, so I packed for Alpha Company, too, just to be pulled out again at the last minute, and at that point, CPT Feigenbaum told the Battalion Commander that he could not run a company unless he had some people he could truly count on. The Battalion Commander told CPT Feigenbaum to give him three names. Those people would be untouchable – everyone else was fair game. SSG Martinez, SSG Sedore, and I were picked.

SSG Sedore was an Army Ranger turned Engineer, and he had been to Sapper School, so he was in Special Forces both as Infantry and as an Engineer. Somehow he was the Platoon Sergeant for Headquarters Platoon.

Our Company Sergeant Major, CSM Leeber, got a fax machine, and suddenly everything had to be faxed to him, and though that might not sound like much of a problem, those early fax machines were very slow and had very little internal memory, meaning that a fax machine would call in and then stay connected for a very long time while the receiving fax machine collected and printed out the fax.

This became a major problem for each company’s headquarters platoon, as if they sent a runner to bring a report to CSM Leeber, CSM Leeber would send the runner back with a nasty message about not wasting time with runners when reports could be faxed. We would sometimes spend half a day trying over and over again to send a fax before we finally got through when CSM Leeber’s fax machine was not busy.

Fax machines would transmit each pixel that had to be printed, line by line, so a page with just a little writing on it would print relatively quickly, whereas a page with a lot of writing on it could take a long time.

One day I was in the headquarters platoon office, and I overheard SSG Sedore complain about the fax machine.

I headed over to the supply and asked SSG Martinez for fifteen pages of black construction paper, and then headed back to headquarters, where I talked SSG Sedore into faxing the black construction paper to CSM Leeber.

By the time we had formation at the end of the day, CSM Leeber wanted us all standing at attention in the motor pool, and he was absolutely livid. He wanted to know what “dumb son of a bitch” played a prank on him, and made sure we knew that “nobody is going home until I have somebody’s ass.”

We must have been in formation for 45 minutes before the Battalion Commander walked past and asked what was going on.

“Someone sent a bunch of black paper to my fax machine, Sir,” CSM Leeber told him.

“That was me, Sergeant Major,” the Battalion Commander said. Someone must have brought the Battalion Commander in on the joke – him saying he sent it was a total lie – but it had the desired effect. CSM Leeber no longer demanded that every single report be faxed instead of carried to him, and SSG Sedore and I were fast friends.

> Read the entire series of posts here: My Journey to Jesus.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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