Company Commander goes ballistic

[bayonetbrant]

One of the best screeds you'll read in a long time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/vir2mk/company_command_blows/


here's a taste and there's oh so much more....

Company Command Blows

Hi, I am rolls_for_initiative, and I hate you.

Yes, you. You know who I am talking to. The senior Captain and/or Field Grade who raps your knuckles on your standing desk, waves to your stupid fucking coin collection, and sighs "Company command was the best time in my career."

Do you know why you enjoyed command? Because you are a fucking moron.

If I have to sit through one more LPD and watch adult O3s try to out ADP 1-0 each other in front of the Commanding General, I am going to light myself on fire in front of my Senior Rater's F250. If I hear one more reference to that fucking loser who wrote On Killing from a Fivehead Transportation Commander who failed CCC three times, I am going to drag each and every one of you with me down to hell. Killer Angels is a shitty book. Once an Eagle blows, but not as much as Millennial Tryhards who think shitting on Once an Eagle makes them different or somehow free from guilt within the military industrial complex.

You enjoyed command because while you floated on the cotton candy cloud, a sea of blood and bones churned underneath you in the form of the faceless competents who conveyed your mental health and success. Five or six people bled to death to keep your company running while you bathed in the cool waters of ignorance. You should have paced the floor every night, drunk, wondering if you'd been fair or right or just--because the decisions you made, the power you were given, isn't natural. At first, you feel you will be relieved for the smallest mistake. Eventually, you feel that you will never be punished for the many mistakes you make. Then you feel nothing at all.

Yesterday, I counted 29 agencies or offices who all thought they were my most important phone call of the day. I had to stop writing an SIR for suspected child abuse to listen to a PV2 complain that his NCO won't let him vape in the DFAC. I had to cut that short to take a call from the CSM who informed me that another Soldier's spouse was on the garrison families page complaining that I was making her homeless(again)--which he thought was a fitting transition into inquiring if we were doing leader checks off post--and I swear to god, I had to dig into 2007 levels of discipline not to ask for an address. Then I hung up so I could answer G4 Maintenance's phonecall, informing me that another one of my LMTVs failed roadside because the driver was wearing a fucking hardhat instead of a kevlar. This was all in a span of like 90 seconds--and if I hadn't thought to chronicle it, it wouldn't have even been an unusual 90 seconds of the day. Command is just one abstract string of idiots who all intersect on your cellphone.

This is some sort of lovecraftian paradox where doing something as simple as pretending to help unload a connex for 10 minutes, or just not being fat, earns you Dick Winters levels of praise, but two years spent trying to improve and fix systems for the betterment of your people and the mission is met with utter indifference and, usually, failure. At some point in your career, you go from trying to figure out what the fuck is going on from trying not to do it all on your own--and then realize at 10 PM that you didn't do a single productive thing in 14 hours. You are so utterly removed from actual warfare that you never once start to wonder why Generals say things like "People First." Surely it is out of some newfound, modern-army ambivalence. Or maybe its for the same reason that free-range cattle tastes better.

This dude is clearly my spirit brother

And you'll know it when you get to the first comment from the audience, too 

[bayonetbrant]

oh, and this one from last year from the same dude is equally funny and not nearly as long

https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/m9m9er/opinion_teach_ncos_how_to_read/

[TTC]

Once an Eagle blows,

 

[Staggerwing]

'Once an Eagle' huh? Never heard of it till now. Is there a graphic novel version?

[judgedredd]

What is this about?

[bayonetbrant]

What is this about?

the book?  no idea.

the rant?  about a company commander in the US Army who hates everyone because they're idiots 

[BanzaiCat]

It's apparent that the U.S. Army has issues retaining people, but I'm no expert. I get that from articles like this as well as the U.S. Army WTF Moments page on FB, which is loaded with stupid people in the Army, as well as tons of comments on each post detailing things like this, where senior leadership wonders why the hell nobody wants to re-up and yet the reasons are right there in front of them. 

[besilarius]

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA9dyopf8noNhaYAcllEchVd0wrbAS-cd

Once an Eagle is a good novel on a officer starting in World War I through Korea, I think..
It's been out for maybe fifty years.  Here is the television mini series from 1976.
For geeks like us, its really pretty good.  When this came out, right after Vietnam, it really shocked me that a military epic would get such a treatment.

[bayonetbrant]

There was talk for a long time of making Brotherhood of War into a TV series, but truthfully, if you were going to do a WEB Griffin series, the better one would've been Men At War, which was his OSS series he wrote under a pen name.

[BanzaiCat]

I always loved Brotherhood of War, and The Corps as well.