REALLY bad assumption.
Another wrong-headed assumption is that there was ANY risk of this going any other way.
No. Chance.
I picked the time, the place, the witnesses, and the person upon which to practice this particular little management tool. For one thing, of the three new troops who were giving me the gyp, he was the biggest one. For another, he was the leader of the mini-insurrection I was dealing with, because he was just about as new as I was to the group.
I had just replaced another sergeant one grade higher than my rank, who had been there in the same position for three? maybe four? years. He was out, probably they med-retired him, because of a training accident with a mortar bomb. I never got the details, but it had something to do with a bomb getting dropped on rocks and not down the tube. Almost had to have been bad burns, most likely anyway, since the training rounds we used were smokers and not H.E.
Could also have been an illumination round, a parachute equipped round hanging a magnesium flare up in the air for about a minute (usually less). THAT would almost have been worse than the H.E. live rounds, those suckers burn HOT.
And your post also says really loudly that maybe you've been near to, but you've never been IN a command position.
Sometimes (OFTEN!), pencil-whipping your way out of a problem-child only begets you a whole unit full of problem-children.
"Doing the paperwork" was NOT the issue. Nor was actually doing the forms to get someone transferred for fitness reasons, when it is really necessary and actually appropriate, ever a problem.
But knowing when to knock the tonsils out of a smart-mouthed a-hole with a chip on his shoulder, and manage to keep him in harness, while the rest of the crew watches him go down like he was pole-axed, well, it makes a WHOLE different impression.
After this was all over, he was my best troop. Never a minute's trouble, always on the bounce and ready to give the necessary, and he had my back when I needed it.
Listen, if you've got to lead these high-voltage sorts into places where they have a good chance of getting their butts shot clean off, they have to know some things and know them in their bones.
For one, they have to know that you'll be right there alongside them, every time, when things get stupid. And they have to be certain that you're also going to be there pulling their butts out of the line of fire when they need it, even if it means going INTO the fire yourself.
This kid's real problem wasn't me, wasn't even the job. He was SCARED. He was as new as I was and didn't have the experience to help him get integrated into the right socket, didn't have the confidence in himself that some time actually doing this kind of junk will get you, didn't a lot of things.
Cutting monkey-shines to get out of the assignment was a part of the whole deal, but not the main part. He needed to know that I thought he was worth keeping in the group, that he had a place to be and people to be there with him. Had I just cut him loose, or pulled the reprimand and "see the Colonel for a chewing out" business, he would never have gotten his head on straight. And I -could- easily have passed the buck for disciplining him to one of the officers, the butter-bar they foisted off on me to keep the requisitions up to standard, or even all the way up to the Colonel in charge of the facility.
That would have done him absolutely NO good, and made me look like an ineffective buffoon hiding behind other peoples' ranks. That is a REALLY bad reputation to have when you're out in FRONT of a bunch of people with a whole BUNCH of lethal weapons.
Unenviable, I think is how they would describe that position.
The only "good" thing would be that the position wouldn't be very long-term.
When you're going to be living and dying on the skills and loyalty of other people, they need to know that there is a time for goofing and giving guff, and a time when that's not going to be tolerated in ANY quantity. Had we ever actually gone to war in West Germany against the Soviet armies that were stationed on the borders there, none of us would have gotten out of there alive. It was an almost guaranteed death sentence. Our business was to have been to lay low and let the Soviets roll past us, and then interdict and destroy ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in their supply chain that we could find. That kind of assignment or tactical goal is NOT generally survivable. The kind and amount of damage ten people with a BUTT-LOAD of things that go boom (as well as caches scattered all around for re-supply) is NOT something that the invaders can ignore. You're a PRIMARY objective, and they do NOT waste any time or spare any effort to find you and wipe you OUT.
There isn't any room for foolishness when the bullet meets the meat. You have to be tight, you have to know your people, and they have to know YOU. Foolishness and flippant back-talk doesn't cut it in heavy traffic.
The time to sort out that kind of crap is at the field station, the barracks, the armoury while they're cleaning things, the classroom when you've got them sitting down getting taught something.
You can't save it for when there is a nasty job to be done, and they're the ones that have to do it.
Had I gone and done the paperwork to get rid of my insubordinate big-mouthed idiot-child, not only would i have been out a really WHIZ-BANG demolitions guy (pun of COURSE intended), the rest of the commando would have figured me for a Regulation Charlie more interested in keeping myself alive than in doing the mission, not worth trusting. Plus they would KNOW that the easiest way to a reassignment would be to give me a load of CRAP.
And they each and severally would have started handing me truck-loads of crap, privatim i seriatim.
But instead, since the result of crap was a bad headache and a sore jaw, I not only kept my demolitions troop (which are hard to come by, just to make a point there), but I got the respect I HAD to have to make this punk get up and do what he had to do.
Even better, I kept the rest of them from trying the same stunts just to get a new billet somewhere else further away from that death sentence.
There. I think I gave that in small enough bites that you can get a handle on it. These kinds of situations are fraught with tons of repercussions. You have to know ALL the consequences. Or at least think you know them, and act like you do even if it turns out later you were wrong.
"I may be wrong, but I'm not uncertain."
Waffling, hesitating, dithering when you're in combat, not making up your mind NOW,
--- NOT --- DOING --- SOMETHING ---
even if it maybe isn't the absolute best thing there might be to do, is what will get you killed fastest.
If it turns out they've sent kittens out to bite a tiger, well, that kitten's gonna get munched; but if he's ME, he's going out swinging and shouting orders to the rest of the squad, trying to get a tiger-skin rug despite the odds, or trying to get the other kittens and puppies who he led into this mess, out of the reach of those claws and teeth.
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