Leadership Lesson
Cleanliness is next to godliness
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Under the category: Lessons for young officers._______________
In 1973 Ranger assumed command of the 3rd Army Advanced Marksmanship Unit, this after commanding Division and Post level marksmanship detachments. He knew a little bit about weapons and their care and cleaning.
The first thing Ranger did was to order a weapons inspection to coincide with an inventory. At that time the shooters had their weapons signed out and secured in shooting boxes. This inspection was mainly to verify their physical existence.
The hitch came when the Sergeant First Class, NCOIC of the pistol team, objected. "We are not an Infantry Unit and we do not clean weapons like they do." To which Ranger replied directly to the First Sergeant, "Weapons inspection will be 0800, Saturday." SFC repeated his mantra.
Saturday rolled around as they always do, and Ranger began inspecting the NCOIC's pistols first. Dirty and grungy. Again the NCOIC told Ranger this was a MTU and not an Infantry unit, at which point Ranger turned to 1st Sergeant and said, "Get this man out of the unit before 0800 Monday. We will continue this inspection at 0800 Monday."
Come Monday, all the pistols and rifles were clean and glistening. No problem.
The point? Young officers often fail to realize that there are two types of NCO's -- those that will help, and those that will screw you. The main job for a young officer is to distinguish between the two.
An ancillary lesson is that a command must be put in such a form that the men carrying it out understand it is to their benefit to execute that order. In addition, never give an order that you will not enforce.
Labels: NCOIC protest, ranger commands marksmanship team, ranger lessons, young officer lessons
posted by rangeragainstwar at 12:46 PM
8 Comments:
if a humble grunt would be allowed to speak freely sir, i would suggest a couple extra points be added to the leadership lesson.
leadership often means ya'll go first sir. (that's why the rank insignia is on the fucking back of the helmet yo)
i got very sick and very fucking tired of young ensigns who would not hesitate to order me to strip down, grease up, arm myself to the goddamn teeth and crawl down into tunnels, but could never imagine themselves going down those same shitholes. not even when i offered to go with.
there usually wasn't jack shit worth finding down there. it was a far better solution to simply gas the mad motherfuck out of them from up topside.
i enjoyed serving with, and under some of the finest officers our navy ever produced. for the most part they weren't hesitant about getting into the slimy muck with us.
but, unit discipline begins with the officer's self-discipline.
(p.s. i am certain that during that exchange with the ncoic the ranger's sidearms were bright shiny and sighted the fuck in)
MB,
At that point i still didn't have assigned weapons as i was not a team member, but i did shoot as an individual and my equipment was always correct and maintained by myself.( in prior assignments)
I always pulled my shift in the pits when we range fired. I always fired service rifle /National Match course hence pulling and marking targets.
I wasn't the best Officer in the Army but i tried to do my job.
Marksmanship/SF/ have some prima donnas as i'm sure that you are aware. This requires a different style of leadership- if i let the NCO bullshit me then i'd never have one order followed. In retrospect I should have relieved the OIC as well as the NCOIC.
When i see you we'll have a weapons inspection and don't tell me your guns are stainless and don't need cleaned.:).
jim
MB,
BTW I never met a humble grunt. It's not one of our character traits.
When I hear words like that I know I'm in a kill zone.
jim
a little bit of gunk here and there helps a rifle barrel to fire true.
MB,
Yep-true but a little gunk is hell on a gas piston or an impingement gas system. Now we have adjustable pistons on a lot of the newer rifles. The old BAR had this feature so extensive cleaning was not required.What a beauty that one was. Our departed friend Lurch really loved that weapon.
For a match rifle often a chamber brush was all that was needed as tearing them down ruined the glass bedding.
The bolt sniper rifles were the best since they could be properly cleaned without stripping them from the stock. And yes you are right- cleaning excessively will change or ruin a zero. This is why one test fires and confirms zero before using the weapon, and it's never cleaned after test fire. We know these things .
I still prefer my old time model 70's.
jim
MB,
Old story.In Ranger school , dead of winter in the mountains, our sqd was depleted and light so I frequently carried the m60 mg. So one morning the instructor , a SSG Victor Aviles,asked if my gun was clean and i rogered him ; upon inspection this didn't prove to be the case.
I replied- I test fired it. This didn't fly and i still remember SSG Aviles. We later served together in the 13th Infantry and we often laughed about this incident.
jim
A Marine First Sergeant would never have acted like that, and if one had, he would have very quickly been the oldest Private in the brig. Every Marine is a rifleman, and cleaning rifles approaches religious ritual in the Corps.
In my day, our rifles (M-14s with real wood in them and bayonets thiiiiiis loooong!) were kept in a rack in the squadbay, ostensibly locked with the Duty NCO in charge of the key in case someone needed to get theirs. In actual practice we simply pulled the trigger housing group out and field stripped the rifle out of the rack. We'd clean the damn things just for something to do.
Shoot it may, but shine it must.
The racks got modified so we couldn't do that after a buncha morons went and shot up a town in NC after the locals beat 'em up for trying to make time with the town girls. The brass called a base-wide rifle inspection right after the incident to see who could get their rifles out of the locked racks. Every man at Camp Lejeune fell out with his rifle. The officers had no idea we could do that. Those racks had been the same since they modified 'em from holding .03s. Heh.
I only fired a BAR in ITR. They were just about phased out at the time. I liked it so much I snuck through the line twice. Fired it once on slow and once on fast. Me want one!
Gordon,
The NCO featured in this story was an E7=Gy Sgt. He was not an E8.
There's a company in Chardon , Oh that sells semi auto BAR's.
The rifles you are describing we called -arms room clunkers. You Marines even mixed and matched parts when cleaning en masse. We were more attentive.
jim
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