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.