Stripped Leadership

It felt surreal…like a movie, standing in the First Sergeant’s office, listening to him berate me for my lack of respect in the course of filing my IG complaints.  I had continued to discuss with the Inspector General my mistreatment at the hands of the Menwith Hill command, the abuse of authority, and attempts at retribution through the overall investigate process.

The truth of the matter was that I knew what was coming to me.  I knew I would possibly loose my rank.  I knew the command at Menwith Hill would attempt to discredit me in front of my soldiers and force me out of the military.  I just wasn’t prepared for it to be so blatantly obvious to everyone involved. 

Our Shift Sergeant, SSG P had just failed his PT test months earlier, and was to be soon replaced.  Everyone assumed that I would be taken over, having had both the experience of being a former platoon sergeant, and seniority in rank.

Instead I found myself again in the 1SG Tommy Riley’s office, being yelled at for continuing to appeal the lengthy string of NCOER’s I was receiving, and that I had no right to question the 1SG’s involvement in the process even though he was neither my rater nor senior rater.  Then he broke the news to me.  SSG N, a junior NCO with little experience, would become the new shift sergeant, and I would be placed in an advisory capacity to him.

Basically I was told “SSG, I don’t care what the Inspector General says.  I am the 1SG of this command and you will hold no leadership position while I am in charge.” 

And that was it.  My career was officially dead in the water.

It was a long ways from the stellar soldier who was leading 60 troops as a platoon sergeant and promoted to SSG just two years earlier. 

At that point there was nothing left I could do.  I had been removed from my previous platoon and operations section, and placed in a new position that had nothing to do with my job field.  My shifts really only consisted of working two hours a night, and doing my own pet projects the rest of the time.  I was more focused on getting married and having children. 

I still fulfilled all my duties.  I volunteered for events, organized and tried to get management roles in the back offices. 

But, ultimately I was left unfulfilled.  The best I could do was organize mock promotion boards, push junior soldiers to better themselves, and be the best leader I could be without having any sort of authority. 

In a way, it was kind of a good leadership exercise, because I had to lead from my charisma and spirit, and not from my army-given authority.  I spent my last year trying to inspire as opposed to trying to lead, which I believe is the only reason I kept the respect of my subordinates. 

The soldiers campaigned long and hard for me to placed back in a leadership position, and I did become a squad leader for the NCO’s in the platoon one final time before I separated.  It was my last hurrah, and I enjoyed it.  Still, there was conflict with the Junior NCO’s who would get in legal quandaries with their soldiers and disagreed with my advice.  I had no authority in such situations, and it came to quite a head one night when one of the specialists in the command, an alcoholic who continually showed up to work drunk, decided to take it too far. 

I had warned the junior NCO’s about this soldier.  We all agreed he needed to be counseled, but we disagreed greatly about how to do the counseling.  They wanted to do a quick “give him UCMJ and throw him out” counseling, and I tried many times to explain to them that it wouldn’t work that way.  That they needed to consult with JAG, Army Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program, and other agencies so that the proper policies were enforced and the soldier was given the opportunity to correct himself and discharged properly.

They went the “hard-ass” route—the soldier appealed to several agencies at once, and it took the command another entire year to discharge him—but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Late on CQ, SSG P called down to operations.  The M.O.D. (I believe the equivalent of American SWAT team) was standing outside the Army CQ office, looking for a young underage girl from Harrogate.

The alcoholic specialist had taken her hostage, and was literally holding her inside his room, refusing to let her go. 

SSG P, in all his ignorance, let the M.O.D. on base, and for a short time, the British Force invaded our barracks, arrested one of our soldiers, and took him into foreign custody.

Which made the discharge process even longer.

All of this could have been avoided by doing things the “right way” as opposed to the “army way”, but without older, experience soldiers running the place, it was trial by error. 

That was how I spent the last of my time in the military…inspiring to many…but only useful to a certain degree.