I knew that if I could just get through my fish year in
the Corps of Cadets, my life would get easier and easier over time. Boy! Was I
wrong?
Life doesn’t ever get easy. This is one of life’s best
kept secrets. Life only gets harder (and harder). With progression comes
responsibility. Experience changes all perceptions—except for those lacking integrity.
The misconception of an easier life became magnified
after I graduated from college and entered the Army, having been sent thousands
of miles from home in a cold and (almost) desolate land—Alaska. I now found myself at the age of
twenty-three responsible for my wife and son plus the fourteen other members of
my section and their families members that they had drug along with them.
Just a couple of months later, my boss managed to get
himself relieved of his position and I was forced to sit back and realize that
all thirty-two members of the platoon (and their tag-alongs also) were now my
responsibility also.
It wasn’t long before I was receiving calls from a
distraught mother whose daughter’s husband, a member of my ammunition section,
was mistreating her daughter. She lived in New Jersey and called at 0730 (her
time), hoping to catch me before I left for work; never realizing that her 0730
was my 0130. I sleepily listened to her problem and promised to follow-up on
the same. These calls went on for several weeks; always at 0130 or about that
time. I counseled the young man, reminding him of his responsibilities, but
eventually had to restrict him to the barracks. His young wife, living off the
post, not having authority to have followed her husband to an overseas command
soon moved back to New Jersey with her mother. There were others of this
nature, but you get the idea.
I took time to reminded my entire group that just because
they had my home phone number didn’t mean they were authorized to share it with
just anybody—particularly
mothers-in-law.
At some point that next summer, I’m not sure exactly
when, the realization began to dawn on me that all eighty-five hundred members
of the Brigade were my responsibility also. I had gained a much more realistic
view on the obligations and authority that were inherent within my position.
If I didn’t provide their food, they went hungry. If I
didn’t replace their shelter, clothing and gear; they had no place to stay out
of the environment, nothing to wear or tools to work with. If I didn’t provide
their fuel, they froze.
I was forced to evolve: physically, mentally and
integrally. Life never got easier the next year.
Fort Greely, Alaska, Feb 1974 (-98ºF)
PS: I held that position for another three and a half
years and my responsibilities grew with each year and the platoon grew right
along with them; eventually surpassing my authorized strength of 70 to 75. This
was largely due to the curtailment of the Southeast Asia field problem. You get
chances in life to improve your lot; some you bring about on your own and
others come strictly from the circumstances of the time. I quickly found out
that “it’s the people dude” that make the difference. They run the spectrum
from great to pitiful and a great deal of them reside at quirky. From quirky to
great is where the real opportunity lies. The troubled ones may take a great
deal of your time, but I found that if you pay close attention to the quirky,
you’ll be rewarded over and over with lessons that cannot be learned any other
way. I was lucky enough to have the occasion to have been associated with more
than my share of quirky characters.
