Be Sure Brain Is in Gear...

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The Rogue Battalion was at the U.S. Army training area at Hohenfels, Germany. I was the battalion adjutant. My office was section of a huge Quonset hut. My primary means of communication was a battery operated field telephone. Because we were in training mode, our brigade headquarters was not present; thus, the headquarters of one of the battalions in training was designed as the "acting" brigade headquarters.

On the second morning in Hohenfels, the field telephone rang; since I was the only person in the adjutant's "office," I answered the telephone. At the other end of the wire was a Staff Sergeant in the Adjutant's office of the battalion acting as the brigade headquarters. I was just able to say "2/64 Armor, S-1," before the sergeant began barking orders at me: the type and frequency of reports he wanted, the format of those reports (which was very different from the format used by our brigade adjutant, what was acceptable and not acceptable to him.

After he completed his mile-a-minute monologue, I said to him, "OK, Sergeant, now lets go over that one point at a time so I can write it down."

The sergeant, possibly hearing my "southern" accent (I don't believe that I have a southern accent), relied, "Don't you listen to what I said? You Johnny Rebs are so damned slow!" He then proceeded to again tell me what he had just told me is a slightly slower speed. He then said, "I hope you understood all of that, Hill Billy" and rang off.

To understand what happened next, you need to know something about military field telephones. They are battery operated and always connected, one to another. If one needs a phone connection to two different locations, then one needs two telephones. One never hangs up (closes the line) on a filed phone: it's always open. To get the other location on the line, one simply turns a crank on the phone and the other phone rings,

After the sergeant at the acting brigade headquarters rang off, I took a deep breath and mumbled the words pompous ass.  Immediately the field telephone rang. Of course it was the pompous ass at the end end of the wire. "What did you say, soldier?" he demanded.  And, I, by this time having had enough of his pomposity, responded, "Make that 'What did you say, Sir', Sergeant."

There were no repercussions from that little incident, except a perceived coldness my sergeant noticed be our battalion headquarters and the battalion headquarters acting a brigade. Even that ended after I met the adjutant of the acting brigade headquarters at the Hohenfels' Officers Club.

The moral of this is two fold: the sergeant should have been certain to whom he was speaking before putting the person down (or,better, follow the Gold Rule and not put down anyone); I should have kept my mouth shut until I was away from the field telephone (or, better still, kept my opinion to myself).

On Sunday 28th November 2010, Wikileaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain.

Hmmmmm... Perhaps a lot of government officials have now learned the same lesson.