Long ago, in the 1980s, I was a soldier in the 502nd Air Assault Infantry Regiment, which is part of the 101st Airborne Division. A few of our sergeants were combat veterans from the Vietnam War. But none of our officers had seen combat except for one captain. He was 15 years older than any of the other captains in the regiment and medals covered him: The Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, as well as decorations from the Chancellor of Germany, the President of the French republic, the King of Thailand, and the President of the Republic of Vietnam. Unlike the other 22 captains in the regiment he had been an enlisted man, a sergeant, during the Vietnam War.
I was only a Private First Class but I worked for the adjutant on the colonel's staff so I knew all the officers in the regiment. There was one lieutenant who was a Christian. There was a major who loved the Lord and with whom I sang Handel's Messiah one year. He and I would have been friends but he was an officer and I was enlisted. There was one captain who very ostentatiosly proclaimed his Christianity, as though he thought it would make people think he was a better man than he was. There was the colonel, he was a Christian of some sort, and attended the protestant chapel service every Sunday (it was on his official schedule). But there was my captain, who you think I would have known better than all the others because he was actually my commander. But he was quiet. When he came into the headquarters he didn't talk to anyone but would quickly walk to the colonel's office and make his report or recieve his orders. Always, on his way out of the headquarters he would stop by my desk and ask, "Soldier, do you have everything you need to do your job?" then go back to doing what ever he spent his days doing. I never saw him smile. The only time I saw him angry was when the lieutenant in charge of the mortar platoon said his men were too tired to complete a task. (That lieutenant was forced to resign his commission.) Though he worked us hard, that captain was absolutely loved by all his men.
He was loved because he was humble. He knew his power over us. He knew his responsibility to us. He never abused us but made us perform to the highist standards, much higher than the army-wide standards. I would sometimes hear the captains bragging to each other about how good their companies were. My captain never braggged. He didn't have to. The records were clear. His company had highest PT scores, the highes SQT Scores, the most days in the field, the highst marsmanship scores.... He just stood there and listened to the other captains brag on their men. I never felt like the the standards he set for us were so he would look good to the colonel or the other officers in the regiment. I think all we soldiers knew he demanded so much from us so we would survive on the battlefield, because he had survived on the battlefield.
He was Baptist. He attended a little Baptist church in Clarksville, Tennessee. He never talked about it. He didn't keep a Bible on his desk like the ostentatious captain did. He didn't talk about Jesus to his men. But he went to church every every Sunday morning, as I learned when I heard some of the other officers talking about why my captain wouldn't go out drinking with them on Saturday nights. Did I mention he was humble? There were 4 lieutenant colonels, and 7 majors in the regiment who outranked him, but as a Distingushed Member of the Regiment the captain should have always been seated beside the colonel at any dinner. But one time the adjutant (he was new in the position and didn't listen to me or the sergeant in charge of protocol) seated him below the majors. The colonel, of course, corrected the adjutant, and the adjunt apologized all over himself. What did the captain say? "Don't worry about it. We all put our pants on one leg at a time."
No comments:
Post a Comment