About two-thirds of the way through his Afghanistan deployment, Chris Hernandez had a new intelligence lieutenant arrive at his firebase, and the crusty old E-7 convinced the young man to go outside the wire with some French Marines the next day. The young lieutenant was nervous about giving a bad order that might get someone killed:
I gave him a serious look. “Lieutenant. You don’t have to worry about giving a bad order tomorrow. You’re a new lieutenant, new in country. If we get into a firefight, and you give an order, nobody will listen to you. So don’t worry about it.”
The lieutenant looked stunned; for a second or two, he was actually speechless. Then he gathered himself, and said, “Uh… okay. In that case, I guess I’ll go.”
He went out with us the next day. And we got into a firefight. The Taliban opened fire on French vehicles as the team I was attached to scrambled down a mountainside. A burst of machine gun fire barely missed a French forward air controller as he stuck his head out of my vehicle. French gunners dumped thousands of .50 and 7.62 rounds back at enemy-occupied compounds. At one point, an RPG flew between the lieutenant’s vehicle and mine as we rolled down a road (I’ll never forget the look on his face when he described watching it zip past). It was a hell of a first mission for a new lieutenant.
It was also his last mission. When we got back to base, his boss told him he couldn’t go out again because it was too dangerous. So he got to go outside the wire one time, and earned a real Combat Action Badge for it.
And I like to think I taught him something important. Just because the book says “the officer is in charge and everyone of lower rank must follow his orders”, real life says “if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing the best thing to do is shut up and listen to those who do”.
No one would have followed his orders to begin with as he was not in command authority.
Plus he was an American embedded with French but had no command authority regardless of rank.
Sounds like that E-7 does not know the difference between command and general authority.
I’m reading House to House on James LaFond’s recommendation and it gives the same lesson pretty early on. Now I think it of, it would be rare for an experienced NCO to write a story that’s positive about a new Lieutenant.