Quote:
Originally Posted by Eddie
Webstral, your thoughts? You were an officer as well.
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My first time down the enlisted path taught me that as a lieutenant, the smartest response to almost any situation or challenge was to look over my shoulder and say, "What do you think, sergeant?"
When I first got in, the last of the Vietnam era guys were retiring. In general, I thought the Vietnam-era guys had the right attitude. I got some great wisdom on being a new lieutenant from a few sergeants major wearing on their right sleeves the insignia of units that did not fight in the Gulf.
The post-Vietnam senior NCOs were not as uniformly impressive. In my limited exposure to the combat engineering world, the officers expected the NCOs to do a lot. Some of them delivered. Some of them did not. The ones who don't deliver out themselves fairly quickly, but, as has been said, they can't always be gotten rid of. Following a six-week rotation to Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site (Colorado), all of the master sergeants in the battalion headquarters rotated out to the line companies, and all of the first sergeants rotated in to the battalion staff. At this time, I was on battalion staff. I was not favorably impressed with the guys being rotated in. (Clearly, neither was the sergeant major.)
[Total aside: the leadership in the 4th Engineer Battalion did not give a damn who wore what or who carried what where, except for a few specific items. However, the division missed Desert Storm and Somalia; and this was before the real grind in former Yugoslavia started. It's hard to say how combat--or at least peacekeeping--would have changed the unit's outlook.]
I had some very good experiences with the drill sergeants in MI. They were smart, motivated, and capable. I'm thankful that I had my enlisted time before taking an XO slot in an AIT company. I knew just enough to know who to ask.
The other NCOs were a mixed bag. Some were excellent. Some were not. For the officer leadership considering how to get things done, I think it's a matter of judgment. The superior people make their presence known quickly enough, and they can be given more rope. The less-superior people are given less rope.
I can't talk to what other nations expect from their militaries' NCOs first-hand. I can repeat what I've read time and again from people who do know: Western nations have a long-standing tradition of high-quality NCOs; Russian-model armies generally don't have the same tradition. It's been a generation since the end of the Soviet Union, plus several military actions along Russia's periphery. Things may have changed for them. The Chinese have a long military history, although the benefits thereof seem largely to have been absent in WW2. How well the PLA did in Korea depends a good deal on whose accounts one reads. The older I get, and the more I read, the more I come to see that the exchange rate may not have been as favorable for the West as I grew up believing. The better the PLA did, given their circumstances, the better we must believe their NCOs performed.
I do know that we expect a lot from our platoon sergeants. I think these guys are even more important than the first sergeants, critical as good first sergeants are. Unless the squad leaders and platoon leader collectively are VERY strong or VERY weak, in my experience the platoon goes the way of the platoon sergeant. The platoon leader may lead in the field, but he leads the platoon sergeant's platoon. I've seen a couple of promising lieutenants face-plant because the platoon sergeant wasn't doing his job. I've seen more promising and not-so-promising lieutenants seriously get propped up by their platoon sergeants until the PL could learn to walk on his own.
It's a complex picture.
Webstral