Re: [eia] US Memorial Day remembrance

[Joel Uckelman <uckelman@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thus spake MICHAEL P GORMAN:
> Whenever conversations like this occur I'm reminded of a past conversation wi
> th a friend of mine that served in the rangers through the Reagan era up unti
> l the beginning of the deployment to Somalia.  He was wounded in Grenada and 
> knew personally almost every person killed in the events we now remember as B
> lack Hawk Down.
> 
> He left the army when he was faced with having to leave the Rangers to be pro
> moted further, this is normal practice as people move into the higher version
> s of sergeant, and he really only wanted to be in that unit, so he left.
> 
> I once asked him why he didn't try to become an officer since he could've sta
> yed in the rangers if he'd done that.  There were the standard jokes about of
> ficers and the issues of pay cuts dropping from a high ranked enlisted to a m
> inimum ranked officer, but then he said something that really changed how I v
> iewed the difference between an NCO an officer.
> 
> A sergeant has to have the courage to tell a group of soldiers to follow him 
> into a situation that they might not survive going into.  An officer has to h
> ave the courage to tell a group of soldiers to go into a situation that they 
> might not come back from while the officer stays behind and is safe.  These a
> re two very different types of courage and while he had never had a problem h
> aving the sergeant's courage, he really didn't think he had an officer's cour
> age.
> 
> We often joke that the great generals of history are at least a little odd.  
> After that conversation, it has always made sense to me that they had to be.

Thanks for that anecdote. Very interesting.

On the other hand, I've noticed from walking through American Civil War
cemetaries that there's no shortage of officers there, either.

-- 
J.
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