This post is going to challenge my ability to omit profanity, but here goes nothing.


We have one last night of freedom before we report to Ft. Bliss for the remainder of our training. We have been at it for about a month now and most of the guys in our section are already foreseeing potential problems.

There is a newly minted junior NCO in our section that everyone is having difficulty adjusting to. The guy seems to mean well but he can be a complete jerk. He treats everyone like we are the two year old bastard child of a twenty dollar hooker. I understand that there are a few guys need to be tended to by a nanny but this guy is like the evil stepmother that beats her stepchildren.

This guy is getting under our skin so bad that a few of the guys and I had an impromptu pow-wow yesterday to figure out how to stay off this guys radar. At first I thought the guy was trying to flex his muscle when he first joined our section, so I have tried on a few occasions to try to get to know the guy. I wanted to give him the benefit of a doubt, but all that changed this morning.

I was the second person down in the cafeteria this morning to grab a bite to eat and he was the only guy in the place. I decided, as I grabbed my meal, to go sit with him and have a visit. This was where I was going to figure out if this guy was truly an (explicit) or not.

As I walked up to the table, I said something along the lines of, "Whats going on man?"

His response was, "I am not a morning person."

It was not his response that annoyed me, it was his tone. His tone of voice pretty much told me to go shove my thumb up my rectum. Without hesitating I sat down and didn't say another word. I knew the uncomfortable silence would piss him off. After he finished his breakfast he got up, without saying a word, and disappeared. At this point, I knew we were going to be in for a long year.

Later in the day a handful of us were taking part in some hip pocket training with our section leader. This junior NCO set an excellent example by making it clear that the training was irrelevant to our mission in Iraq. This guys is supposed to be a leader and the fact that he was reluctant to train, even after being told to do so by a senior NCO, pissed me off. Soldiers must train for every possible scenario and this guy thought that because he had a combat patch he could tell a senior NCO that he didn't want to take part in the training. Way to set an example for the men.

I understand that there are many styles of leadership but ultimately the goal is to keep the troops in high moral. Keeping the troops happy is a daunting task, but a soldier that knows he is being taken care of will move a mountain at a moments notice. Keep the troops happy and you will earn their respect. This guy does not know it but the troops are ready to bury him under that mountain.