Lessons Learned

Back in the early 70's, I commanded a National Guard Artillery Battery.  It was Battery B of the 2nd Battalion, 130th Field Artillery in Horton, KS.  That unit had been activated for Vietnam and when they came home, a lot of kids joined that unit to stay out of the draft,  They were for the most part a great group of guys and if you think the guys were great, you should have met the young officers I had assigned.  They were about as fine a group of people as I could have ever asked for.  They were sponges about learning how to run a firing battery.  I think I was in my teacher mode most of the time and they learned a lot and well.  Seldom did I have to cover a subject twice, and there were only a few lessons they had to learn the hard way.

 

Young Captain Petty

One weekend, we were called at about 8 AM when the drill was to start and told to load up our soldiers and report to Hiawatha for a training exercise.   That required our soldiers to draw their gas masks, weapons and bayonets.  Back then almost all of us had our Web Gear in a duffle bag and most of us had it stored in the Armory.   It took us about an hour to issue everything, do an in-ranks inspection and get everyone in the trucks.  About a half hour later, we reported to the Hiawatha High School parking lot for some instruction on formations used in riot control.  I was glad to have one of the Battalion staff do the instruction and then to have the young officers to actually perform the troop movements. I was a pretty salty Artillery man but not much for the Riot Control formations and orders.  It was very simple and easy so I didn't stress much.  We all learned a lot and it turned out to be one great day of learning. 

When we returned to the Armory, the supply officer was in the supply room and inspecting the rifles as they were turned in.  Back in the day, we issued each weapon with a weapons card and the appropriate bayonet went with the weapon on that card.  I made sure that the officer in charge of the weapon inspection knew that we were scheduled for an IG inspection that next month so he needed to make sure the weapons were clean as they could be.  He was as tough as he could be and several of the rifles were returned to be re-cleaned.  The only mistake in this process was that the bayonets were allowed to be turned in and the rifle's returned to get further cleaning.  When the final rifle was turned in, there were two bayonets missing.  Crap.  No one in the unit admitted they still had those bayonets.  I am sure they were kept more as a token of being in the guard than the value.  I kept the unit late for an hour or so and finally let them go home when the bayonets didn't turn up. 

Instead of making the supply officer pay for the two missing bayonets, I just whipped out my check book and wrote a check for a little less than $15.00 to replace the bayonets.  The new Lieutenants all wanted to know why they weren't held to be responsible.  I told them that we all learn from doing and this was just one of those lessons I didn't teach as well as I should.  It became an object lesson and that from then on, all I had to do was to remind them that I didn't want to have to buy any more bayonets.  It was a cheap lesson that they all learned.

Oh, BY the way, the weapons for the unit passed the IG Inspection and got a special commendation as being well done.  The only exception to this was the Commander's .45 (Mine) was dirty and was not cleaned.  I was an expert at cleaning the .45 and had even used my special cleaning supplies to make sure it was clean and orderly.  When the inspection was over, I cornered the Unit Administrator and asked him what had happened to my .45.   He admitted that he and a couple of guys had taken my .45 over to a local pond and shot frogs.  He just got busy and forgot to clean that weapon.  Had it been any other weapons I wouldn't have been mad but it had to be mine.   Dang I hate it when that happened. 

MUD