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Company
Commander |
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My first
command position came to me as a surprise. I don’t believe any new commander can
ever really be prepared enough for the challenges that would later face them.
I believe that, especially in myself. I had been assigned as the supply
officer of A troop 155 cavalry regiment. We were stationed in My company commander was a gung ho kind of guy. When we were back in the states, he would wake us up every morning an hour before every other company; so that we could get an extra hour of pt in before we had to start our day. I hated that. As soon as all the platoons were doing pt, he would take me, being the only other officer in the company, and he would run me around some track which just so happened to also go into the woods. The man was a devil. After every pt session, I would be pulling stickers and thorns from out of my clothes. I hated him. Besides the pt though, the man never seemed to make the right decisions. He would always be fumbling around with giving orders. He would tell one person to do one thing, and then he would tell somebody else to do something else which completely contradicted what he had told the first person to do in the first place. Then, he would have to stop them both, and have somebody else who knew what they were doing to tell them exactly what it was the he wanted them to do. It was confusing to say the least. I got exhausted just watching him. When I would be in the supply room, ensuring that all the procedures were being met, every now and then, the captain would show up and tell my supply sergeant exactly what it was that he was doing wrong. As soon as the captain would leave I would tell the supply sergeant to ignore what the captain had just told him. Afterwards, the captain would congratulate the sergeant for doing a good job. I would smile and walk back to my office to see if there was anything I needed to sign. In February, there was going to be a convoy. We were working hard to make all the preparations. Word came down from head quarters that the Battalion XO was going to be riding with us. The captain got nervous when he heard that. The captain had served as one of the XO’s platoon leaders back when the XO was a company commander. Every day for a week as soon as we finished everything once, we would do everything again. After that, we would have top to bottom inspections on the hour, every hour. The captain would walk through all the rooms with a white glove on. Most likely he had seen that in a movie. The man was so fake, but the men seemed to like him. They thought that he was “Hard-Core” and “Hooah”—two words that really have no meaning outside of the military. The day finally came for the convoy. We P.M.C.S’d every vehicle twice for good measure. We then “radio-checked” for the next twenty minutes. “Uhh…Vehicle three, uhh, radio-check, over.” “Uhh…yeah, this is vehicle three, radio-check out.” I would bet that every vehicle did that about three times each. The major
came down at exactly I sat in the passenger seat of the third vehicle. My
driver was some 19 year old kid from “Yes, sir.” My driver replied being polite. We then got to a point in the road where the ride started getting bumpy. We were probably going a bit too fast. With every bump the Humvee would go flying in the air. My driver and I just yelled “Yee haw” the whole way. A voice came in over the radio. “Stop fuckin’ around back there!” It was the major. He had been watching us in the vehicle before us. My driver began to slow down, and we stopped having fun. Soon, we were driving by a city. It was a small city. The buildings were nothing more than stone looking squares with holes in them. Between them were strings which had been hung up to dry clothes on. It looked like something I had seen out of that “Aladdin” movie I had watched when I was a kid. As we drove by, a group of villagers began forming up along the street to watch us as we drove by. Then, suddenly shots fired out from out of the crowd, and the convoy came to a stop. “What’s going on? Why are we stopping?” I yelled to my driver. “I don’t know! The vehicles in front of us just stopped, sir.” He replied back rather smartly. I didn’t care about that. I quickly got on to the radio, and tried to reach the commander. He wouldn’t answer. Then, I knew why. He had stopped his vehicle, and had taken to chasing down the villager who had shot at us. He was armed with only his side arm. All the weapons had been secured in another vehicle. He began to scream. “Hey yo, mother fucker, stop!” As if that were supposed to work. He ran down the person he was chasing into an alley where the guy ran into a building. The captain didn’t follow. He just stayed out in front aiming his weapon at the building. At that time the major had taken it upon himself to get out of his vehicle and go retrieve the captain. The major screamed. “Get your ass back inside your vehicle.” I began to think about how this was a bad idea to have the convoy just parked out here. “What if this was a trap?” I thought. I got out of my vehicle and began walking towards the captain and the major. The major screamed again. “Get your ass back inside your truck!” The captain turned his head towards the major. Suddenly, shots fired. Two shots went right through the captain’s chest. His flak jacket didn’t stop the bullets. The major then quickly grabbed for his side arm, but before he could draw, two more shots came out. One of them hit the major, and he flew in a circle and fell to the ground. I grabbed my side arm, and began firing into the direction of the bullets. I must have fired at least six rounds. Then, the shots stopped, and it became quiet. I ran up to the building. Two more guys from the convoy had gotten out, and were following me. They had drawn their M16s. I kicked in the door, and we quickly sweeped through. There was no one else inside except for the person I had shot through the window. He was wearing a mask. I bent over to remove the mask. When I did, I sighed. It was only a twelve year old little girl. She was dead. I threw the mask back down onto her face and went back outside to check on the captain. He had sat himself up against the wall. Blood was splurging from his mouth. I stooped down beside him. He couldn’t talk. He began to make whimpering sounds. “I need a medic!” I yelled towards the convoy as loud as I could. “It’s alright sir. It’s going to be alright. We’ll get you back inside the truck, and we’ll have you to a hospital in no time.” It would be at least an hour before we could get any where, but I didn’t know what else to say. “Am I shot?” The captain managed to ask between the periods of whimpering and spitting blood. “Yes sir you are.” I replied. “I can’t feel it…” “It’s going to be alright sir. It’s going to be alright, just hold on.” “Did I stop them?” The captain asked. I hesitated for a bit. I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to say that that was the stupidest thing I had ever seen, and he could have gotten us all killed. “Yes sir, you stopped them.” I began to get choked up. I swallowed heavily. I yelled out again. “Somebody get your ass over here!” Two guys came running up. They were the medics. They were carrying a stretcher for the captain. Immediately they began working on him. The major had been shot in the arm. He would be ok. I looked back down at the captain. “I stopped them.” He said. “Yes you did sir, stopped them good.” A forced smile spread across his face. Then, suddenly, the smile began to fade away and his eyes rolled back into his head. The captain was dead. His blood was all over my uniform. “Help me get the captain into one of the vehicles.” I said. I helped place the captain onto the stretcher. The two medics took his body away. We quickly got everyone back inside their vehicles and got the convoy back ready to go. I took the first vehicle. I left my driver to go on by himself. When we started off again I realized something. I had just become the commander of my very first company. |