Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 78

lead them effectively from in front. Platoon sergeants and company commanders are far more important to privates than are generals, and most private soldiers remember only the eccentricities of their distant senior officers. Your theatric attempts to conjure up charisma have caused your soldiers to write you off as a phony flake. Remember when a unit of your soldiers marched past your field command post in the rain, and you stood outside the tent entrance to show them that you shared their suffering? They concluded that you didn’t have enough common sense to get out of the rain! I calculated the cost of dismissing you. The government has made a substantial investment to develop you as a senior commander over the years—perhaps even as much money as I hope to make in my future senior officer’s pension. Could you still be considered an asset? The Army has gone through a period of rapid promotion for almost all eligible officers, so maybe some have been advanced before they were ready. You were assigned beyond your leadership ability; yet, you might be fit to serve somewhere on staff. Under the circumstances, I cannot recommend that you be kicked upstairs to some other position of higher responsibility. Since you are not a career competitor to my boss or to me, we would have no reason to block your reassignment elsewhere at your current rank. Of course, you will undergo a psychological evaluation so that you will have very little hope of appealing our decision. Therefore, it behooves us to give you the push and hope that some of the stink of this operational stag