Tired of deep meditations on war? Here's a story - and just a story - submitted 5 years ago when it was titled "Virtue Among Lieutenants":

Rank Among Lieutenants

"Rank": Also Means "Something deeply unpleasant to see, smell, taste, consider, etc..."

I was an artillery Forward Observer, attached to an armored cavalry troop - technically still a company, but reduced down to about a reinforced-platoon by an epidemic of some jungle cootie a couple of weeks earlier. This was Vietnam, I Corps up on the DMZ and on the coast of the South China Sea, 1968.

The troop was led by one of the two officers who escaped the jungle crud, a West Point 1st Lieutenant, who was, surprisingly enough, junior in rank to me by a couple of days.

Yeah, I know: "Rank among lieutenants is like virtue among prostitutes." My experience is that sometimes there is virtue among prostitutes - I've known some working ladies who were very kind to me in a non-transactional way. Sometimes "virtue is its only reward." People say that like it’s a bad thing. Huh. Again, not my experience.

Flash Priority

So, we were motoring around the sand dunes and fishing villes that line the coast of the South China Sea between the DMZ and Huế City. Our battalion had the usual three maneuver troops that operated independently.

This particular day we were in the south side of our Area of Operations (AO) when the battalion radio net lit up. Alpha troop was in contact up north of us. We could hear the calls back to battalion HQ for air support. Bravo (us) and Charlie troops were ordered north with all deliberate speed.

We didn't deliberate at all. Did a 180 degree turn and moved out. We were flying, taking no precautions at all, relying on our M113's to protect us from anyone who wanted to take a potshot at us while we were on the fly.

It was sort of a tense situation. On the radio, it sounded like Alpha had run into more than they could handle. Took us about ten minutes to reach Highway 1, the main N-S road through I Corps.

This is why they call it "Ass-fault."

The road was some general's pet project, I can hear him in my head, "What these people NEED is pavement! I want Highway 1 to dazzle 'em! Pave that sucker! Make them proud of their roads." Actually nobody really needed a paved road until we showed up. Just sayin'.

That paved road was the problem. Point track ran square into a senior Sergeant E7 MP (Military Policeman), backed up by a couple of other MP's and a jeep with an M60 machine-gun mount. The E7 had his orders from the General: "NO TRACKS on my nice asphalt highway!"

And we had our orders. The CO moved his track up to point. Point track commander was pissed at being stopped, still up in his .50 cal turret yelling at the MP Sergeant, and the MP's on the jeep had sorta moved their M60 into a target solution.

Two more of our lead tracks had moved up left and right of point, and they were manning their gear - .50 cal turret, M60 machine gun mounts on either side - to casually point in the direction they were headed, which was somewhere on the other side of the MPs.

The CO moved the command track up between two of our other tracks and dismounted. He was in a rush, and he wasn't very polite. He ordered the MPs out of the way. The MP sergeant stood his ground. The CO tried to explain that we were on a flash-priority mission, and we needed to use the highway. There was more discussion. Not sure an MP would even know what a "flash-priority" mission was.

Lock and Load

I was assigned the right side of the Command Track pit (and the right M60) on the command track. While everyone was arguing, I was trying to figure out where in hell we were. Welp, there's the highway - that's on the map. I finally identified a Catholic Church steeple, which gave me a resection point. And there was more...

I hopped up on the command track's upper deck, dismounted and walked over to where the CO was. He was just ordering point track to move around the MPs and on to the highway. The track revved up, the idiot MP on the Jeep racked a round into his M60, immediately followed by the sound of (counting in my head) four .50 cals and maybe eight M60s chambering rounds. This was getting ugly.

Turd in the Punchbowl

I got up to the CO, said "We don't have to do this." He whirled on me, pretty angry. "Not NOW!"

Time to insert some rank among lieutenants into the issue. I yelled. "SIR! We don't need to go on the highway! There is another, better, faster route!"

Well, wasn't I the obsequious turd-in-the-punchbowl? These boys were working themselves up into a murder-froth, and I ruined it. Good.

"SIR! If we cross that rice paddy, there's a road that diagonals to Alpha's position. The highway takes us up two sides of a triangle. This is the short side. We should go that way. The road isn't safe, but then neither is this."

We needed to scoot. The CO directed me to hop on point track and go find that road. "NOW, Lieutenant!" Roger that, boss. Up I went, and across the paddies we went. The troop followed. I don't know if the CO made up with that nearly-dead MP. I expect he just ignored the officious suicide-NCO, saddled up his men and moved out.

I think we were within a click of Alpha when they called us off. We could see the cobras chasing what was left of the NVA. We did a little patrolling alongside Alpha, then went back to our assigned AO.

Grunt-Think

So, just a little traffic-spat of a story. But so many guns! Promotes even trivial things up to life-or-death issues. Rank becomes a life-or-death issue. The E7 was packin’ a remote-general. My CO had a silver bar. They both had backup, hot to go. And they both had good reason to stand their ground, though I thought my CO’s reasons should’ve prevailed.

Reason should have prevailed. But it nearly didn't. The lesson for officers is, I guess, that Grunt is contagious. Bush-happiness is contagious. Officers need to know this, monitor themselves. Because all that grunt-think just seems like such a good idea sometimes... We're on our way to kill somebody, right? Is this guy somebody? No? Why not? He sure LOOKS like somebody!

The Gunny is Always Right...

I remember the Marine Gunnery Sergeant who trained me up. He taught me to distinguish varieties of “Sir.” Said tiredly, it means “cut that out.” Said casually, “okay then.” Yelled at the top of his lungs - “SIR!" = "You’re fucking up! Reboot and reconsider!”

Didn’t just work on me. It worked for me, too! I was surprised. It occurs to me that there is a lot to this rank-thang that is NOT taught at West Point. Maybe it should be.