CAPTAIN BLOOD

One of the acid tests of "leadership" in the Army is the Annual General Inspection, commonly known as "the IG". Every company-sized unit in the Army is, in theory, subjected to this inspection every year. Everyone knew that the IG was imminent and all the companies of the 1st Airborne Battle Group, 325th Infantry were preparing for it.

I had just been assigned to D Company, fresh from the basic course and jump school at Fort Benning. On my first day in the field with the company, some two days after my arrival, the company commander received a call on his radio to return to post to attend a meeting about the forthcoming IG. He sent me instead.

When I arrived at the meeting, a brand new second lieutenant who had been in the 82nd Airborne Division for a total of two days, the dismay of the battle group commander and staff was obvious. As I listened to the instructions being passed out for preparation, I could tell that no one had any hope that D Company could pass this crucial inspection. This quickly led to the relief of the old company commander and his replacement by Captain Blood.

Of course, Blood wasn’t his real name, but within a few days of his assumption of command every soldier in the company called him that. There was a movie out at that time with the title Captain Blood, and many of the troops had seen it. Apparently the fictional Blood, the captain of a ship, was a cruel and vicious man. The name fit our new boss perfectly.

Captain Blood was dismayed by the slack discipline in the company, as well he should have been. However, in an effort to shape things up he went far overboard. Every infraction, no matter how minor, was dealt with by court martial. We were filling up the post stockade with some pretty good soldiers.

The first time we went to the field for a live fire exercise, in other words, the troops had real ammunition in their weapons, Blood instructed me to always stay right behind him. Every time I strayed a foot or two from his back he would tell me to get behind him again. Finally I asked for an explanation. He said I was the only officer they wouldn’t shoot just to get a shot at him. He might have been right.

This might give one the impression that he appreciated my rapport with the soldiers. Nothing could be further from the truth. He viewed that as a sign of weakness. Indeed, everything I did seemed to infuriate him. He would get so angry at me that he would stand behind his desk, too mad to sit down, shouting at me, pulling out the drawers of his desk one at a time and slamming them closed. It was so funny to watch that I nearly laughed every time it happened. That was about the only thing I never did, though: laugh.

Captain Blood’s reign of terror reached its climax with The Case of the Missing Rifle. To put this in perspective, it was in 1959 and arms merchants were paying top dollar for US Army weapons to be resold to Castro supporters. The Army was losing a lot of weapons and was getting very concerned about it.

I took reveille one morning (it was my turn, I was no longer the more or less permanent reveille officer), went on into the messhall for breakfast afterwards, and, during breakfast, learned that one of my soldiers had just been arrested. As soon as I could, I found out what had happened.

Specialist Davis, my radio operator and one of my best soldiers, had been on guard the night before. When the guard tour was over in the morning, the guard barracks were inspected. The guard detail failed the inspection but only had a few little discrepancies to correct. The sergeant of the guard elected to take the rest of the detail back to their company barracks and to leave Davis behind to complete the inspection. He was the obvious choice as he had his own car and was the best man to deal with the inspection discrepancies.

When Davis had passed the inspection he returned to the company with his rifle, intent on locking it up in the arms rack. He couldn’t find the Charge of Quarters and decided, unfortunately, to leave the rifle in the trunk of his car until he could find him. This was stupid, but he thought that since the weapon was assigned to him and he was technically still on guard, no one would miss it.

Of course, the world doesn’t work that way. The CQ made his weapons inventory, found a rifle missing and reported it. By reveille it had come to the attention of the First Sergeant who called the MPs, and FBI was on the case before breakfast was over. As soon as someone figured out it was Davis’ rifle, they asked him. He then remembered that it was still in his car, and freely admitted it.

I wasn’t too concerned about the outcome of the arrest. Davis had made a stupid mistake, but it was clearly not a crime. I was pretty surprised when I learned, a few days later, that Davis had been charged with larceny.

Military law, often maligned by civilians, is actually very fair most of the time. To convict someone of larceny in the military is very difficult because it is necessary to prove "intent to permanently deprive." There was obviously no such intent and it was futile to charge this good soldier with such a serious offense. Or so I thought.
I talked to Captain Blood and explained this to him, but he responded that he had the proof of intent. Since there was no such intent, I couldn’t imagine what the proof was.

On the day of the trial the defense counsel, the military equivalent of a defense attorney, came to me during a recess and asked me if I knew anything about the reveille formation on the morning of The Case of the Missing Rifle. I said that I had been at reveille that morning. He then asked me if Captain Blood had been there, too. I said he hadn’t. He then told me that Captain Blood had just testified that he had made an offer at reveille that morning that whoever had the rifle could return it no questions asked. Since it hadn’t been returned, that proved that the perp had intended to keep it forever.

The whole statement was preposterous. Blood hadn’t been there. Had he made such an offer, Davis would have promptly returned the rifle. He was going to, anyway. What in the world would he want with an old Army M-1?

The defense counsel asked me if I would be willing to testify to that effect, and I readily said I would. A little later I was called to testify and told that and go home for dinner. Blood was standing in front of the company waiting for me. The place was deserted, since it was dinnertime and all the troops were eating. I had no choice but to walk up to Blood and take my medicine. He asked me what the result of the court martial had been. When I told him, he acted surprised. How could they not find for larceny, he wondered, when he had testified about the offer? I told him I had refuted that.

"Oh, you did?" he replied. "That would explain it. Well, see you tomorrow."

He turned on his heel and headed for his car.

Blood didn’t mention the court martial again. A few days later, though, a commander’s call was announced. All the officers of the Battle Group met with the commander. Actually, the deputy commander ran the meeting. He told the story of the court martial and was said he was astonished that the court had taken the word of a second lieutenant over a company commander. He "instructed" everyone to never do such a thing again. This "instruction" was completely illegal. I sat there, everyone knowing that I was the lieutenant, essentially being called a liar in public.

When the meeting was over, everyone filed silently from the room. I silently kissed my career goodbye. No action was ever taken against Blood for his perjury. He had me at his mercy, a quality that he did not possess. Davis was reassigned to Headquarters Company and was promoted back to Specialist in two months.

I have described a couple of career-ending events, and by now you know that I actually spent over 20 years in the Army. In case you are wondering why or how, I can only say that I kept forgetting to resign. Eventually I was in a situation where it made sense to get out and I could retire, so I did. By some miracle, I had managed to make a career out of a royal mess. Lucky me.