OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS

Any hierarchial organization is prone to arbitrary and irrational actions. When a boss can just tell someone to do something and not permit discussion, strange things happen. The Armed Forces are particularly vulnerable to this. In fact, the motto of my class when it entered West Point was "Instant and unquestioned obedience to orders at all times."

Needless to say, this tendency toward irrationality didn't sit well with me, but I was well trained and usually did what I was ordered regardless of how stupid or irrational it might have been. Not that I didn't try to have a discussion before doing something stupid. I always tried, and sometimes succeeded, but many times I just had no choice. Several times the orders given were worth remembering, whether carried out or not.

I had a company commander, "Igor" Beaver, who was the darling of his boss and the staff, even though he didn't seem to know much about commanding a company. He was an expert politician. He spent a lot of time at the higher headquarters manipulating things for the benefit of himself and the company, and this he did very well. And he was an innovator. He was always coming up with ideas which seemed crazy when you first heard them, but after working them out they often came out pretty well.

The unit had recently moved from Fort Bragg to Okinawa and had just moved into its barracks. Igor and I were walking around the barracks building examining the grounds and the outbuildings. There was an unusual metal mesh box set upon a concrete slab out by the street that was the first thing you saw when you drove into the company area, and it was ugly.

"What's that thing?" Igor asked, as if I might know something he didn't.

"All I can figure out, sir, is that it's a paint locker," I replied.

"But it's ugly," grumped Igor. "We've got to get rid of it or fix it up. You know what it looks like to me? A cage for a wild animal. We should get a bear. Boy, wouldn't that be great?. We'd have a bear for a company mascot!"

I was unconcerned about this nuthouse idea at the time, but as the days went by things got worse. Special Services had an old fishing boat that it couldn't afford anymore and had put up for sale. Igor was very interested in the company owning that boat (also a crazy idea). Then he decided that I should take the boat to Japan, go up into the mountains, capture a bear, and bring it back for a mascot. It took several days to talk him out of it. I had nightmares for weeks about being lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a bear running loose on the boat.

Igor had more luck, if you could call it that, with his other mascots, a pair of mongoose (mongeese?, mongooses?). Igor spent a lot of nights in the local bars and he was fascinated by the fights staged in some of them between the local poisonous snakes, called habus, and mongooses. There was a lot of betting on these fights, with the bar taking a large percentage of the money wagered. Never mind that mongooses had won every fight ever held, the patrons bet huge amounts of money on every fight.

Igor could visualize holding habu-mongoose fights in the company and raking off big bucks for the company slush fund. He wanted some habus and mongeese.

The next time the company went to the field for a few days, Igor put out an offer for snakes and rodents. He offered a 3-day pass for every habu and every mongoose, dead or alive. Within an hour he had been presented with four dead habus. That wasn't working. He changed the offer to reward only those bringing in live specimens. By that night he had two live mongoose, but no habus.

When the company returned to the barracks they brought two mongoose with them. Someone built a cage and put it outside the door. Several soldiers lost finger tips by sticking fingers into the cage for a second or two. They never saw the mongoose move until they felt the end of their finger disappear into its mouth. No one dared clean the cage which soon smelled like the monkey house in August.

A few weeks later the company was going to be inspected by the High Commissioner, a Lieutenant General who had quite a reputation for his detailed inspections. Igor went outside a few minutes before the scheduled time, to await the general's arrival. I was outside taking care of a last minute detail. Suddenly Igor smelled the cage.

"What's that awful smell?" he asked with some desperation.

"It's the mongoose cage, sir," I told him.

"Get rid of it," commanded Igor.

"You can't get near it, how am I going to get rid of it?" I retorted.

"You get paid the big bucks to be an officer implying that you can think, now get rid of it!" barked Igor.

I got two soldiers and a couple of wooden planks. I had them put the planks under the cage and carry it to the back of the company. When they got to the cliff behind the company I told them to throw it over the cliff. At the bottom of the cliff, the cage broke apart and we watched the two mongoose go scurrying off. I returned to the company and hoped the general didn't go out back and look over the cliff.

The ecology of Okinawa was unusual. Though the island is only 60 miles long, it is divided in half by a narrow waist, and has different ecologies on each half. The training areas were on the northern half, and that is where all the habus and mongoose lived. No one had ever seen either on the southern half, except in bars and in a cage in front of D Company.

About a month after the inspection, I was driving to work one day when I saw the corpse of a mongoose on the road. "One gone, one to go" I thought. A few weeks later I saw another. I was convinced that the mongoose were now again restricted to the northern half of the island. However, I saw another one a few days after that, and then another, and then another. By the time I left it was not at all uncommon to see mongoose roadkill. The ecology of Okinawa was changed for all time.

* * * * * * * * *

Unfortunately, I have a rather poor record when it comes to obedience to orders. Considering that the Army is based on -- relies on--obedience to orders form superiors, it's a wonder that I ever lasted beyond the first three years. Perhaps my most outrageous disobedience occurred in front of hundreds of soldiers and involved an order from a general.

I was commanding a rifle company in the 2d Infantry Division at Fort Benning. My company had won the battalion and brigade drill competitions and was competing for the Division championship. The reviewing officer and head judge was BG Corley, an old acquaintance of mine from my preteens when we were neighbors.

My company was the first to compete and when we made the turn to pass in review the markers on the field were obviously in the wrong place. We had turned too late to be lined up correctly. General Corley yelled out to me to take the company back and start over after the markers had been correctly emplaced.

I answered, "It's all right, sir, I can make it." <BR>

Stupid!!!! We finished third. I'm sure we would have won if I hadn't done that. It's bad enough to disobey a general, but to do it in public is too much.

For some reason, I never learned. Not all results were that bad, though. At a fire support base in Viet Nam I saw my artillery battery turning around and preparing to fire. I had heard of no contact with any enemy so I asked the battery commander what they were firing at. He replied that he didn't know, it was a fire mission from "Corps". There weren't actually corps in Viet Nam, but the Field Force Artillery acted like a corps artillery and gave orders to subordinate artillery units.

I thought about that for about a half a second and ordered him not to fire. He insisted that he had to fire if he got a fire mission from Corps. I told him that I had troops in the area his guns were aimed at and I wouldn't permit him to fire until I had made sure there were no friendlies in the vicinity. While he relayed that to "Corps" I called the A Company commander to find out if he had anyone near the impact area. He didn't.

In a few minutes a colonel who identified himself as the corps artillery commander called me. He wanted to know what he had to do to get that mission fired. I told him he had to tell me what the target was and how he knew about it. He said he couldn't do that. After a few minutes of discussion he asked me if I got a direct order from the "corps commander" would I fire? I said that in that unlikely event I probably would. The next voice on the phone was Lieutenant General Peers, the Field Force Commanding General.

LTG Peers made me an offer. He said that if I would fire that mission he would explain in person what the target was and the source of the information. I responded with the correct artillery phrase, "On the way, sir" I gave the signal and he could hear the howitzers firing in the background. The next thing I heard was the report of the rounds landing followed by a series of explosions that went on for ten or fifteen minutes. I forgot all about the general's offer. For the next few days we were busy hauling out supplies we found at the place where the artillery had fired. It was a major jungle depot for the North Vietnamese Army.

A few days later I heard a helicopter coming in very high. You could always tell when a VIP was visiting because they were flown at very high altitudes. I got a call on the radio from General Peers saying that he was about to land and wanted to meet with me.

I ran to my tent, which was about 150 degrees in the daytime, and rolled up the sides to let some air in. I grabbed the briefing map and put it in my tent. I noticed that my radio operators had a pitcher of ice cold lemonade. I have no idea how they got ice.

I said, "Guys, I'm really sorry to do this but I'm stealing your lemonade for the corps commander." I ran out to the helipad and met the general's helicopter as it landed.

I escorted LTG Peers to my tent and offered him some lemonade. He told me to give it back to the radio operators. He asked if I had any bourbon. I didn't know if that was a trap, but I didn't have any booze at all and told him so.

"That's a hell of a way to fight a war," he said.

General Peers explained some highly classified stuff to me. The essence was that if the bad guys talked on a radio, we might know about it and he would then send out a fire mission. He told me he wanted me to fire those missions without question in the future, did I agree?

"No, sir!" I answered. "Sir, we spend all of our time out here in the jungle searching for bad guys without much success. You're telling me you know where they are. I want you to allow me to go get them."

"Can you get there in 20 minutes, they may not be there longer than that?" he asked

"Yessir, I can," I answered, having absolutely no idea how to do that.

He hung around for another hour chatting with me about the war. I told him that the problem was we were being made to re-fight Korea by colonels who had learned to fight that way and weren't going to change. He agreed. It turned out that we both thought we were the only ones who knew how to fight the war in Viet Nam. And we agreed with each other.

After he left I thought about the promise I had just made. The only way I could honor my commitment was to pull a company out of the field and keep it on standby. When my battalion commander returned I told him what had happened. He agreed that it was too good an opportunity to ignore.

Over the next couple of months we captured every radio the bad guys owned. The last one was a huge World War II vintage job with a hand crank generator. We had to haul it up into a helicopter with a rope. It must have weighed over a hundred pounds. After that we were back to hunting for them in the jungle.

When I approached the end of my tour the Task Force Commander visited me. He told me that General Peers was being reassigned to the Pentagon and that he wanted me to be on his staff there. I refused again! I said I was on my way to Command and General Staff College and, after that I would join the Russian Foreign Area Specialist Program. I don't regret that, but working for General Peers would have led to a totally different career and higher rank. Life is full of hard choices.