Listening to the press conferences yesterday, about the failures that led to Trevyan Rowe’s death, I thought about basic training, where they made us fold our underwear four-inches square.
In the third drawer of our wall locker, in the right corner, our underwear, four-inches square.
A few weeks in, they had an inspection. A big inspection. With the battalion commander and the sergeant major. The light colonel was coming through and that was a big deal and in the days beforehand they pushed us hard on our wall lockers and our bunks and the shine on our boots.
It was on a Saturday morning, at 10 o’clock, and half an hour before we were beside our bunks, at parade rest, eyes forward and body rigid.
It was scary as hell.
You’re in some freak world where they own your soul and act like maniacs and you’ve got to pay attention to the knot on your laundry bag and the tuck of your blanket and which way your tooth brush faces in the drawer. And some guy is going to come through and check your stuff and if it doesn’t suit him the world is going to explode right there where you’re standing.
They came through the door right at ten hundred hours – that’s what they called it there. Ten hundred hours and you felt the old open-bay barracks stiffen. Men had slept and cursed and been inspected on those wooden floors since the Second World War and that day was our day. It was the battalion commander and the sergeant major and the company commander and the first sergeant and the senior drill and they moved from bunk to bunk, wall locker to wall locker, inspecting each man’s bed and equipment in a slow, methodical fashion. The light colonel doing the hard looking, the sergeant major on his wing, the first sergeant throwing pissed-off glances in every direction. As they came to your bunk, you and the guy beside you moved from parade rest to attention, ramrod straight, eyes locked in a motionless stare, hands cupped and held rigid against the outside seam of your pants.
I snapped sharply to attention.
I was a private E-1 and there wasn’t anything on my uniform but my name tag.
He stood in front of me and looked me over, top to bottom, inspecting the alignment of pockets and the knot of my tie. Then he smartly side stepped me and moved to my bunk, bending down to check the tautness of the blanket and the dust cover, glancing at the shine on the boots and their arrangement next to my shower shoes at the foot of the bunk.
The sergeant major and the company commander and the first sergeant and the senior drill hovered in earnest witness to what was happening, randomly following on and reinspecting what the light colonel had only just inspected.
The wall locker was the hard part, but he moved through approvingly, nodding at the spacing of the hangers and, drawer after drawer, the arrangement of the clothes, exactly as specified. He seemed satisfied and came back to me, calling me by my last name, and asked me to recite the First General Order or the effective range of the M16 or some such piece of then-important information.
And he was off to repeat this same process with the private beside me, who likewise proved satisfactory, and then on to the next bunk, as its soldiers moved to attention as the man beside me and I snapped back to parade rest.
That’s about when it happened.
Everybody’s eyes were locked forward, and nobody saw anything by anything other than peripheral vision, but we knew something was wrong. There was a hesitation in the methodical movement of the battalion commander, he had stopped in front of an open wall locker drawer, his head bent down, looking in, and then a slow turn to the sergeant major, to whom he spoke in brief, grave tones.
The sergeant major stiffened, looked into the open drawer, and spun around to face the first sergeant.
The first sergeant snapped to parade rest as the sergeant major leaned in hard and earnest, going on at length in unintelligible but earnest syllables that sounded like a growling dog.
By the time the sergeant major was done, the battalion commander was a couple of bunks ahead and before long the knot around him had completed the inspection and exited the barracks. All but the first sergeant, who stood, fists and jaw clenched, right where the sergeant major had dressed him down. We privates stood by our bunks, eyes forward, at parade rest, silent.
And then it happened.
That man, with the Purple Heart and Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal ribbons on his chest, reached up and grabbed the top of the wall locker in question and threw it to the ground. And then he attacked it, pulling out each of its drawers, scattering their contents across the floor, and hurling the drawers as far down the polished hardwood as he could. Then it was the bunk of the man whose wall locker it was, ripping off the bedding and throwing it and the mattress and the bedframe like so much tornado flotsam in every direction. He was all rage and fury, literally roaring with anger as he demolished the man’s gear and then stood toe-to-toe, face-to-face with him, seething, his chest heaving.
“Fold your fucking underwear four-inches square!” the first sergeant howled, almost rattling the barracks windows with his intensity.
“Not three and a half, not four and a half, four.”
Every one of us felt the rush of fear adrenaline. He was yelling at one man, but we all felt like we were in the crosshairs. We couldn’t grasp, and were disoriented by, this irrational outburst over a pair of misfolded boxers.
“Fold your fucking underwear four-inches square! Because I told you to. Because that’s the way it’s done. Because that’s how we do it. Because that’s what you get paid to do. Because it’s your job. Because it’s your duty. Because if you don’t, somebody could die!”
Later that day, the scattered debris cleaned up, the offending soldier off to mop the mess hall while the rest of us were given an hour to write letters home, we laughingly mimicked the first sergeant: “Because if you don’t, somebody could die!”
That was about the time the senior drill came in. Lean and hard in starched fatigues and a Smoky Bear hat, he was a god in our world. Usually, an angry god, and we feared our mockery of the first sergeant wasn’t going to go over well.
But he didn’t yell at us. He taught us. In calm, comfortable, almost friendly tones, he explained that it wasn’t about underwear, it was about following instructions and attention to detail, about doing your duty exactly as you are ordered to do it. First time, every time. He said that wasn’t mindlessness, it was dependability and precision. It was professionalism. It was about excellence and accomplishing your mission. And he said that in the Army and in life, failure to conscientiously and reliably do your duty caused problems, it could even cost lives.
Attention to detail, dependability, pride of service, honor, mission accomplishment.
Those are the hallmarks of professional excellence and personal integrity.
That’s what I thought of as I pondered Trevyan Rowe, and felt the tears well up in my eyes.
Take the fucking attendance.
Send the fucking fire trucks.
Do your fucking duty.
Because if you don’t, somebody could die.
Somebody innocent, and young, and afraid.