[SuperScout]

On my first tour, I quickly learned via observation who the competent and the less than competent were, and that guage was applied to EM, NCO's and officers alike. Combat actions can be a very decisive deselector of incompetence; most of the people in my platoon had already survived six months in country before I arrived. Out of the four squads, three were led by draftees or volunteers who had succeeded in earning leadership positions; one RA SSG was the most incompetent NCO I had, and he quickly became the NCOIC of the Defecation Elimination Detail back at basecamp. Through the miracle of intrinsic standards of performance, most EM functioned extremely well because they relied on each other, and knew they had to rely on each other.

Most officers I worked with were exceptionally well qualified, with some notable exceptions. LT McDonald suffered from several conditions, the "Little Man Syndrome" being one of them. He also had been told, he insisted, that upon his completion of his first tour, he was to be sent to flight school, and that future assignment clouded his every-day judgment, his sense of purpose, and his attention to the details of leading his platoon. He ended up as the support platoon leader, and was marginally successful in that assignment.

My first co cdr was a Ring Knocker, totally eaten up with self, and basically a tactical dolt. Two months after I my assignment to his company, he was releived by the bn cdr and sent to the div hq, where he could receive more hands-on adult supervision.

Don't know how it was with other units, but I think I worked as hard as any of my EM or NCO's, and that counts for both tours. I never asked them to do anyting that I hadn't already done, or wasn't prepared to do with them on a side-by-side basis. The phrase, "leading from the front" is almost an oxymoron, as I always found it difficult to lead from the rear - kinda like trying to push cooked spaghetti across your plate.