March 13, 2003
I woke to the sound of soldiers snoring and beginning to stir around 5 a.m., and joined them out by the 500-gallon water buffalo shaving and brushing teeth in the cool desert air before the company’s morning formation. I spent much of that morning sitting on my cot, writing on my laptop. Lustig, the platoon sergeant, was busy with pen and paper on his cot nearby. The hungover soldier lay in the fetal position, sick as a dog, on someone else’s cot at the opposite end of the big platoon tent, as far away from Lustig as he could get.
Around mid-morning, Lustig called the soldier over and began reading out loud. I was a little surprised that this personnel matter was being handled about six feet away from me, but Lustig ignored me, so I just kept typing. Fly on the wall. Lustig told the soldier to sign the statement.
In the afternoon, I joined the rest of the platoon in the tent for a map-reading refresher course. During a break in the class, Lustig came forward to address them.
“Listen up!” Lustig snapped. Ferocity wound up like a spring, just like I said. Quiet but intense. Human panther.
“You all know what happened last night. Somebody got out of control. Somebody fucked up. Somebody broke the rules. We read you these regulations at formation. We didn’t just do it because somebody told us to. No alcohol, no drugs, no pornography in a hostile zone.
“There is a reason for these regulations. Somebody didn’t just make them up. Back in the garrison, in civilian life, it’s a misdemeanor. Here, it’s a fucking felony. We can be called to roll at any time, on a couple hours notice. I don’t want no soldier drunk in his tank, or someone who can’t go because he’s passed out. If you want to be a drunk, you don’t belong here. When it’s time to re-enlist, don’t raise your hand. I don’t want you in my Army. I don’t want you beside me in my tank.”
This would never happen in the civilian world, a dressing down in front of a reporter. Maybe Lustig had taken my promise of immunity at face value, when the drunk, puking soldier had been carried away, and I told Lustig, “Don’t sweat it. That didn’t happen.” I didn’t intend to step in it my first night here, and didn’t particularly care if one soldier was drunk as long as the rest of them weren’t. That wasn’t what I was here for, and right now, my objective was to get everyone to forget I was here.
Maybe Lustig had taken to heart the Army’s instruction that everything was supposed to be open to the embeds. Or maybe, Lustig didn’t mind letting some lame-ass newspaperman see him at work.
What was playing out was an age-old scene of military discipline. It was a platoon sergeant exerting his will over the young men in his charge, boys he had to whip into shape and lead into battle. He was responsible for making them an effective killing force. He was responsible for their lives. This was what men like Lustig had done since the dawn of war, and as an outsider, I was privileged to witness it. This was Lustig’s own personal ass-chewing speech, no doubt drawing on some of the greatest ass-chewing hits he had heard as a green PFC with big red ears from some grizzled ’Nam vet, who got it from some guy who was still standing after the human wave assaults in Korea, who got it from some tough bastard who made it through the Bulge, and so on down through the centuries.
Lustig was still going, drilling holes in everyone’s head. Lustig didn’t yell or bark. Lustig was all cold, murderous business, and barely had to raise his voice.
“If you want to be a fuck-up, go back to the civilian world. Let the cops chase you around and arrest you for the rest of your life. Get yourself a job sweeping up the parking lot at Wal-Mart, because that’s all you’ll get.
“If I’m an employer, and you fill out an application and you have to say you’ve got a felony record, do you think I want to hire you? No fucking way. You’d just be a liability to me. I already know you’re a liar, because you probably lied to the cops who arrested you. And if you’re a drug addict, you’re probably a thief. If that’s what you want to be, fine, go do it in the civilian world, but don’t do it in my Army.
“I know some of you think you’re smarter than me. You might get away with something, pull the wool over the old platoon sergeant’s eyes. If any of you think you’re smarter than me, then try it. I will find out. I will come after you”
Lustig recounted the facts that his platoon members already knew. They had witnessed it, and the buck young sergeant who was about to lose his stripes sat nearby with his head bowed, listening to his buddies take this ass-chewing on his account.
One soldier had received a bottle in the mail from home. Three of them – two from another platoon – snuck off in the duststorm that came up after chow to drink it. It all unravelled when one of them stumbled into our tent, glassy-eyed with blood on his forehead. Lustig was all over him in seconds.
”What happened to your head.”
“I fell.”
“How’d you fall.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You fell and cut your head and you don’t remember how.”
His cot was the one between my cot and Lustig’s cot. A minute or two after he lurched into it, he rolled in my direction to vomit, which was infinitely wiser than puking on Lustig’s boots. He was bringing up Army chow and high-proof alcohol, so strong it smelled like medicinal alcohol and I thought he might die. One of the GIs and I carried him out into the sand, where he kept puking on his hands and knees in the swirling duststorm. Lustig told the medics to put an IV in him and had a couple of Joes watch him all night, so he wouldn’t wander off.
Lustig, winding up his ass-chewing, told the young soldiers a few other things. In a war zone, to fall asleep on sentry duty is punishable by death. Any infraction out here would be multiplied in penalty and in the damage it could do. Now, more than ever, he told them, they had to be able to rely on each other.
“That’s all,” Lustig said. “Get back to your lesson.”
I had not taken any notes, but it was all in my head, and I wrote the whole thing down later. The next day, I went to Lustig.
“I know I told you I wasn’t going to write about that, but I want to do that,” I said.
Lustig stared at me.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to write anything until you say it’s OK,” I continued, not giving him a chance to react. “I told you I won’t, and I’ll stand by that.” I told him what I thought the ass-chewing said about the Army and platoon sergeants. I didn’t want to embarrass the kid or the unit, and wouldn’t use names. Lustig didn’t say much, but it was obvious he didn’t like it. I later told Capt. Wolford the same thing. I hadn’t made him any promises, but at this time I extended the same promise to him. I wouldn’t send it until he was OK with it.
Wolford got it, but didn’t like it. Wolford discussed it with LTC deCamp, and deCamp told him, “The rules say the embeds can write what they want. Let him do it.”
Wolford said this about the situation later:
“There’s a leadership lesson in the Army most people figure out pretty early. As a leader you don’t get in trouble for what happens, you get into trouble for how you mishandle what happens.” He had inherited a highly cohesive company, which had had competent commanders, NCOs and soldiers in place for several years before him. Wolford, who was 36 and had started out as an enlisted man, said A Co. 4-64 Armor was probably the best unit he had served with in the Army, in terms of discipline, preparedness and raw ability.
“In the Army, average is good, but not in the Assassins,” Wolford said. “It was the only unit I have ever been in without a weakness, nothing average. Lustig and I talked about this all the time. This was something the young soldiers would probably never see again in their Army careers.”
Wolford now had a couple of problems, on top of everything else as he made his company ready to go to war in a few days.
“In the eyes of the soldiers everything means something. How do I handle this, what punishment, how do I address this to my soldiers, to the battalion leadership, etc… all these factors were weighing and then I have a reporter wanting to take it to the national level,” Wolford said about it later.
As Wolford and I discussed the matter in the following couple of days, he said Lustig had been pissed off by my about-face. Wolford told Lustig he didn’t think I was out to shaft them. I spoke to Lustig later as I prepared to write it, and he had softened.
“That was one of my best sergeants,” Lustig said. “All of their careers are probably over. This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But I can’t have this shit. Not here. Not now.”
The generator powering our tent had died. I don’t know if Lustig had done something to piss off the mechanics, but that thing never worked again. I asked Lustig to join me over in the maintenance area, where they had power, so he could read it. Lustig hunched over the laptop in a folding camp chair, scrolling down. He looked up when he was done.
“You can send that,” Lustig said.
There was an Article 15 hearing. The young sergeant from First Platoon was busted to specialist, but stayed in Lustig’s tank. I never found out what they did to the other two. We were going to war in a few days. I got distracted.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 2:36 am on Tuesday, March 13, 2007
6 Responses to “March 13, 2003”
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March 13th, 2007 at 5:40 am
And thus will it ever be
March 13, 2003 Jules Crittenden I woke to the sound of soldiers snoring and beginning to stir around 5 a.m., and joined them out by the 500-gallon water buffalo shaving and brushing teeth in the cool desert air before the
March 13th, 2007 at 5:45 am
And thus will it ever be
March 13, 2003 Jules Crittenden I woke to the sound of soldiers snoring and beginning to stir around 5 a.m., and joined them out by the 500-gallon water buffalo shaving and brushing teeth in the cool desert air before the
March 13th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Tough NCOs are what makes an Army. An officer who backs them is worth his weight in gold.
March 13th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Jules, after ‘Nam, as a Staff sergeant in the Corps, I swore that no journalist would come around either me or my troops. You would be the exception, based on that piece.
March 13th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Hmm-company level article 15-probably not going to cost the troop his career. Young GIs loose stripes, but as long as they learn something from it (i.e. DON”T MAKE A HABIT OF IT!!!) they can come back from it. I’d say the other guys probably got docked some pay or maybe some extra duty.
The platoon daddy was writing a counseling statement while the culprit was sleeping it off (you have to establish a paper trail regarding what happened) and his recommendation about what to do would make a difference in whether or how the commander chooses to punish. It’s usually better to start with an ass-chewing and then take more formal measures, however with this unit about to make the assault into Iraq it was probably better to make an example.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:13 am
March 13, 2003
Jules Crittenden.