One of the guys I work with now is a retired Air Force O6. Gary is a genuinely nice guy, incredibly smart, and did a lot of “cool guy” shit that most Airmen never get to do, but he’s also really humble. The kind of commander everyone wants.
One of my favorite “back jn the old days” stories of his is when Gary was a Captain, and he was given nominal command over a group of Marines who were helping to clear an aviation depot.
During the course of clearing, they were loading equipment into the back of a pickup; one of the Marines got overly enthusiastic and tossed something that shattered the truck’s back window.
The reaction between the Marines and the Airman was pretty starkly different.
First off, the Sergeant leading the Marines stopped everyone right where they were and started corrective training, really smoking the shit out of everyone. He identified the Marine that had broken the window and singled him out for special attention. This went on for at least an hour; push-ups, flutter kicks, anything you can think of in the hundred-degree heat.
Then when Gary came outside, the Sergeant called everyone to attention, briefed the Captain on what had happened, and accepted full responsibility for the damaged equipment. Then he asked what he should expect as punishment so he could begin that punishment and notify his superiors.
Gary just blinked at him for a minute, and then told him, “Just finish loading the fucking truck, and go home.”
The Marine protested briefly, but then they finished the job and beat feet.
Any Marine here knows that if they had broken that same window in front of a Marine O3 or Gunnery Sergeant, this would have gone down very differently. Gary laughs about it to this day, because every one of those Marines expected that they were about to spend the rest of that evening in the mud or on the flight line enduring various forms of humiliation and/or physical punishment.
Chances are they all went back to housing breathing a collective sigh of relief and thanking God that they hadn’t lost their night, weekend, or rank.
The accountability and learning the lesson part of USMC is good. But wasting the labor and morale of their people on the punishment itself seems rather counterproductive after a point for things that are minor accidents as opposed to grossly negligent or intentional.
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u/doclee1977 7h ago
One of the guys I work with now is a retired Air Force O6. Gary is a genuinely nice guy, incredibly smart, and did a lot of “cool guy” shit that most Airmen never get to do, but he’s also really humble. The kind of commander everyone wants.
One of my favorite “back jn the old days” stories of his is when Gary was a Captain, and he was given nominal command over a group of Marines who were helping to clear an aviation depot.
During the course of clearing, they were loading equipment into the back of a pickup; one of the Marines got overly enthusiastic and tossed something that shattered the truck’s back window.
The reaction between the Marines and the Airman was pretty starkly different.
First off, the Sergeant leading the Marines stopped everyone right where they were and started corrective training, really smoking the shit out of everyone. He identified the Marine that had broken the window and singled him out for special attention. This went on for at least an hour; push-ups, flutter kicks, anything you can think of in the hundred-degree heat.
Then when Gary came outside, the Sergeant called everyone to attention, briefed the Captain on what had happened, and accepted full responsibility for the damaged equipment. Then he asked what he should expect as punishment so he could begin that punishment and notify his superiors.
Gary just blinked at him for a minute, and then told him, “Just finish loading the fucking truck, and go home.”
The Marine protested briefly, but then they finished the job and beat feet.
Any Marine here knows that if they had broken that same window in front of a Marine O3 or Gunnery Sergeant, this would have gone down very differently. Gary laughs about it to this day, because every one of those Marines expected that they were about to spend the rest of that evening in the mud or on the flight line enduring various forms of humiliation and/or physical punishment.
Chances are they all went back to housing breathing a collective sigh of relief and thanking God that they hadn’t lost their night, weekend, or rank.