encore Witty Response
An Army offi cer unknowingly sets up his team sergeant for the perfect clever reply to his fi nal question during an early-morning pre-convoy briefi ng.
I
I was an A-team leader in the 10th Spe- cial Forces Group at Fort Devens, Mass., in the mid-1970s. My team consisted mainly of hard-charging young sergeants who were serving in slots one level above their actual ranks. None of the eight lower- ranking noncommissioned officers had been to Vietnam. However, they made up for their lack of experience with fearless enthusiasm and some recklessness. Due to various post-Vietnam personnel issues, I had not been assigned a lieutenant to act as executive officer. Nevertheless, we were able to strike a balance through the good offices of our team sergeant, an intelligent and savvy master sergeant whose calm de- meanor and shrewd interpersonal skills kept the team on an even keel. He was well-known in the entire group for his wit. He also could talk me down from most of my unrealistic training ideas without compromising the readiness of the team.
During one winter, our battalion was scheduled to conduct ski training at Fort Drum, N.Y., which always was guaran- teed to have adequate snow. Most of us were beginning skiers, so we were look- ing forward to this experience. We were to travel to the training area by convoy in the venerable 2.5-ton trucks. I was absent from Fort Devens during the planning phase for the training and the convoy, but our team sergeant was more than capable of representing the team.
88 MILITARY OFFICER MAY 2016 I returned late the night before the
convoy was to depart, but I had arranged to meet with the team sergeant early the next morning for a briefing on our participation in the convoy. Like all military formations, convoys
are divided into smaller segments for ease of control. The subdivisions of convoys are called serials, and like all subordinate units, serials have their own internal command structure. That morning, the
sergeant and I met, and we went through all of the pertinent informa- tion about our serial: the number of trucks, our trucks’ position in the serial, the radio frequencies, etcetera. We seemed to have covered everything when one final question occurred to me. “Who is the serial command- er?” I asked. I should have been better
prepared for the sergeant’s answer to my question, be- cause his face became the very picture of irreproachable innocence before he replied: “Captain Crunch.”
MO
— James Lockhart is a retired Army major. He lives in Huntington Beach, Calif.
ILLUSTRATION: DAVID CLEGG
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