A Lesson in Leadership:
Mistakes Will Be Tolerated
It was a bitterly cold and windy Sunday morning on a HAWK surface-to-air missile site in West Germany in the waning years of the Cold War. I was the greenest of second lieutenants – twenty-two years old and only two months into my first tour.
I stood outside at a trash can to burn classified paper documents. When the gust of wind ripped one page from my hand, I looked over to Specialist Fox, my witness in the document destruction. His eyebrows had receded into his hairline. I secured the remaining documents and scampered after the small white piece of paper, which had blown under a truck and out of sight over the snow-covered ground.
After looking for several minutes, I rounded up my skeleton crew on duty that morning, told them what happened, and asked them to help look. Troubled, they asked the green lieutenant, “Sir, do you know how serious this is?” I assured them I did. Twenty minutes later they reassembled empty handed.
I headed to the telephone to report the loss to CPT Histen, my battery commander. Even if I had considered not reporting it, that was not an option given that I would also have had to direct enlisted soldiers to cover for me. There was wisdom in the regulation requiring witnesses for document destruction.
Mrs. Histen answered the phone and told me she would wake her husband. I groaned internally. On hearing the news, CPT Histen wearily told me to recall the battery and that he would be in soon. “Recall the battery” meant calling 150 soldiers in from a rare day off to search in the snow in a biting wind. As they trickled in, it struck me that they looked at me more with pity than the contempt I expected. When CPT Histen arrived, he told me I was still the officer in charge that day and left me in charge of the search.
As we searched, the investigators from higher headquarters started arriving. I could only hear snippets of comments: “new lieutenant,” “burning outdoors in the wind,” “poor judgment.” Unable to dispute these observations, my mind wandered to whether my ribbons were on my dress green uniform or my blues. I would likely be in my greens the next day in front of someone’s desk. I figured my best case was a rehab transfer to another battery as a screw-up. At least, I reflected, my parents still loved me even if I had so quickly crippled my career.
After six hours of searching it was already dark, as happens soon after 4 p.m. in Germany in February. The troops had all come in to warm up and eat hot chow cooked by the mess section. That is when we got the call that LTC Rose, the hard-charging battalion commander, was approaching the site. CPT Histen ordered everyone back out to continue searching. He told me to stand with him to greet LTC Rose. The headlights of LTC Rose’s staff sedan swept the missile site as it wound its way to us. It stopped in front of us. LTC Rose emerged, and we saluted. As we did so, miraculously, a crowd of cheering soldiers came around the missile berm carrying Sergeant Pasquale on their shoulders. It was like a scene from Carnival in Rio. Pasquale waved a small piece of white paper over his head. Apparently, Specialist Littinger had been crawling under a truck searching when his boot kicked over some snow revealing the paper to Pasquale’s flashlight.
LTC Rose said, “Excellent, come Lieutenant, let’s destroy it.” We did so. He commended me for reporting the loss and gave the battery a pass for the next day. I felt like a balloon being re-inflated with air.
I asked CPT Histen why he had never yelled at me or even reproached me during the loss. He replied that he figured I knew perfectly well that I had messed up badly. It was a leadership lesson of which I still remember every detail. He had certainly won my undying loyalty. As always, it is also another reminder of the typical dedication of the Army’s enlisted soldiers, in this case crawling through the snow in the dark in what must have seemed a futile effort.
© 2020 Roland F. de Marcellus. Posted by GovLeaders.org with the kind permission of the author.