I had my first sit down with the two most important men in my platoon as soon as I could. I knew Pwoody from an earlier turn at Fort Ord; he had been a hell-raising drunken corporal at the time. When we locked eyes I saw that he recognized me. We had not been friends. Ricky was a small Philipino who looked as straight as they come. These were my squad leaders, the intermediate leaders who would be the supervisers in my platoon. In a nutshell, they could make or break me. They both had excellent reputations and from what I had seen of the platoon, they deserved it.
As I discussed with them what I expected and what they could expect of me, the subject of waking the troops came up. This is a time honored tradition in the Army that I would abolish Army-wide, if I could. I told them I did not expect them to wake anybody up. Pwoody immediately responded that they wouldn't get up. I asked him who had gotten him up that morning. He looked puzzled. I said I would not be coming over to his quarters to wake him up, ever. No one came around to wake me up. I told him that I didn't care what time the troops got out of bed...as long as they were ready to clean the common areas by 0600. Of course that meant that at 0600 when they came out into the hallway, their rooms would be squared away, they would be dressed and shaved and ready for working on barracks clean up, chow, and going to work. It was a shock to both squad leaders, but they grasped right away that what I expected of the troops, and their leaders, was responsibility. I suggested that they tell their soldiers to get alarm clocks. Pwoody asked what I planned to do with those who couldn't or wouldn't be responsible. I told him I expected that the squad leaders would train their troops...that was the natural order of things.
They both beamed. They not only agreed with me, they had both felt the same way for a long time, but traditions being what they were, they had kept doing what squad leaders have done for ages. I knew there would be a period of adjustment and that some guys just wouldn't get it. But for the most part, it worked out real well. And it wasn't just getting up on time, it was a principle we taught every soldier about every aspect of his duties...be responsible for the things you are supposed to do.
How do you teach something like that? Well, Pwoody did it like this. When new guys came into his squad, he explained in detail what he expected of them and then asked if they could deal with it. Next he let them try it out. Invariably some newbie would goof and Pwoody would remind him that he was not living up to standard...then at 0300 the next morning he would bang on the door of the newbie's room. Get out of bed, pull everything out of the room, let's have a thorough clean up, here. Scrub the room top to bottom. Put everything back in the room by about 0545, you have 15 minutes to be in the hallway to start clean up in the common areas - get showered, shaved, dressed, polished, squared away and turn to. The next morning at 0300, Pwoody would be banging on the door: here we go again. Even the laziest soldier could do the math on this arrangement. It rarely took three mornings, but occasionallly four, before the new private assured the squad leader he was trained well enough to get up on his own. And he usually did.
Pwoody was the kind of squad leader that there are never enough of. He was fiercely loyal to his soldiers, he fought (literally and figuratively) for them and was tough at all times. I saw him throw his hat on the Colonels office floor and speak loudly, "Damnit, Colonel...I can train these men, if you trash them now we'll never see what they could have been !!" They were before the Battalion Commander for a Field Grade Article 15 (if you are not familiar with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, this is just under a court martial). The Colonel thought it over and decided to go with the squad leader's recommendation; gave them the lightest punishment . He also made sure that Pwoody knew that he now had to turn these two into soldiers. And when the same privates were caught up in a theft ring a few months later, the Colonel looked a Pwoody and asked if he was gonna throw his hat again....Pwoody just looked down and said, "Ahhh...NoSir....Hang 'em."