I came to the 515th in the summer of 1989. I was so very pleased to have been promoted and to finally achieved a career-long goal...I was the First Sergeant of a working truck company in Germany, a place where Army trucking is a real mission, real world, full time operational job. I couldn't wait to get into it.

There was the added benefit that the company had a terrible reputation for lack of discipline, mission failures, and generally a mis-managed mess. The previous 1SG had been a buddy of the Sergeant Major, which explained why he had not been fired a long time prior. So from my perspective, the only way was up...I couldn't help but make things better!

My family was still in Baumholder, it took a couple of weeks to get the moving done. I was a weekend Daddy for a bit. The first week was spent getting to know the leaders in the company and sounding them out for attitudes and insights. I closed up early on Friday because I had to drive up to Baumholder and it was the 4th of July weekend, a long one because the 4th was actually on Tuesday.

I drove back to Ludwigsburg late Sunday night and bounced into my office about 0545 to check for messages before PT at 0600. There were a few...dozen. The Sergeant Major's said to turn things over to someone else and get my butt to Battalion ASAP. I did. Over the weekend, three of my soldiers had gone to Holland. Their intention was to buy enough smoke at bargain prices to avoid Ludwigsburg's local dealers' more oppressive rates. During the exchange, the contact they made in A-dam convinced them that if they took a couple bags of Heroin back with them, the money they made on the sale of it, they would not only cover their mini-vacation in A-dam, the purchase prices, and travel; they would actually turn a nice profit from it. They thought he was a genious. He wasn't a genious, he was a German Border Police undercover agent. Several of his pals met them at the border and took them and all their product, their car, and everything they owned to jail. Because of Status of Forces Agreement, they were shortly turned over to the Military Police and placed in pre-trial confinement in OCS (Old Coleman Stockade).

The immediate concern to the battalion was, "Who were they planning to sell the stuff to?" "How deep does this problem go?" And of course, "1SG Daddy, you have a major drug problem in your unit." The following week was wrapped up in shake-down inspections (yeah, I know, we don't do "Shake-downs" anymore. We do "Health and Welfare" inspections), where you go in with the platoon leadership and start a complete, pull everything apart, leave no stone unturned, everything like that inspection...at 0200 with no prior warning. There was also the matter of inventorying the suspect's personal property and boxing it up for storage in the supply room until final disposition is made on their case. Then all their military equipment had to be inventoried and cleaned up for turn-in. Their bank accounts and loans and any other financial matters had to be resolved. And beat goes on. At every turn there was some glitch, sometimes several, that required the First Sergeant's personal attention. It kept me pretty busy.

On top of everything, I was REQUIRED to drive up to Mannheim every week to visit my errant soldiers and see to what ever needs they had that could be met. Lots of their "needs" just brought laughter to the jailers.

It was interesting to me to see the changes in these guys from one visit to the next. The first time I met them was on that Wednesday when I went to Mannheim for the first time. They were cocky, smart ass, the whole thing was a joke. As the weeks went by, small changes became apparent, a little less cockiness, less laughter, the united front they displayed to the world started to crumble. The Prosecutor told me that after 6 weeks behind the wall, they started to roll over on each other. The ring leader was the last to try for a deal, he didn't know the others had already cut a deal. When he made his play, the Prosecutor told him that he didn't need his deal...he had everything he needed to send them all away for a good while.

I wasn't required to testify at the court martial, I hadn't even met these guys before they got jailed. The previous 1SG did testify for the defense, character witness, long and loud about what wonderful boys these were. Shudder.

The last time I saw them was the day I brought them their orders and all the dispostion forms on their property. It was the day before they were transported to Leavenworth. I had to provide three escorts to fly with them and there were some other odds and ends requiring their signatures. When the business was finished, I asked if there was any questions. None. We stood there just looking at each other. I felt like there should be some sort of wisdom I should have been imparting...but the only thing I could thing of was that they had earned this. It was theirs. There was no more bravado of any kind. No more smart ass, instead there was an increase of military courtesy. No more laughter. The joke was over and the punch line was 15 years for the ringleader who waited too long to deal, 5 each for his compatriots. The ensuing sweeps of shake downs and unannounced whiz-quizzes resulted in another dozen or so convictions in the battalion (seems I wasn't the only 1SG with a drug problem). I thanked them before I left. Their mistake pointed out a problem I may not have noticed right away. It enabled me to weed out a large percentage of below standard soldiers and the shake up sort of galvanized the whole unit to overcome the stigma of a "drug" unit. They had made my job easier. They just looked stunned. I think one of them croaked, "You're Welcome" but his voice was choked and cracky and I couldn't be sure.