A First Sergeant isn't the oldest or the first one up in the morning;  the "First Sergeant"  is the senior enlisted man in any Army company.  The First Sergeant (abbreviated 1SG) has many varied duties and responsibilities.  I won't list them all;  it would take a lot of space, but I always felt that one of the most important responsibilities a 1SG has is the management of the unit's training program.   Everything a soldier does is planned out on a training schedule.  Every day is organized into training events, sometimes classroom instruction, sometimes field exercises, but most often it is  "mission accomplishment" or "mission support",  which means going to work and doing your job...ie, truck companies send their trucks out on missions, maintenance companies maintain, MP companies MP, etc.

The training schedule is planned a year at a time, made specific six weeks out, published three weeks out, and posted in the unit a week at a time.  All this organization is practically a full-time job, so most units appoint a junior NCO to be the unit's "Training NCO" who has the responsibility, under the First Sergeant's direction, for scheduling events and resources, coordinating activities, reserving training areas and ranges, and publishing the Training Schedule.  He also records individual soldiers' participation and results.  A good Training NCO can make a 1SG's life so much easier...and a bad one...well...that can be a tragedy.

When I came to the 515th Trans, I was a new 1SG but not new to being a 1SG.  As a senior E-7, I had been an acting 1SG on many occasions.  One of my first stops in the new company was to visit the Training Office and meet my Training NCO, a young buck sergeant named Todd.  He impressed me with his presentation;  he was on top of everything to do with the program, had things neatly organized, had wall charts displaying events and requirements, and could talk authoritatively on every aspect of the program without referring to notes or chasing some errant piece of paper.  I liked him.

My Training Officer (every unit has a lieutenant assigned to be the Training Officer...they don't do anything but sign papers) told me that Todd was a little strange, but I had been more favorably impressed by the Training NCO than I was by the lieutenant, so I deflected any futher discussion of Todd's ideosyncracies. 

Then one day I was walking with one of the platoon sergeants when I noticed a nice-looking Harley Sportster, beautiful in every way except for the gas tank, which was painted to match the woodland camoflage pattern  on our trucks...and the Nazi-style helmet on the handlebars.  I looked it over then and turned to the platoon sergeant who shrugged and said, "Todd".  Slowly, more stories of Todd's "uniqueness" surfaced.  He  had stabbed himself with a bayonet...well, not intentionally, but while trying to teach himself to throw the bayonet, he bounced it off the wall and it stuck in his leg (soldiers are not allowed to have bayonets in their rooms, because they might try to stick them in the wall and get hurt).  He was reprimanded for that trick, but he could have been more seriously punished.  I also heard that he was an avid Clint Eastwood fan;  he had a framed picture of Clint decked out in his Marine dress blues (ala Gunny Highway) on his wall along with posters from several movies.

One afternoon I was talking with Todd about firing ranges.  Every soldier has to qualify with his assigned weapon every year.  Since it is impossible to get every soldier to the range to qualify at the same time, we had to schedule ranges four or five times a year.  He was having a hard time scheduling time on a range near us.  We had a few dates available, but several of our soldiers needed to fire before those dates...I said, "Well, it's always like that..."  Immediately Todd started speaking in a perfect imitation of Clint Eastwood, falling right into the dialogue from Josey Wales...he said, "It's always like that.  Every time I get to likin' somebody, they don't stick around very long..." then he switched right into a perfect imitation of the old indian and continued, "I notice when you don't like somebody they don't stick around very long neither..."

He stopped when he realized I was staring at him.  He rather sheepishly apologized.  We stared at each other for a few minutes when, again in that perfect Eastwood rasp, he said, "I know what you're thinking..."  We both busted up.  He had every Eastwood movie committed to memory and any little stimulus could produce Clint's distinctive voice straight out of some dialogue or other.  Many times after that I was tempted to put that talent to good use, calling in threats to reluctant burocrats in our support chain...but I never did.

Another duty of the 1SG is to be the "dorm mother" for the barracks.  Room assignments, cleaning, repair, and maintaining order are all delegated to platoons and squads, but overall responsibility is the 1SG's.  One night I got a call from the CQ (every unit has an NCO who sits up all night looking out for the barracks) telling me that there was a fight in the barracks.  I reminded him that it was one of his duties as the CQ to stop fights in the barracks.  He said it was too big a fight with participants that were too big for him to stop...he said he would just call the MPs.  I hollered, "Whoa!...no MPs, I'm coming".  Calling the MPs would create an event that would be recorded on the blotter, reported up the chain of command, and wind up being investigated,  causing all kinds of problems for me and the commander.  So I got out of bed, jumped into some clothes and fifteen minutes later I was in the hallway outside the room where the ruckus was happening.  I went into the room, stopped the fight, got the occupants settled down, and then returned to the hallway to send the spectators back to bed...it was well past midnight. 

Our barracks was co-ed in that men and women lived in the same barracks, and the same hallway, but the rooms were designated as either mens or women's.  The latrines and shower rooms were separate, too.  So there were men and women in the hall in various outfits: robes, sweats, nighties, etc.  I was sending them back to their rooms when I came face-to-face with a young woman in  very sheer baby-doll pjs, without the usual support staff associated with ladies' apparel.  She had shiny brown hair down to her shoulders,  a  smooth, creamy complexion, and clear sea-green eyes...she was movie-star beautiful with an athlete's body.  I was in mid-sentence telling folks to back to bed when I saw her and it sounded something like:  "Just go back to your rooms...the shows ov....Who the heck are you?"  She was a little startled.  She blurted out, "But First Sergeant, I'm PFC Smith!"  I closed my gaping maw and said, "Of course you are...now go back to your room...and put some clothes on!"  I vaguely recalled her arriving the previous week and assigning her to the second platoon...she looked different in BDUs.

You may wonder why I included that little antecdote in a story about my Training NCO...well sir, PFC Smith caught the attention of many of the soldiers, but only Todd caught hers.  They were married just a couple of months after she got to the unit.

Todd went to DESERT STORM with me:  PFC Smith didn't make the trip;  she was "with child" when we were notified so she had to stay behind.  I had to send Todd right back to the platoon he had come from for the war;  they needed experienced drivers and NCOs and I really didn't need a Training NCO in the desert. 

I missed having Todd around.  He was, aside from his few little quirks, a thoroughly professional soldier who studied hard to be the best soldier he could be.  He volunteered to go to the Njimegen march every year, he pushed for the best PT scores, shot expert in every weapon in the company, studied martial arts, and (after I gave him a little instruction OUTSIDE his barracks room) he learned to throw a bayonet and stick it into his target and not his leg.  When the war was over and we were all back in Germany and settling down to our normal routine again, I had to get a new Training NCO;  Todd, his pretty wife, and their beautiful little boy went back to the States to a new assignment.  But I always remember him for his mimic talent and the way he "Made my day".